I think of 2018 as a major turning point, both in the world of romance and in my reading life. 2018 was the year of two high-profile romance releases, The Wedding Date by Jasmine Guillory and The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang, that broke new ground in terms of representation and how romance was marketed. Slowly, and then all at once, romance was being talked about in bookish outlets that wouldn’t have previously covered it. Independent bookstores had romance sections that got larger and larger. Celebrity book clubs started featuring romance novels. There was a vibe shift underway. I remember feeling that there were both more romances for me to get excited about, like The Kiss Quotient, A Princess in Theory by Alyssa Cole, and my beloved London Celebrities series, and more people to discuss them with. While I’d been reading a lot of historical romance, I’d been largely reading it in a vacuum. Now I could actually talk about in public. (Thrilling! Terrifying!) Friends of mine who’d never read romance before were talking about it and I was overflowing with recommendations. And things only got better in 2019. That was the year I discovered Alisha Rai, Mary Balogh, and Julie Anne Long and joined a romance book club. Not all of our book club picks were hits, like the absolutely bonkers honey badger shifter romance that half the club loved and half hated with a burning passion, but our monthly meetings provided a plethora of recommendations, spirited debates, and declarations of eternal love for various authors. According to Storygraph, 2019 was the first year that romance was my most read genre and it’s maintained the top spot ever since.
Then 2020 sent that shift into the stratosphere. The vast majority of us were stuck inside and experiencing a continuous, collective low-level panic attack. In a deeply unsurprising turn of events, a lot of readers turned to titles with a guaranteed happy ending and, while living through a time when a lot of us felt very alone, books that prized human connection. In a time when I felt stuck in my run-down Boston apartment, reading about characters who were in the process of growing and changing felt like finally getting to take a deep breath. I still can’t pinpoint exactly when the switch happened but sometime in that blur of years, I fully embraced my identity as a romance reader. Some of it was due to the growing mainstream popularity of romance. Some of it was due to getting more comfortable in my own skin and learning to shrug off the lessons of the 2000’s and early 2010’s. I was a teenage girl in a time when feminine-coded things were often perceived as cringy, trashy, or deeply uncool, even in the nerdy circles that I traveled in. It took a while to shrug that off and, simple as it sounds, learn to be proud of liking what I liked. And of course, some of it was also because of the reader friends who wanted to hear my romance recs, enthused about the genre, and even encouraged me to start this newsletter.
The biggest thing, however, might have been slowly learning to think of myself as a romance writer. I’ve written off and on for years and have about 69,000 words of a YA fantasy sitting in my metaphorical desk drawer but it wasn’t until I wrote a romance novel in the winter of 2020-2021 that I felt like I’d found my narrative voice. Writing a romance only reaffirmed everything I love about the genre and why I think it matters. It also gave me a new appreciation for just how hard it can be to write one and the level of craft that my favorite authors showcase. Right now I’m querying one project and revising another and it’s challenging and exhilarating all at once. Writing and reading romance is one of the places where I feel most like myself and I have the feeling I’ll be here for a while.
Let me know how you’ve experienced the romance boom of the last six years in the comments! What was the first romance you remember hearing about widely? Your favorites? And where do you think the genre’s going?
Currently reading: Any Duke in a Storm by Amalie Howard, a swashbuckling romance that’s delivering on both the adventure and the chemistry between the characters.
What’s bringing me joy lately:
I’ve been feeling under the weather for most of the week and have turned to my ideal feeling-slightly-sick show: the new season of Below Deck. It’s drama that’s the exact right level of petty.
An epic catch-up conversation with one of my closest friends.
The very sweet cat my boyfriend’s currently fostering, who has a truly magnificent purr.
Yes!! 2018 was the year I saw the shift too! I never read historical or category romance in the past but DID read what was called chick lit at the time ~ I’m fairly certain most of those books would now be considered rom coms since the romance genre has gone mainstream. I have started dipping into historicals and some super spicy stuff since then and have fully embraced what I call emotional romance - NOT a rom com and not category romance. Kennedy Ryan’s Skyland series being a perfect example. I’m also very much in love with cozy romances that have a sweet small town or family or band of friends, low heat and low angst. Such great comfort reads! As for rom coms - the market is now over saturated and I’m becoming more and more picky about these as IMO, the quality has fallen off a cliff with the volume of titles on offer.
Natalie!! I resonate with all of this so deeply! Thanks for taking us on the journey of your romance with ROMANCE! The podcast HOT&BOTHERED was really my gateway into the romance genre and their first season (debuting in 2020 pandemical times) is all about writing romance novels as a sacred practice to affirm and claim an HEA for ourselves. If you haven’t listened, I highly recommend that you check it out. 💛✨