The dataset was complete. The analysis and a thorough literature review were done. Heck, I had a whole paper written already, organized into a coherent narrative with citations basically organized and ready to go. This seemed like an achievable task for a 4-day retreat.

Did I achieve my goal? Or was it really about the epiphanies about romance scholarship that I made along the way? Follow along on the journey.

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Day 1

I’ve got everything I need: 10 books. 4 notebooks. 85 highlighters. 15 binders full of research print-outs, highlighted with notes. Zotero pulled up, filled with all of my sources, also highlighted, negating the need for those binders and some of the books, but sometimes it’s nice to be able to search for text, while sometimes I need a physical reminder that research exists (hence the binders).

I started the day by re-reading a bunch of articles from my binders, thinking that since it had been 5 years, I may need to brush up on the sources and maybe some new insights would jump out with fresh eyes. Turns out, I had read them so thoroughly and repeatedly that I basically had them memorized.

Next, I rewatched my presentation, which past-Andrea helpfully released on YouTube.

First, I marveled at how white-blonde my hair was. It’s amazing it didn’t fall out!

Next, I realized that past-Andrea actually did a really good job with this paper, and all I had to do was go back to my data, clean up the data visualizations, and I could basically just rewrite this into more of a standard scholarly paper.

Then I fell down a rabbit hole of researching publications so I could determine which style to use when writing the paper, and then I also ended up finding more scholars I needed to deep dive into…

Time for dinner! We walked to Paella, to savor the Mediterranean, and on our way home took some photos in Portland’s most desirable tourist destinations: this train track and Mr. Bagel. Jayashree suggested we make duck face poses for the latter photo op.

Jayashree and I chatted until late about many romance topics. (Do I recall any of the specific topics at this time? No. But believe me - it was GREAT.)

Epiphanies:

Every time I dig into the romance stereotype work, I worry that the conclusion is too obvious. Cool, I measured something that we all kind of assumed - that society at large holds a stereotype about romance readers - and measuring it has some value. The stereotype is tied to romance being associated with women, which again seems like a duh?

But maybe I’ve just been marinating in it for too long, so everything feels like a foregone conclusion?

I do think there’s something in here about attitude change and genre adoption, or more broadly, how and why people choose leisure activities and adopt related identities for stigmatized activities. Like, if we all agree that society sees being a romance reader as kind of cringey, what would motivate anyone to start?

Overall, it feels like this is the canvas for a bigger picture I’m trying to draw: it’s a necessary foundation, but in and of itself it’s not that exciting. I think I’m struggling to just let it be a canvas, but I need to let it be so that I can move on.

Day 2

We had plans today: do some work, then tour a historic mansion and go to a local romance event.

First, the work: I pulled up my romance stereotype data set in Wizard 2 and remembered that I needed to clean up the survey data, which is to say: completely restructure it for more robust statistical analysis.

The last time I took a math class was in 11th grade, and I’ve never taken a statistics class in my life. Who knew my interest in romance novels would take me to these new and exciting places?!

I will assume you’d like me to gloss over the details here, and so I will. Suffice it to say, after 6 hours of this, I was ready for a break. (Go to the footnote for a challenge related to the screenshot below.1)

Extracurricular Adventures

I drove into downtown Portland. Man, these drivers are polite! The city I live in north of Boston has a population density just slightly less than Portland’s, but the traffic and level of aggression is about 30 times greater.

We visited the Victoria Mansion for a guided tour, which I’d highly recommend. Great history and lots of beautiful architecture, paintings, furnishings, and more, including this sculpture of a small girl spanking a naughty kitten.

After a quick dinner at Becky’s Diner, where we were served by an ethereal creature who surely moonlights as a muse for fine artists, we headed to a reading at Portland’s romance-only bookstore, Grump & Sunshine.

After the reading, Jayashree and I had some time to browse and I asked the owner, Cassidy, for recommendations for the dirtiest books in she had in the store.

Once again, Jayashree and I stayed up late talking, but after retiring to our rooms, I foolishly pulled up my data again and continued hacking away at my analysis until 4 am with Couple’s Therapy playing in the background.2

Epiphanies:

I realized that the more I got into my own data, the more a story emerged about the features and benefits of romance that genre-competent readers recognized vs. how the genre naive have a harder time distinguishing features of an example from features that define the whole (genre).

This is already something I’ve been poking around in, related to my “Rereading Reading the Romance” project, specifically: are the features of what defines an “ideal” or “failed” romance consistent across time and readers? My hypothesis is that the benefits are fairly consistent, the emotional experiences are fairly consistent, but that some features (as a way to achieve those outcomes) are shifting for readers based on the context of our time, society, and lived experiences.

This then reminds me that I need to come back to structuring the reading/question guide for that project. I already recorded (and edited!) an episode with Shelf Lovely Jess about The Fulfillment by LaVyrle Spencer as part of this project, but I haven’t started scheduling recordings and lining up my full list of readers yet because I want more precise, curated questions. Also I’m still figuring out if I want to commit to reading all 40 books… (I definitely don’t, but I need to come up with a defensible methodological reason to explain which I choose to cover and which to skip.)

This also reminds me that I have submissions for “Romance Novel Collection” that I need to publish on here...

My eyes are drifting shut with my finger on my computer trackpad. Heartburn creeps up my throat and I don’t sleep well — is it the German chocolate cake we shared after the reading, or am I overwhelmed by unfinished romance scholarship projects?

Day 3

Half the day is gone before I wake up. I feel like hot garbage. I stare at my data for a bit, then admit defeat and try reading my comfort scholarship: Narrative Impact: Social and Cognitive Foundations.

Normally I’d be soothed by Green & Brock’s orderly framework for narrative transportation, but on this day, it just makes me think of applications within romance, and instead of pollinating the little flower garden of ideas in my head I feel like a swarm of bees is chasing me through a garden maze, herding me toward a minotaur at its center…

That reminds me: I need to reread Feeling Judged: Reflections on Pornography and Romance from a Minotaur Milking Farm, an article by Laura Vivanco in JPRS.

ARGH! No more new ideas! Yes, everything is related, Andrea! Create some boundaries around scope!

I pulled out one of my 4 notebooks and sketched out the major concepts I’m interested in, drawing lines between them to show how they’re connected. Everything is connected to everything else, with arrows going every which way.

I fully admit defeat and take a nap.

When I wake up, Jayashree is cooking pork chops. We have a nice dinner with great conversation, updating each other on the work we’ve been doing during the trip.

Jayashree reminds me that sometimes it’s less about the work done on the trip and more about the thinking that’s generated that results in tangible work later.

We’ve been talking a lot about why romance reader discourse seems to shy away from talking about sex in detail and we sketch out ideas for Jayashree to say more on camera. I play around with locations and angles in our AirBnB. This is one location that was rejected because the lobster tail in the poster behind Jayashree looks like a penis with testicles. But on later reflection, maybe that would have been visually appropriate given the subject matter?

Epiphanies:

I’ve allowed too many romance scholarship projects to pile up in my mind. I feeeeel like they’re done, because I’ve presented a paper at a conference or written about it on Substack, but I haven’t left them in a place that actually allows me to move on and build upon them.

I need to choose what I most need to finish, and then FOCUS. I need to be comfortable leaving some projects unfinished, and accept that while I could try to publish something about it, it’s not in line with my current interests.

The body of work I’ve outlined could take 3 lifetimes to complete. The romance reader stereotype work in and of itself could probably be a book. I’m obviously interested in the topic, but is this how I want to spend my time?

On our walk home from dinner on Day 1, I was explaining ADHD to Jayashree — we get a lot of dopamine for starting something and from urgency. So, if I announce a project, launch it, and get data, then have the urgency of a deadline to create a presentation, dopamine is sustaining my interest and hyperfocus. When the milestone is passed and the urgency is over… that’s where I get into trouble. It would be so much more interesting to start something new!

