Romance Books, It’s Not Enough_Jordan

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https://nypost.com/article/best-contemporary-romance-novels/

One of my biggest pet peeves about books is when the entire plot is about two people falling in love. Now when I say this I don’t mean it in a way that’s like “oh romance is boring and no one can enjoy a romance book.” What I’m really trying to say is that: when you make a book purely about romance, you make the character’s lives purely about romance, and that is simply not enough to make a well rounded and enjoyable character. Before recently, I never really had that much of a problem with these types of books, that was until I got my first book that fell under the ‘romance’ genre. The moment I started reading it I thought to myself: “this is just a slice of life book, why isn’t it just called that?” That was until I got to the second chapter, where there and till the end of the book, it no longer mattered about the characters but the romance between the two. I honestly couldn’t finish the book, but I did gain something from it: I learned that romance in itself is not a complex enough genre to write a book. 

Romance should be a theme present in the slice of life genre but should not stand on its own. When you read a slice of life book, you’re reading about the person and how they grow through the book from the first to last pages. Usually, during someone’s life, they will develop crushes, love interests, go through heartbreak, etc. these, or the lack of these, can usually lead to growth of characters or revelation about themselves or the people around them. When you have a romance book the author, usually, throws away all of the character growth and focuses solely on the relationship’s growth. When this happens, the characters usually become watered down because their growth is usually seen only in comparison to the relationship. Characters should be able to live lives outside of their relationships, but a lot of romance authors are so focused on the relationship’s build up rather than focusing on who really allows this build up to happen: the characters. Now I’m not saying that you can’t grow in a relationship, you can, but a lot of these authors simply put these two characters into a relationship and by the end of the book, they’re exactly the same in all aspects except their relationship status. In a good book, the characters are able to grow by themselves, grow in a relationship, and grow out of a relationship, and with a book like this the main focus (genre) of the book is the character’s life (slice of life) and a portion (theme) of the book is their romance. 

‘Romance’ books are not bad, and usually have a lot of benefits to readers but these benefits can be backhanded. One of the best feelings to have is being able to open up a book and see yourself in a main character. Whether it be race, sex, sexuality, religion, culture, all of these things can grow someone’s love for reading and understanding of who they are. One of the main reasons people love ‘romance’ books so much is that they are able to see themselves and people like them getting their happily ever after. This can be seen especially with how Laynie Rose Rizer gained popularity because of her LGBTQIA+ books and her reasoning behind her fame being “People want to see themselves,” (Harris 2023). Another reason why people love romance books so much is because of the outlet romance books give them “Romance told women that it was natural to want,” wrote Emily Sinclair Montague (her username.) But while these things are good they can also be backhanded in their own ways. By having LGBTQIA+ people only in romance books, it can create this focal point around someone’s sexuality and less of who they are as a whole. Yes, someone’s sexuality is a huge part of who they are but it is not everything about a person. This same observation can be used for the other quote by Emily. By saying that romance is ultimately what showed women that it was okay to want is focusing on the woman’s sexuality rather than anything else. It paints women in a way that’s saying: ‘all women want is romance’ when women can want more than that. 

Ultimately I dislike romance books not because of the romance itself but because everything else about a person is usually watered down to make room for the romance. Because of this I believe that romance should be like an add-on to a book, not the focal point, leaving romance being seen as more of a theme rather than its own genre. With viewing romance as more of a theme than a genre of a book, it can allow authors to focus more on fleshing out who the characters are so we can see them grow and develop first. And then put them in a relationship so we’ll actually want the relationship to thrive instead of being like ‘oh they’re together, so what?’ At the end of the day, I really can't say whether or not romance books are good (because that’s subjective,) but I can say that with having romance as a secondary thought rather than the focal point, it can allow there to be more focus on the complex and easy to relate to characters. 

Montague, Emily  Sinclair. “Why Romance Is a Genre to Be Reckoned with (and Respected).” Words of a Feather, Words of a Feather, 29 Sept. 2020, www.wordsofafeather.net/post/why-romance-is-a-genre-to-be-reckoned-with-and-respected. 

Harris, Elizabeth  A. “‘I Just Want Something That’s Gay and Happy’: L.G.B.T.Q. Romance Is Booming.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 30 Mar. 2022, www.nytimes.com/2022/03/30/books/lgbtq-romance-novels.html.