Whither the third-person in contemporary romance?

A brief-ish investigation

I had a realization this week. Out of the 16 contemporary romances I’ve read so far this year, only two were told through a third person POV. If you add in historical and fantasy/paranormal romance, the number goes up slightly but first person still dominates. Then I looked at all the contemporary romances I read in 2024: 34 of them were told in first person, 25 in third. (Interestingly, seven of those were queer romances, which seem more likely to be written in third person dual POV. If I look at just m/f contemporary romances, the gap between first and third person gets even larger.) A quick glance at the New York Times hardcover fiction list revealed eight romances, both contemporary and romantasy, all told in first person. Admittedly, that list includes all three Empyrean novels, which skews the results slightly, but if you look at the contemporary romance authors who regularly appear on the NYT list, like Abby Jimenez, Emily Henry, Carley Fortune, or Ali Hazelwood, all of them write in first person.

Part of the rise in first person can be attributed to the decline of historical romance, which is almost always written in third person dual POV, in the last few years. But I feel like there’s something more going on. Contemporary romances from the 2000’s, like the work of Jennifer Crusie and Nora Roberts, tend to be written in third person POV. Even a lot of the contemporary romances that I was reading in 2019 and 2020, like books by Jasmine Guillory, Helen Hoang, Tessa Bailey, Alisha Rai, and Alyssa Cole, were third person dual POV. Sometime in the last five years, first person took over.

I think a lot of it has to do with Beach Read by Emily Henry, the book that helped bring romance to a new level of mainstream popularity in 2020, and her subsequent wildly successful novels, all written in first person. Beach Read also heralded a further blurring between contemporary romance and women’s fiction, which may include romantic elements but is generally focused on the heroine’s journey and emotional experiences. I’ve read quite a few romances in the last few years that are very focused on what the heroine is working through, while the hero is mostly there being lovely and supportive. You don’t necessarily need the hero’s POV when the book is much more the heroine’s story. (Although sometimes I’d like it!)

I’ve also seen a rise in plot devices that are at their most successful in first person single POV, like the interesting shift in enemies-to-lovers plotlines in contemporary romance. We’ve gotten significantly less loathing and a lot more “our heroine thinks the hero hates her but he’s actually secretly in love with her”. Not having a third-act break-up, which has become more popular in recent years, makes a lot more narrative sense if the focus is largely on one character and their emotional journey. In fact, Henry’s novels wouldn’t necessarily work if we were outside her heroines’ heads or if we got her heroes’ POV. Neither would any of the three Ali Hazelwood novels that I’ve read. Notably, The Love Hypothesis is written in third person but we never get Adam’s POV because the minute we do, we’d know instantly that he’s in love with Olive and all of her insecurity and confusion about what he’s feeling would turn into a frustrating reading experience. If you want to play with some of the popular narrative arcs and genre trends in contemporary romance today, your odds of success are higher with first person single POV.

But why do readers crave first person narration in the first place? I don’t have the romance reader data to back this theory up, but I do think that a lot of readers who came to romance in the late 2010’s or in 2020 and who are helping drive the romance boom today are readers who came of age with Twilight and The Hunger Games. Both are first person, putting the reader right in the midst of the action with Bella and Katniss, and I can see the DNA of both series all over the popular genre fiction of today. I also think that, in an increasingly digital world, there’s a real craving for intimacy. We crave the messy details, whether that’s from a reality TV reunion or a romance novel, and first person heightens the intimacy. But that intimacy is also escapist. You don’t have to absorb the entire fictional world, just what the protagonist can see and experience, and particularly with the romance genre’s promise of a HEA, it’s a very safe form of intimacy.

I’m curious to see if the pendulum swings back towards third person or dual first person in the next few years, especially with the significant number of previously independently published authors signing traditional publishing deals. When I was thinking about contemporary romance authors who do write dual POV, most of the authors I could think of (Chloe Liese, Kennedy Ryan, Sarah Adams, and Elsie Silver came to mind immediately) started out as independently published. Selfishly, I would also love to see more romantasies with richly developed worlds and sprawling casts of characters, which I think third person can really help facilitate. I’ve talked a lot in this newsletter about my vision of romance as an expansive genre, one with room for all kinds of subgenres and stories, and for me, that includes all kinds of perspectives.

Let me know what you think about POV in today’s romance novels in the comments!

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Currently reading: Out of the Woods by Hannah Bonam-Young, a marriage in trouble romance about a couple on a wilderness retreat.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• I may have to watch the violent bits of this through my hands, but the trailer for the TV adaptation of the Murderbot Diaries looks excellent! The books are such fun quick reads if you want to get into the series before the show comes out.

• I am years late to this one, but the release of the new season of Black Mirror was the nudge I needed to finally watch “San Junipero” and it was beautiful and perfect and made me weep. If you have recommendations for books with the same vibe…

• Blooming trees wherever you look in Brooklyn! The magnolias and the cherry blossoms are out in full force.