There’s a reason why the formats I’ve successfully maintained3 (the podcast and Substack) force me to break things up into bite-sized chunks.

Day 4

Check out is at 11 am, so we spend the morning packing up and then just before we leave, I record some short videos with Jayashree. The lighting and staging was impeccable.

Before dropping Jayashree off at the airport, we visit some more local establishments. At Pot + Pan, everyone gained new knowledge: Jayashree and I learned that it was more than just an adorable shop with baking implements and spices, and Dunia (one of the owners) got a list of romantasy book recommendations, exclusively provided by Jayashree.

Our last stop was Back Cove Books. I picked up Woman Hating by Andrea Dworkin (because I remember taking issue with a lot of her work, but figured it was time for me to reconsider), the latest Murderbot novella, and some books for my daughter.

They had a very respectable romance section (but I am wondering why it was hidden in a literal vault). Jayashree pointed out Ilona Andrews’ This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me and described the premise, and I immediately downloaded the audiobook for the ride home. (It was so good!!)4

Jayashree and I tearfully bid each other adieu at Portland’s delightfully quaint airport, and I made one last stop: Goodwill. I had stopped at Portland’s Goodwill several years back when I drove up to pick up 15 boxes of Harlequins someone was giving away for free, so I remembered they had a decent romance selection.

And boy did they deliver! I definitely hit the jackpot with these two mint condition Sunfire romances. I already have these in my collection, but these ones are in much better condition, so I will likely release the others back into the wild. Or keep them as reading copies? Ug, being a collector is so hard!

Epiphanies:

When we were speaking with Dunia in Pot + Pan, Jayashree explained that we were on a romance research writing retreat, that she’s a scholar who studies romance, and then spoke about my podcast.

I’ve had the pleasure of hearing Jayashree explain what I do to others a few times now, and it’s something along the lines of, “she podcasts and writes about romance but what’s unique is she actually engages with the scholarship!” This inevitably leads to me explaining that actually I have a whole day job in B2B marketing and I just do this stuff for fun.

Oh right! I do this for FUN! Nobody is making me do this, and there’s no external incentives, really — I don’t need to publish so I can get tenure or for any reason tied to making money. I’m doing this for personal satisfaction.

Having a 4-day retreat to exclusively focus on my research unintentionally created more angst, because by having some time to actually sit with all of these ideas (not tied to a specific conference deadline or post/episode), it just kind of chafed that I have all these ideas and not enough time to work on them.

I knew I didn’t necessarily have enough time in the day-to-day sense, taking into account work and family responsibilities, and also having other hobbies. I think the realization was more that I don’t have enough time in the scheme of a lifetime.

I like exploring ideas, and investigating ideas thoroughly and rigorously. I like being cross-disciplinary, and mixing social psychology with archival research and literary theory and communications. I even like randomly trying to figure out how statistics works, when it serves me and my interests. I know I have ADHD, and recognize how it’s both something that empowers me and challenges me. See: time blindness (you’ll see the evidence of that throughout this post).

I have a milestone birthday coming up — I’ll be turning 40 in just a few months. It’s a good time to reflect and be intentional about planning the latter half of my existence.

I’ve started a lot of things — what do I want to finish? And how am I going to create the conditions under which I can make it happen?

Wow - that got incredibly existential!

I hope you enjoyed this descent into madn— account of a romance research writing retreat. If you have any ideas about what you think my greatest contribution to the field of romance scholarship could be, I’d appreciate if you could let me know!

3

“Successfully maintained” is a conversation for another day. I was reminded of a chart I once made for myself where I tried to quantify my “romance content” output per week, looking across podcast episodes, Substack posts, and research projects, to see if, in some way, my output was consistent but just spread across many channels. So for example, when I only had a podcast, if I released an episode every week, my Avg. per week would = 1. Once I had a Substack, if I released 26 podcast episodes and 26 Substack posts, my average would still = 1.

The data does not support that I’ve had a steady output. At the same time, I think there’s been a big change in the depth of what’s underneath what I release.

So I began digging in to try to answer a few questions:

• What is the history of teen romance?

• How did it evolve?

• How has teen romance been viewed by young readers at the time?

• How has teen romance been viewed by adults at the time?

• And, of course, how does teen romance compare or interact with adult romance?

I did a deep dive into the genre we now call young adult romance in a series of episodes a few years ago and today I’m sharing a slightly edited version of a podcast episode intro to that series for your reading pleasure, with the addition of photos and some updates.

Without further ado, let’s dive into a quick overview of major periods of innovation in young adult/teen romance series from the 1940s onward.

Curious about how I define “teen romance” and “young adult romance”? Go here:1

The junior novels: 1940s-1960s

In the 1940s through the 1960s, publishers were putting out so-called “junior novels.” Dr. Amanda K. Allen2 notes that these were stories of first romance, set primarily within the American high school milieu.

Popular authors included:

• Maureen Daly

• Betty Cavanna

• Anne Emery

Ten Summers with no teen romance: the 1970s

The next era begins in the 1980s…so what happened in the 1970s?

My editorial opinion, based on reading things, is that apparently in the 1970s everybody got really into serious issue novels that sound more like gritty after-school specials. Apparently the appetite for lighthearted romantic plots fell by the wayside.

Cultural changes eventually helped usher in a new era: economic prosperity, the rise of the teenager as a consumer, and new distribution channels that could directly reach young readers and let them make their own choices about reading materials.

The result was a boom time for romance series targeted to young readers in the 1980s.

How teen romance caught fire of the 1980s

Scholastic launches Wildfire

By most accounts, this boom seems to have been kicked off when Scholastic editor Ann Reit noticed that book club selections with romance did particularly well and pitched what would become the Wildfire contemporary romance series, which began in 1979.

Back to Wildfire in a second, but let’s pause on Scholastic book clubs.

Scholastic had been doing school book clubs since the 1940s. By the 1970s, they had established their supremacy in schools and had a strong reputation for publishing and promoting high-quality educational material for young readers.

Scholastic is important to this story for several reasons.

1. Empowering kids to choose their own books means kids’ preferences are making themselves known to the market, which starts to shape what is acquired.

2. Scholastic had a foothold in the school market. They had consumer data and a very strong distribution channel that they could use to sell a lot of books.

3. Scholastic’s reputation for creating trustworthy educational content is going to become relevant later on…

The first Wildfire came out in 1979, and it was a hit. In a 1981 Christian Science Monitor article, Ann Reit said that romance titles were selling double what classics sold: between 55,000 and 90,000 copies in a two-month period, according to “Teen Novels: What Kind of Values Do They Promote?”

Why the 1980s was ripe for teen romance

The rise of malls in the 1980s and the expansion of chain bookstores was an external market change that facilitated the boom in teen romance. Young people increasingly had more freedom to shop for books on their own. They also had disposable income from allowances, babysitting, or lawn-mowing money to buy the books they wanted to read.

The early 1980s also saw a boom of adult contemporary category romance. Adult romance publishers were making major investments in building audiences and fighting for market share — it’s no surprise that they looked to younger readers.

Scholastic’s success in the teen market did not go unnoticed by their competitors or even by adult romance publishers. There was an influx of different teen romance series that were essentially category romances for young people.

• Wildfire focused on fairly straightforward contemporary high school first-love stories told from the perspective of the heroine.

• Bantam created Sweet Dreams in its image, with the innovation of also including the boy’s perspective on the romance.

  

• Silhouette, the well-known publisher of adult romance, started the First Love by Silhouette line.

  

• There were even two lines of choose-your-own-adventure-style romance series, although they do not seem to have caught on: Make Your Dreams Come True (Grand Central) and Follow Your Heart (Simon & Schuster).

  

Scholastic also created romance series that mirrored well-known subgenres in adult romance:

• Windswept sounds like contemporary gothics.

• Sunfire published historical romance.

If you know anything about the history of commercial publishing companies, particularly in the 1980s, it will not surprise you that all of these romance lines focused on heterosexual relationships, took place in a heteronormative world, and displayed a breathtaking deficit of racial, ethnic, and economic diversity.

If you’re looking for book series like Sweet Valley High and wondering why they’re not listed above, learn more here:3

When adults panicked about teen romance

In 1981, Scholastic was publicly criticized for selling, marketing, and distributing teen romances. It started because they sold a new Wildfire magazine through their school book club.

There was only one issue of this magazine because the criticism shut it down pretty quickly. (Naturally, I had to hunt this magazine down.)

Wildfire magazine’s tagline was “Every Young Girl’s Dream.” Included in this issue was a reprint of Maureen Daly’s award-winning story “Sixteen.”4 There was also a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay, a short story by Caroline B. Cooney (who had not yet written The Face on the Milk Carton), horoscopes, an agony-aunt advice column, and quizzes by Ann Reit herself: “Does He Like Me?” and the stunning follow-up, “Do I Like Him?”

What proved objectionable to at least one parent was the supposed sexist stereotypes embodied in the stories and advice within.

Concerned parent Elaine Wagner complained all over town: to Scholastic, library organizations, women’s groups, the school, and of course, the media (which is how we heard about it).

She. Was. Furious. … that the school had allowed her impressionable eleven-year-old daughter to be marketed to. (Her daughter was smart enough to resist the lure, but nonetheless: furious.)

The crux of the issue was that the magazine was being promoted for distribution at school.

Wagner wrote about the controversy in “Protesting Sexist Materials: You Can Make a Difference”, published in the Interracial Books for Children Bulletin. The Bulletin also published a special double issue on preteen and teenage romance series.

Wagner said she was most concerned about sexist stereotypes, and she also noted the lack of racial diversity. But, based on where she focused her vitriol and energy, her objection seems to be the perceived tawdriness of romance in general. The language has a lot in common with moral panics about romance and girl readers: she clearly thought romance was garbage and that, no matter how well done, it should not be condoned by an educational authority.

That snobbery about romance is extremely apparent in Madsen’s Christian Science Monitor article about Wagner’s war on Scholastic.

Ann Reit defended Wildfire as having benefits for readers. Reit said she hoped the books showed readers that the writer knew them, liked them, and respected them — that their first relationships with boys were not being brushed off. She also said she hoped the books might teach kids to like reading and move on to other books, or maybe they never would, but at least they would be reading.

Meanwhile, many of the quoted experts in the article parroted the same highbrow/lowbrow talking points about romance that we still hear today, with an extra side of paternalistic concern for the children.

For example, one expert asked whether adults who read twenty Harlequins then go on to read Thomas Hardy.5 🫠

Race, representation, and whiteness in teen romance series

The critique that these books lacked racial diversity was fair. The 1980s teen romance boom was overwhelmingly white: white characters, white couples, white authors, and a presumed white readership.

Ann Reit mentioned in the Christian Science Monitor article that an upcoming Wildfire book would feature both a Black and a white couple.

I bought the book she was referencing: it is Senior Class, published in 1982 by Jane Claypool Miner (who is white). She also authored the only Sunfire historical romance featuring Black protagonists, Corey.

And is it weird that every other Wildfire book features one couple, and this one has a white couple and a Black couple on the cover, and the book is about both romances?

Yes, definitely.

I also could not find Wildfires after this that had main characters that were BIPOC, though I have not done a complete audit of the entire line. It is totally fair to say that these series were dominated by white couples and white characters.

First Love by Silhouette did publish two books by Tracy West with Black couples: Lesson in Love in 1982 and Promises in 1986.6

The overall pattern is clear: these series were dominated by white couples, white characters, and white authors.

This was happening at the same time that adult romance was beginning to see important interventions by Black editors and writers. Vivian Stephens published Entwined Destinies by Rosalind Welles — the pen name of journalist Elsie B. Washington — in 1980, which is widely recognized as the first category romance with Black protagonists written by a Black author.7

Teen romance was not off in its own separate universe. It was part of the same publishing ecosystem as adult romance, with many of the same assumptions (and problematic ideas) about audience, respectability, marketability, race, gender, and desire.

The paternalism shown towards young adult/teen audiences is pretty dang close to the paternalism towards adult women readers.

The longevity of the 1980s boom

Most of the teen romance series lines I mentioned went on for years, but many ended between 1985 and 1987.8

Gabrielle Moss’s book on the history of ’80s and ’90s teen fiction, Paperback Crush: The Totally Radical History of ’80s and ’90s Teen Fiction, argues that many of these lines eventually petered out because they did not keep up with changing attitudes about sexuality in the United States.

That makes sense to me. These books were often built around crushes, dating, emotional confusion, and maybe a climactic kiss. Meanwhile, the actual teens reading them were living in a culture where expectations and conversations around sexuality were changing.

Teen historical romance for future adult romance readers in the 2000s

This is not a comprehensive list, but two notable series came out in the early 2000s:

Avon True Romance

Avon True Romance was a line of historical romances written by adult historical romance authors from 2002-2003. I found a very useful 2002 article on All About Romance, “At the Back Fence #145,” that includes interviews about the line.

In that piece, Avon editor Abby McAden says she cut her teeth on Scholastic romances, including Sunfire, in addition to reading adult historicals like The Flame and the Flower and books by Jude Deveraux. She approached adult romance authors already working with Avon because they were a known quantity before reaching out to other authors, including Meg Cabot.

The authors in this series included:

• Lorraine Heath

• Beverly Jenkins

• Kathryn Smith

• Margaret Moore

• Meg Cabot

• Karen Hawkins

Compared with the Sunfire series, the impact of adult romance trends is really clear in Avon True Romance.

Sunfire books all took place in America and they covered a pretty wide range of time periods and locations, and the authors seemed to be doing new original research for each book.

Meanwhile, adult historical romance tended to gravitate toward a narrower range of settings. The Avon True Romance authors were often setting their stories in time periods and places they were already known for tromping around in for their adult romances.

As for racial diversity, there were only twelve books in the Avon True Romance line, and two of them were written by Ms. Bev, aka Beverly Jenkins, with Black characters. Miranda and the Warrior also has a hero who is Indigenous and part of the Cheyenne nation. Progress? You decide.

Kimani Tru: teen romance by and about people of color

In 2007, Kimani, Harlequin’s multicultural romance line, created Kimani Tru for teen readers.

Like Silhouette and Avon, Harlequin seems to have understood that young readers are potential future romance readers. But there was also an underserved market of young readers who were ripe for the picking.

Similar to Kimani books for adults, Kimani Tru focused on stories by and about people of color. The line published 49 books over six years, mostly contemporary with the exception of reissuing Beverly Jenkins’s Avon True Romance historicals.

Unfortunately, the last Kimani Tru came out in 2013, 4 years before the entire Kimani imprint was closed by Harlequin.

Twilight and the shift to author-driven YA romance

Twilight came out in 2005, and it seemed to kick off a new age of young adult romance stories, especially those driven by authors rather than publishers.

By that I mean: Twilight is a series written by one author in one universe. The earlier teen romance series I have been talking about were publisher series. The publisher created the concept and structure. Different authors wrote mostly standalone books. The reader came back because of the line promise.

With Twilight, readers came back for the author, the characters, the world, and the ongoing romantic arc.

Twilight also kicked off greater interest in paranormal and fantasy settings compared with the contemporary and historical romances that dominated much of the earlier teen romance landscape.

I have not researched the post-Twilight period as deeply, so that’s where my historical overview ends.

Why the history of teen romance series matters

To me, teen romance is fascinating because it sits at the intersection of leisure reading, gender socialization, commercial publishing, moral panic, and the formation of romance readers.

The big story around young adult and teen romance is that in some ways, it follows the story of the creation of “teens” as a consumer market audience. Then, as that category matures, the arc shows that audience gaining more agency, self-determination, and ability to express preferences separate from adult intervention.

There’s an obvious disruption that emerges where my history leaves off that kick-started a million moral panics: the internet. Hello romantic fanfic stories! (But that’s a story for another day.)

Teen romance has repeatedly been treated as trivial, formulaic, embarrassing, dangerous. It’s always interesting how the criticism can’t decide if they’re meaningless or meaningful. Should young adults be developing discernment to prepare for adult life or should they be kept ignorant of even age-appropriate discussion of adult life?

Young adult romances also reveal the limits of the publishing systems that produced them: the whiteness, the heteronormativity,9 the narrow ideas about who counted as the default girl reader, and the anxiety around how much desire young readers were allowed to have on the page.

Further listening

This post is adapted from Shelf Love episode 121, which introduced my series on young adult and teen romance.

For more on YA romance history, listen to the rest of the series:

• Episode 122: Jessica and the Sunfire historical romance series

• Episode 123: Candice Ransom on writing Sunfire romances and working with Scholastic editor Ann Reit

• Episode 124: Beverly Jenkins’ Avon True Romances with Funmi

• Episode 125: Dr. Amanda K. Allen on junior novels, YA romance, and the history of romance for young readers

6

Based on information shared by Steve Ammidown when he was at Bowling Green State University’s Browne Popular Culture Library, Tracy West was a Black author who also wrote adult romance with Silhouette in 1992 as Joyce McGill.

—

This… “HEA”? Oh, okay. I see. You think this has nothing to do with you.

You go to your bookstore and you select that book they made into a movie, for instance, and then you come on social media and call it predictable because it ended happily and you’re trying to tell the world that you’re above genre conventions.

But what you don’t know is that that book isn’t just a book. It’s not literary fiction. It’s not a love story.

It’s actually a romance novel.

And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in the 1930s, British publisher Mills & Boon began to concentrate exclusively on romances of the sweet variety, known for their serialized happy endings. And then I think it was 1958 that Harlequin began reprinting those romances for the North American market?

Then, in the 1970s, more explicit sexuality entered single-title paperback originals, and the market responded to readers who wanted passion, conflict, fantasy, and still—the happy ending.

And then those expectations coalesced across contemporary category romance, historical romance, paranormal romance, erotic romance, romantasy, dark romance, and every other subgenre, merging them into a distinct genre with clear conventions, until you, no doubt, found one on a featured book table and decided the ending was beside the point.

However, that HEA represents the work of a whole genre over generations: writers, editors, publishers, booksellers, critics, scholars, and readers insisting that love is not merely present in the story…

The HEA is the promise the story is organized to fulfill.

And it’s sort of comical how you think your opinion exempts you from genre conventions when, in fact, the book you’re calling predictable was handed to you by a genre that spent decades honing preferences and teaching readers and writers exactly what a love story has to do before it gets to call itself a romance novel.

When the latest HEA discourse popped up, I couldn’t help but think of the iconic scene from Devil Wears Prada where Andy gets a wake-up call that just because she’s ignorant of the conventions of the fashion industry doesn’t mean it’s meaningless or illogical.

Andy can’t see the difference between two different belts because her eye is untrained — she simply doesn’t know what she’s looking at. Miranda’s monologue reveals the nuance, history, and impact of fashion, and how Andy isn’t exempt from its influence.

One of my first Substack posts was actually engaging with the question of “what is a romance novel?.” It sounds didactic and simplistic, particularly to outsiders, but that’s because it’s just shorthand — the real meaning is extremely difficult to articulate because it it constructed affectively inside the reader.

In 2026, the genre rules for “popular romance fiction marketed as a romance novel1” are clearer than they’ve ever been, but still we could have robust in-community conversations with each other about how successful a particular book was in delivering on the expectations.

In studying early scholarly work on romance readers in the 1980s, one can see that the rules were still getting solidified through trial and error and calibrated by reader response. It’s important for romance readers to understand that two things can be true: the conventions of romance can be material and “real” while also being held together by an elaborate ecosystem of readers, writers, publishers, and platforms that are constantly evolving.

We can retroactively see how older works could satisfy modern definitions (see: Pride and Prejudice) while also understanding they were produced in a context where those rules didn’t exist and they were in conversation with other genre conventions of that time, and that those works are part of the lineage of the modern genre without being members of the same species.

I understand why this discourse continues to emerge — even leaving aside bad-faith engagement-bait takes, it’s grating when some outsider (of any gender) shows up and wants to “mansplain” something they know nothing about. It sounds just like Andy’s snort in response to the intricacies of fashion.

It’s no surprise that this scene from Devil Wears Prada keeps popping up for me — the scene is about stereotypes, specifically paternalistic ones. The entire plot of DWP is based around Andy reexamining her self-concept as a competent, intellectual woman in a feminine-coded industry that seems to be shallow and aesthetic-based.

My research on stereotypes about romance readers validates that the stereotype is inextricably linked with romance novels’ association with women, but specifically those coded as “warm but not competent.” This is aligned to the “paternalistic stereotype” and people in this group are pitied.

So, when I see the HEA discourse come around, it’s actually just very predictable — not just why “outsiders” question the genre conventions, but also why it provokes such a strong response from romance readers who feel their competency is being questioned.

Florals for spring? Yes, of course we all tend to associate florals with spring because we’ve been raised in an environment where flowers grow in spring in a lot of places and our culture uses that imagery to symbolize renewal, rebirth, and awakening. The associations will persist as long as we live in that world.

So is it groundbreaking? No. But I can understand why it happens.

Not a coincidence that I used the Devil Wears Prada gifs in my first-ever Substack post. It’s a good companion to the post you just read, in case you haven’t seen it yet:

Romance Novel Collection will focus on the what, why, and how of romance collections — the goal of this sub-publication is to build a community of like-minded people who are interested in learning about collecting romance from each other.

I then proceeded to take up carpentry, and got distracted.

After building anticipation, waiting for that anticipation to fully wane, waiting for the project to be totally forgotten: I’M BACK, BABY!

Thank you to those of you who jumped in with sharing your collections. I will be scheduling posts featuring others’ collections soon!

One last note: if you’re subscribed to Shelf Love for reasons other than romance collecting, you can opt out of the “Romance Novel Collection” sub-channel and continue to get classic Shelf Love posts.

Instructions to do that can be found in this post.

Revisiting Radway’s Ideal vs. Failed Romances

Building the 40-Book Smithton List

I’m revisiting Janice Radway’s 1984 classic romance scholarship: Reading the Romance. RtT was a groundbreaking ethnography of romance readers in “Smithton” centered on an influencer called Dot.

While so much amazing romance scholarship has been published in the last 50 years and we’ve (mostly) moved past the need to defend the legitimacy of studying romance novels at all, Radway’s work still stands out for its methodology.

As part of her larger project, Radway compiled a list of 20 “ideal” and 20 “failed” romances based on the perspectives of the Smithton readers and Dot, thus generating the qualification criteria from within the community of readers themselves. It wasn’t about what publishers or editors thought was good, what sold the best, what won prizes, what was catalogued as romance, or based on criteria from within an academic discipline: it was about the readers’ criteria.

This list of 40 books is the jumping off point for Radway to build her understanding of how the readers in this community conceptualized what defined romance, and what drew them in or repelled them. While Radway is the first to point out the limitations of this small sample size, the intimate sampling allowed an intimacy and depth that will always be lost from large-scale survey research.

Reading the Romance is discussed often in scholarly romance circles, and the methodology and analysis is often picked apart with varying degrees of fairness. While some of the texts Radway incorporates are still well-known and read (such as The Flame and the Flower), most of them are not.

I’m curious if anyone else has ever endeavored to read all of these books in the 40+ years since Radway published RtT?

If I had a time machine, I’d go back to 1982 and replicate Radway’s methodology with a different community of romance readers to see how different the list looked (and how the reader preferences/definitions differed). That would help us understand how universal the preferences were, time stamped at a particular point in history.

But now, 40+ years later, one must grapple not just with different subsets of the reader population and their preferences, but the massive changes in society, pop culture, and technology that have influenced what romance looks like today and how that shapes reader preferences. Attempting to interpret Radway’s corpus (body of texts) and her 1984 analysis from the perspective of 2026 is likely corrupted by presentism and hindsight-ism to an absurd degree.

What, then, would be the point in collecting and reading the books Radway analyzed as “ideal” and “failed” romances?

…because that’s what I’m trying to do.

First, I think it’s important to preserve the primary texts Radway discusses so that modern-day and future scholars are able to actually engage with the texts and not just secondary analysis.

After I recorded the video, I searched the two most likely places to have a full collection of these texts (the BGSU Browne Pop Culture Library and the Lilly Library and Indiana University, which purchased Rebecca Romney’s romance collection) and it doesn’t look like either has the full corpus. That’s not to say it doesn’t exist in a private collection or other specialty library collections — I’d love to find out if anyone or any institution has the complete collection.

Second, I am curious how the Smithton readers’ preferences and sense of what defines romance aligns with my own understanding, as an anecdotal investigation into how much romance has (or has not) changed since the early 1980s.

I cut my teeth on Woodiwiss when I first started reading romance in the late ‘90s and continue to read a significant amount of vintage romance. I humbly submit that I may be in a good position to contextualize the past of the genre sympathetically and fairly, and recognize similarities and echoes in more modern romance and where it’s diverging more significantly.

Third, I’m always looking for excuses to build micro-collections in my macro-romance collection. :)

Hope you enjoy this video, and I will be back with updates on finalizing the collection of books (hopefully?! or getting close to it), and beginning my read through.

The Journal of Popular Romance Studies did a special issue revisiting Reading the Romance on its 30th anniversary. If you’re interested in how contemporary romance scholars were interpreting and engaging with Radway’s work 12 years ago, this is a great place to start.

This channel is not just supposed to feature my own romance novel collection: submit yours via the Google form link below:

Submit Your Collection

The current story is that Elda Minger’s Untamed Heart, published in 1983, was the “First contemporary romance with a condom on page.” This was publicized widely during the 2019 RWA RITA Award Ceremony in a presentation about “Romance Trailblazers.” (More on this later.)

I’ll walk you through my process of validating this and then zoom up to a larger conversation about tracking and talking about “firsts” in the romance genre.

Reading romance history

I collect vintage romances and my current collection is straining my bookshelves at 2,000. I have a particular interest in transitional periods of the genre, and that includes the contemporary romance boom of the early 1980s.

I’ve previously dug into the history of the Candlelight Ecstasy line, its role in publishing sexier contemporaries, and reported back on just how sexy and readable they are after reading 14 of them. On April 12, 2026, I pulled down several more to dig into1, including Affair of Risk by Jayne Castle (aka Jayne Ann Krentz).

Imagine my surprise when the hero and heroine have an explicit conversation about pregnancy and precautions! And then he “fumbled for a moment longer in the shadows” before he “pulled her up into his heat and passion.” (page 115)

In their pre-lovemaking conversation, the heroine notes she hasn’t been with anyone (in the biblical sense) in two years. “I’m not prepared.” He points out their previous penetrative positions and posits that she could be pregnant already, which provokes a panic.2

He soothes her saying, “What happened the other night is past. Tonight I’ll take precautions.”

“And what happens if it’s too late?”

“Then…I’ll take care of you.” …

Kendra was so stunned by his cool words, she couldn’t find the courage to ask if he meant by taking care of her that he’d pay for an abortion.

Affair of Risk by Jayne Castle, page 112

I flipped to the copyright page: 19823. I quickly searched the internet to find the details I vaguely remembered about Elda Minger’s book being the first to mention condoms: it was published in 1983.

I was cautiously optimistic that I just made a discovery of some kind. This book was clearly earlier than Minger’s book, but the text didn’t mention the word “condom.” I needed to confirm the specifics of the claim to see if Affair of Risk fit the criteria. Also, was this an early abortion mention as well?

What’s in a claim?

Claims are tricky. A good claim is precise, and therefore defensible. For example, if I claim that I am the biggest romance nerd on earth, how could I possibly prove that? What even is a romance nerd? How is it measured or recorded? You get the picture.

This is the challenge I had with the “First contemporary romance with a condom on page” claim. Crucially, what does it mean by “condom on page”?

I found references to a now-inaccessible tweet from Steve Ammidown4 on Teach Me Tonight5:

Laura explicitly calls this out, so I left it in the screenshot — Steve was very careful to word this particular claim as “the first mainstream contemporary romance to include condoms that I know of.” This was much more cautious than the bold claim on the RWA site, but I still wasn’t sure if “including” condoms meant the word was used explicitly, or if it was just alluded to.

(I’m going to mostly focus on the condom claims, but Steve also mentions “the first contemporary to discuss abortion” that he’d seen. Sandra Brown’s A Treasure Worth Keeping was published in September 1982, 4 months after Affair of Risk, potentially making Castle’s book an earlier first-known for abortion discussion as well.)

Unfortunately, I don’t know if there was an image in the original tweet, or follow up posts with more details, so I reached out to Steve directly to get more information about the condom claim.6

Steve confirmed that Sarah MacLean asked for his help when she and other authors were collaborating on the Trailblazers list in 2019 and told me that his source for that project and his 2022 tweet was an article Elda Minger wrote in Romance Writer Report (RWA’s member newsletter) in July 1987, where she wrote about putting condoms on page, and he emailed a PDF.

The article is a debate-style forum where two authors take opposite sides on a topic. In this case: is it necessary to mention “protection” in romance novels?

Minger was “PROtection.7” She writes that she she was being true to a hero who would “protect the woman he loves,” and that she wrote the love scene that way and “Vivian Stephens, bless her, left it in.”

At the end of the article she writes about a conversation with a reader at a conference who enjoyed the hero in Untamed Heart: “‘Especially the part… when he reached into that drawer. I think every woman knew what he was reaching for.’”

My conclusion? Minger never claims to be the first to put condoms on page, although she’s clear that she was intentionally incorporating some sort of “protection”8 and implies this was rare or surprising at the time. The anecdote at the end is meant to show how her 1983 book references condom usage in a way that was alluded to but clear to readers.

I first focused on figuring out the specifics of the claim because if the claim was that Minger’s book actually used the word “condom,” Castle’s book wouldn’t actually meet the criteria. However, the claim so far seemed to be about implying some sort of birth control. It was finally time for me to actually look at Minger’s book, which I happened to have on hand.9

Ryan kissed her again, then turned away for just an instant. She heard the drawer in the bedside table open, then shut. She kept her hand on Ryan’s shoulder as he sat turned away from her, but it was only for an instant. Then he was back against her, pushing her into the mattress with his hot, insistent body.

Untamed Heart by Elda Minger, page 200

We now have confirmation that Minger did NOT mention condoms explicitly!

The Trailblazer entry overstates the case: a more accurate formulation, based on what was known, would be “first-known implied condom use in a contemporary category romance.” Under that definition, Affair of Risk by Jayne Castle is now the earliest-known instance.

Pause: what it means to displace a “first”

It’s worth pausing here, because this kind of discovery can read as an attempt to knock someone off a pedestal and that’s not the point.

Elda Minger should be credited for what she actually did: writing a scene that intentionally incorporated “protection” at a time when that was unusual, and at a time when she likely hadn’t seen a published example of someone else doing so, and then continuing to speak publicly about that choice. That matters and it shaped how readers and writers thought about what could appear on the page.

But “firsts” don’t function as permanent titles. They function as provisional markers for what we’ve been able to find, access, and verify.

Pushing that line back doesn’t erase the work that came after: it clarifies the context it emerged from.

As Laura Vivanco said when she quoted Steve’s tweet: “…it's hard to keep track of ‘firsts’ in the genre: since there are so many romances, and many of the earlier novels are somewhat difficult to access.”

This is why I collect physical copies of older romance. I seek out books that others have flagged as notable, to have a baseline, but I also try to collect representative samples of what hasn’t been flagged as notable. There simply are not enough people reading older romances, and there are even fewer who are doing so with the intent of publishing about them.

Telephone claims

The example I’ve just taken you through shows the game of telephone that can happen with claims. “First known example Steve Ammidown has heard of” becomes “First” and the source material is inaccessible (to people who don’t have Steve on speed dial) because a billionaire bought a social media platform.

As a result of the limited access most people have to earlier romance novels that weren’t institutionalized as “classics,” “Romancelandia” depends on pieces of information that can sometimes get inflated beyond their original intent.

This is the blessing and the curse of institutionalization, and here’s where I will return to “Trailblazer” as a concept.

Trailblazer™

The intention behind honoring trailblazers is noble. The 2019 RITA Awards committee seemed to have an intentional restorative justice project in mind for a confluence of reasons. Even though RWA’s implosion due to its dodgy handling of DEI was a year in the future, the organization’s lack of support for equitable inclusion of people of color, queer people, and stories and business practices that pushed the boundaries of the genre had been bubbling since its very inception.

Perhaps there was a sense that this tension had come to a head, given that 2019 was the first time in the 37 years they issued awards that they honored a Black author or South Asian author.

In any case, I am not knocking the RWA project from 2019. It’s necessary to “spotlight” older books and provide a guided journey into the history of the genre. I think part of the danger in not doing so is recency bias, which is evident when current readers act like older romance was universally regressive without considering the context of the past but also without any evidence or exposure to the texts they’re painting with a broad brush.

The RWA Trailblazer page itself acknowledges the limits of a list of “firsts”10 and invites updates and evolution.

Did the Trailblazer list capture every meaningful first? No. It couldn’t. There’s no stable definition of what counts as notable, and there are far more books than anyone has read, let alone documented. Any list of “firsts” is necessarily incomplete.

The problem is when these lists stop functioning as entry points and start functioning as endpoint. When “first-known” becomes “first,” and then becomes accepted fact, the work of inquiry sputters out. The archive flattens and the genre’s past starts to look cleaner, more linear, and more settled than it actually is.

The slice of older romance that circulates in Romancelandia is extremely small relative to all that exists, and the books that get institutionalized as “classics” often reflect current tastes more than they reflect the full range of what was being written and read at the time.

Even when knowledge exists, it doesn’t reliably surface. Three years before the RITA Trailblazers presentation, on Facebook Linda Howard11 casually referenced reading condom usage in a Jayne Ann Krentz book. She was pointing, more or less, in the direction of what I stumbled upon by luck. That information, though technically available, didn’t enter the record in a way that could shape the Trailblazer project just a few years later.

Nobody is deliberately obscuring the past, but the system for preserving and circulating knowledge is uneven, fragmented, and dependent on what is accessible.

The line we draw around “firsts” will always be provisional. There will always be an earlier book, a forgotten line, a reader who remembers something no one bothered to record.

If we treat “firsts” as endpoints, we stop looking. If we treat them as starting points, we keep the history of the genre open, as something that can be expanded, challenged, and revised.

The archive is still there12. The only real question is whether we keep looking.

11

Did Linda Howard scoop all of us in identifying the first contemporary romance author who included condoms?! (In case it must be said, no.)

Say what you want about LH (I certainly have): she was there at the beginning of RWA and the emergence of the sexy contemporary and has a lot of lore stored up. Howard publicly bounced from RWA around 2017 due to her objection to “social issues” being prioritized in the organization, so I am guessing they didn’t call her up to ask for her recommendations for Trailblazers.

Upon a recent rewatch, I couldn’t stop thinking about one exchange between Betty and Don in Season 1, episode 6: Babylon. It’s the evening of Mother’s Day. After Betty expresses anxiety about aging and losing her looks their conversation transitions to an intimate encounter that Betty can’t help but ruin by speaking1:

Betty: I want you so much. I thought about it all day.

Don: Me too.

Betty: No, I mean it. It’s all I think about. Every day. Your car coming down the driveway. I put the kids to bed early. I make a grocery list, I cook butterscotch pudding. I never let my hands idle. Brushing my hair, drinking my milk… It’s all in a kind of fog because I can’t stop thinking about this.

I want you so badly…

Don: Ssshhh. You have me. You do.

The audience knows she doesn’t really have Don, that he’s actively pursuing an emotional and sexual relationship with another woman, and that Betty’s anxiety about his faithfulness is warranted — but why is she grasping instead of angry? I didn’t get it. Nothing we’ve seen in this relationship, in or out of bed, explained why Betty would spend all day thinking about Don or why she believed she loved him so much.

Betty says she wants Don so badly, and that didn’t make sense to me. I thought about it for days — then I realized what she was really saying:

I want you (to want me) so badly.

Like many women of her time (and ours), Betty believes that her role in life is to be desired by men, and since she’s a “good woman,” she must chiefly be desired by her husband. It’s the only thing she’s been taught to pursue, and it’s what’s supposed to protect her in life. Betty’s fear of losing her beauty isn’t about vanity: it’s about survival.

Of course she isn’t invested in the domestic labor of being a housewife: it’s all meaningless to her without the adoring, desiring husband to witness and appreciate it… to appreciate and desire her.

Betty was produced to be consumed: she learned her purpose, and didn’t question it. As Mad Men progresses, Betty only starts to chafe at being an object when she realizes even prized possessions can be discarded before they show wear.

Unlike the Velveteen Rabbit, Betty hasn’t been loved to shabbiness. When she’s set aside in mint condition, she doesn’t get the chance to become real.

Betty may have Don’s ring on her finger, but if he doesn’t desire her above all others, then she doesn’t really have him, does she?

She may be wearing Don’s ring, she may be keeping his house clean and his children fed, she may even sleep in his bed. If he’s not sleeping in his bed with her, desiring her in his bed… even Betty knows there’s no security in being undesired.

Betty believes that if she’s loved to shabbiness she will transform into a real girl, perhaps one who is allowed to finally have and pursue her own desires.

The rub is that this all depends on being loved by a boy and being used for his own desires first. Therein lies the toxic underbelly of a beloved children’s story: how come self-actualization is dependent on external validation?

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I Want You(r Power)

Billionaire romance isn’t about money. Duke romance isn’t about the aristocracy. Serial killer romance isn’t about violence. Hockey romance isn’t about sports.

These stages are all designed to explore power dynamics. How many romances are between two people with equal power? The object of desire in the story is the most:

• wealthy

• strong / large

• skilled

• existentially powerful (determining life and death)

• handsome

• institutionally powerful

Romances are not about becoming the most powerful — they’re about being desired by the most powerful, and therefore gaining that power to finally realize their own desires.

In a heterosexual romance, you start with an inherent power imbalance between men and women. Almost always, that power dynamic is then exaggerated by a male love interest who isn’t just imbued with male privilege: he’s the most extreme version of that privilege.

Being desired by the highest value man makes the heroine the highest value woman. Even when the heroine is considered powerful among women, her individual power must pale in comparison to the male hero’s. If she’s tall, he’s taller. If she has powers, he has more. If she’s a business mogul, he’s the moguliest of them all.

You can go ahead and try to strip this out of romance novels — after all, these themes are problematic as hell and don’t align with the narrative of Not Your Mother’s Romance and all the people yelling about how romance is different now.

So go ahead and try, but to do so is to strip away all that is interesting and relevant about the genre.

Imagine: a horror novel where the monster is easily vanquished and all it can do is kick your shins, a mystery that is easily solved and inconsequential if it remains a mystery, a fantasy adventure with no obstacles to overcome and no destination, a heist where everything goes according to plan and no treasure is gained?

It’s not good storytelling, first of all. Where’s the challenge? The conflict? What’s the character motivation? What’s the goal?

But worse, these hypotheticals misunderstand the fantasy inherent in the genre’s promise. To strip out the problematics of romance is to misunderstand the project and the pleasure of romance novels.

Mad Men is a drama, and so the way it explores Betty’s lack of power and desire for it is a tragedy. Me feeling contempt for Betty is the point: it’s supposed to bother me enough that I think about it and realize that Betty isn’t the problem. The patriarchy, manifest in her life and represented on screen in a million different ways, is the problem. Betty is a victim stuck in a cycle, doomed to victimize others by internalizing the same harmful ideas that harm her.

Romance novels are comedies (in the literary sense), even when they’re dark and angsty, because they must end happily. A romance explores the problematic by resolving it, but a good romance must acknowledge the problematic — otherwise, what is there to resolve?

The central, high-level problematic of romance is that marginalized people in our society can’t actually directly desire power, so they must be desired by a physical manifestation of that power. What is a desire to be desired by the most powerful if not a desire for power? (But no, let’s not say that out loud. Shhh.)

The way romance novels can explore the problematics is by revealing the ways in which power used against us hurts, while having power used for us feels fantastic. The antagonist becomes the prize when the ill-gotten wealth purchases luxuries for us and the strong hands that could hurt us protect us.

Consuming the Romantic Utopia

Why do we continue to consume this romantic fantasy2 of being desired rather than going after a true utopia?

Later in the same episode of Mad Men I referenced at the top, Don meets with department store heiress Rachel Menken. Ostensibly, he wants to pick her brain about the idea of Babylon to win an upcoming pitch for Israel’s tourism bureau and she’s the only Jewish person he knows, but his true aim is to tempt her into an affair. (Justice for Betty!)

In discussing Zionism and the belief that Israel is a utopia for Jews, Rachel points out that the Greeks have two meanings for “utopia”:

• eu-topos - “the good place”

• ou-topos - “the place that cannot be”

A world with true equality would be a utopia, wouldn’t it? It’d be good, but it also cannot be.

Romance novels aren’t meant to explore a utopia — they’re a fantasy of succeeding in a world with the same challenges, power imbalances, and constraints as the one we live in. This is why we must allow stories (and characters) to bother us, for scenarios to be at odds with our values, and understand that the discomfort and the pleasure can coexist.

Desiring the problematic is the point of romance novels, and I wish we’d all stop trying to rehabilitate our fantasies because they serve a purpose. It’s more important to ask why this is our fantasy, not exorcise it like a shameful secret and pathologize it.

More Greek words: pathology is the study of a disease and ontology is the study of being. What if instead of viewing problematics in romance pathologically, as something to be eradicated, we focused on understanding what it is ontologically?

The worlds in romance are not good, unproblematic places: they’re a way to find happiness in a place that can be.

Coming soon

I think the best romance novels must engage with the problematics, but they don’t always do this intentionally.

To explain this, I have created the Shelf Love Romance Reader Impact Model.

If you want to make a material difference in the world we actually live in, please consider taking part in Romancelandia Holiday Fairies: a mutual aid effort for the “Romancelandia” romance novel reader community to support anyone in the community who could use help with purchasing gifts for themselves or loved ones this holiday season.

The “holiday” season may have passed, but there are still plenty of wishlists that could still use support.

Support a Wishlist

In an upcoming episode of Shelf Love Podcast with Tehyah Carver (available Oct. 14, 2025), she shares her research on Kleypas’s 20+ year old series that spans the seasons and provides details on what’s changed from the original texts. (Short preview of one of the changes in the video below.)

Sometimes I feel like I’m circling the same point over and over again on the pod and Substack, but it seems like it bears repeating… and also that the gist of this particular point — that we need to rehabilitate romance texts to be “unproblematic” — will never stop being debated (until society as we know it looks very different).

As I was editing the episode, I thought I would write a spin-off essay about this point, but I think this excerpt from the full episode encapsulates the gist quite nicely. So: why not just share the audio/transcript?

I hope you enjoy this preview of our conversation!

One more thing — I’ll be in conversation with Julia Quinn for her Romance Keynote at the Boston Book Festival on October 23, 2025. If you’re interested in this ticketed event, you can learn more here.

I encourage any Shelf Lovelies who attend to seek me out after the event. :)

Andrea Martucci: Why did [Lisa Kleypas] have to revise the work? I think it actually makes me respect her less.

Tehyah Carver: And this is my theory:

I think even though we understand the time in which these books are written, I think contemporary readers, especially those coming in during quarantine, during the pandemic, have an understanding of romance as an inherently feminist genre that is meant to have empowered heroines, or have heroines who become empowered or something.

It then complicates or even looks like a stain on that specific view of the genre. It then begs questions of, is this actually true? Is this actually as feminist as people are making it seem? Is it as liberatory as it’s making it seem?

Andrea Martucci: Am I a bad feminist? Am I not a good person? And the initial problem there is it is a problem with an understanding of what feminism is.

You started with a false premise. Don’t try to back your way into fixing it. Go back to the beginning, start at go. You know what I mean? That’s the problem.

And you know what, I blame all of the people in this genre [small laugh] who perpetuate ideas like that because it sets people up who want to do the right thing to have a misconception about the point of this genre.

Let’s talk about stuff that’s problematic, but let’s also accept that books can be interesting and worth talking about and we can still not like the characters and not like the book. Believe me, I’m still buying it. I’m still reading it.

There’s certain things where I’m just like, there’s nothing productive about this. I don’t find it interesting. I’m not gonna read that. But this whole idea that we have to get everything and make it unproblematic, it is making extremely boring books and it’s making an extremely boring culture.

And I just want people, I want everybody to just like — oh my God, I’m gonna sound like “let people enjoy things.”

No, it’s not let people enjoy things.

It’s stop trying to pretend like the things you like are better than the things other people like. Just like the thing. Stop making the thing you like morally virtuous.

Tehyah Carver: It makes me think about the concept of an introductory romance or like what romances do you give people to bring them into the genre. And Chels made a really interesting video about this on TikTok and how historicals, you have to have an entryway or a gateway into it.

And even though like Lisa Kleypas gets brought up, I feel like the opposite is happening where a lot of people don’t recommend her books because they don’t want to scare people off. That’s partially what feels like where these revisions are coming from as well, where we’re gonna scare new readers off if these bad things are happening.

But I’m like, if they can sit with an evil mob boss in like 2020s New York running this underground organization, killing, maiming, this and the third, I think they can handle Sebastian kidnapping Lillian.

Historicals are already seen as so archaic and boring as is, that you have to really bring them in in a way that will satiate their contemporary desires and needs.

And especially because I do feel like there is this underlying idea from romance readers and those outside of it who think of romance as morally reprehensible just by the nature of the genre, especially in the way we’re understanding it after the seventies where sexual content is included in it, is this inherently gross, dirty thing.

And it’s like, no, no, no, no, it’s not that. But if you have anything that reaffirms or confirms those preconceived notions that people are coming in with, about the genre, then it’s going to make the whole argument about it being liberatory, about it being empowering, about it being feminist, about it being sociopolitically aware and even changing fall apart.

Andrea Martucci: It’s much bigger than this, right? People are always gonna reduce romance down to being like, Ew, gross: sex and emotions. As long as our society doesn’t actually believe in healthy sexuality, particularly the sexuality of marginalized people, you know, either by gender or race, disability, whatever. You’re not gonna change people’s perceptions of romance until you change that larger thing.

We don’t have to actually change the texts. People are gonna believe what they’re gonna believe. It doesn’t even matter how much sex you have on the page. People are gonna call Fourth Wing dragon smut when a very small percentage of the book, which people have done the math on this.

As somebody who has been reading romance for a long time and has read a lot of older romance, the sex isn’t the problem. It’s people’s concept of sex. It’s people’s concepts of women. It’s people’s concepts of what we should find pleasurable. Stop trying to rehabilitate the texts.

Tehyah Carver: Right.

Andrea Martucci: Rehabilitate the society we live in.

Tehyah Carver: Exactly. Which is why I said I’m like, if you do love St. Vincent, like, I rotate him in the microwave that is my brain. I study him like a bug under a microscope. That microscope is pointed under the sun. I love Devil in Winter dearly because of Sebastian’s villainous nature.

I love him because he is a villain, and even with Marcus, in It Happened With Autumn. I like the fact that he does lose control of his senses and engages in these sensations. These are sensation novels.

And that’s what makes them interesting, which is why also like the gothic element, because some gothic novels are also sensation novels.

These two in this quartet are no different. So it’s also fitting why like Marcus and Sebastian show up and Ravenels so much because, Simon does of course engage in sensations too, but these are two men who are both motivated and repulsed and scared of their own desires, especially if it’s towards someone they have greater feelings for.

And those sensations are just as intense for the men as they are for the women and even for the reader. It’s why those scenes elicit such great reactions, whether it be arousal, excitement, whatnot. And that’s what makes them worth loving in reading and rereading. I literally have two copies of both books behind me.

But I think we do ourselves a disservice when we try to rewrite the text and rewrite the history and make them seem like perfect men, or at least men that we perfectly molded.

Andrea Martucci: It is taking novels that we enjoy because they’re sensation novels and trying to turn them into didactic or like a conduct manual or a moral tale.

We like ‘em ‘cause they’re sensational. We like them because they’re villains and they do weird shit. So you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You don’t get to say, oh, people love the romance ‘cause they’re sensational. But now we need to mold them into being not sensational and so that they’re only doing proper right things all the time, and nobody ever makes mistakes or nobody does anything weird or bad

Tehyah Carver: It’s not just the heroes, it’s also the heroines. ‘Cause people don’t like Lillian because they think she’s too masculine. They like her once she’s tamed: the shrew has been tamed and now she’s fine.

But before she was seen as annoyingly shrill because she had the audacity to fight back or bark back—

Andrea Martucci: Or have a voice at all..

Tehyah Carver: Have a voice at all. Or even with Evie, no one talks about how she’s doing the same thing. And how she is an active player in this story. I love the fact that she’s snarky, but that gets taken out because she’s quiet and she stammers.

And so they will then misrepresent her. The heroines get rewritten and misrepresented just as much as their male counterparts do. Because of how many readers, especially those who have a lot of internalized misogyny, want women in their media and in general to behave based off social ideas that they have internalized and what they have been taught and made to understand as correct as morally just and ethically just.

And that just can’t happen all the time ‘cause we’re all people and we’re all different.

171. Rewriting the Wallflowers: Revisionist History, the full episode, will be available on all podcast platforms on October 14, 2025.

Have you read Lisa Kleypas’s neogothic duology: Devil in Winter and It Happened One Autumn? Tehyah Carver shares her provocative claims about Kleypas’s Wallflower series, including how St. Vincent is a gothic heroine. We also discuss the revisions the author made to the texts around 2021, theories on why the changes were made, and how we feel about them. What differentiates a villain from an interesting character in romance and how have contemporary romance readers’ expectations evolved and what are the broader implications of rewriting problematic elements in historical romance fiction?

Perspective can be revealing, sometimes shocking, and usually surprising. It turns out that our brains aren’t very good at keeping things in perspective — our squishy gray matter prioritizes what is relevant to us and rewards us.

I love the feel of book data on my fingertips on a lazy Sunday, so today, I’d like to provide some perspective on romance book sales in three data visualizations.

1 in 5 (Adult Fiction Print Books) Was a Romance in 2022

Approximately one in five adult fiction print books sold in 20221 was a romance book.

That seems pretty significant, but it doesn’t make romance the most-read adult fiction genre. It’s tied with Graphic Novels and surpassed by General Fiction, which, to be fair, is kind of the catch all for “literary” fiction and “non-genre” fiction.

Nonetheless, if you were motivated to do so, you could spin this data in the following ways, based on how it’s presented:

• Romance is the best-selling genre of adult fiction (in print)!

• Romance sells as many adult fiction print books as Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery, and Action / Adventure combined!

• Romance books are over 3x more popular than Mystery novels, based on print unit sales!

All of the bullet points above are “true” statements based on the data. Take a moment to consider how your perception of the size of the romance genre is impacted by this framing.

Adult Fiction was 25% of all Print Unit Sales in 2022

Let’s zoom up a little bit and put adult fiction print sales in perspective of all print book sales.

Adult fiction was a quarter of all print book sales in 2022.2

Adult books are definitely the majority of overall print book sales, but then again, in the US, adults make up ~78% of the population. So, actually, per capita, adults are consuming fewer print books proportionally (63%) compared with juvenile and young adults (if we assume majority of readers are consuming “age appropriate” categories).3 4

But I digress — now that we have situated adult fiction print sales in the bigger picture…

1 in 20 Print Books Sold in 2022 was a Romance Book

1 in 20, or 5%, of all print books sold in 2022 was a romance novel.

Does that change how you feel about the first data point, in which 1 in 5 adult fiction print books was romance?

I said this was going to be 3 data visualizations, so I won’t add any more pie charts, but here are some other data points to put that “5% of all print books sold in 2022 were romance” into perspective (all data is print unit sales):

• Non-fiction religion sold 26% more units than romance fiction

• Cooking/Entertaining/Crafts and Hobbies/Antiques/Games combined sold as many units as romance fiction

• Biography/Autobiography/Memoir unit sales were 61% of the volume of romance book sales

In Conclusion…

That’s it. That’s the post. Draw your own conclusions.

Were you surprised? Shocked? Validated? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Recent and Upcoming:

I released an episode I recorded like, months ago, with Dame Jodie Slaughter. It’s a meta-conversation about romance and kink where we cover:

• Fantasy as a domain of control / domination

• How desire is entangled with social scripts, consumption, and ideology

• Why romance is a fantasy of dominion over mortality / impermanence

Dominate Your Desire!

Coming up next week5, is on the podcast to discuss his new book Morbidly Curious and his research on morbid curiosity. What does this have to do with romance novels? More than you’d think!

Back in May I released a super fun episode with Semilore Sobande about Devil’s Bride by Stephanie Laurens. I think all of my episodes are fun, but if you’re somebody who is like, “geez, Andrea, lay off the Baudrillard and the data,” this one might be for you.

More “Romance Data” posts:

A critical expectation in paranormal romance is the discovery of a hidden subculture that is a closely-guarded secret from the culture at large.

The Mating Game is an omegaverse novel where the main character who thought she was a beta can get diagnosed as an omega at the emergency room but also TikTok, HGTV, and The Property Brothers exist.2

I’ve dabbled into enough omegaverse novels to understand that they’re not really for me, but gave this one a shot since I’ve enjoyed Ferguson’s contemporary and monster-y paranormals before.

In one of her previous books, Under Loch and Key, the Loch Ness monster-ness was a mystery to be solved by the heroine and a new world to explore. In The Mating Game, I’m having trouble with the idea that the heroine lives in a world with shifters, alphas, omegas, and betas, thinks she’s a beta, has a best friend who is an omega, and yet is totally ignorant — to the point of head in the sand, lalala I can’t hear you!! — about how it all works.

It feels like the equivalent of a contemporary romance with a grown woman who doesn’t know how periods work or how babies are made (in a situation where there’s no backstory explaining away her ignorance3). The impact for me as a reader is that the heroine is too stupid to live (TSTL) — it’s not cute.

I think what this reveals is that it’s hard to have the characters explore and discover a magical subculture (and bring the reader into that journey) when it’s already commonly-understood knowledge in the world.

I’m only 25% into the book, but I’m finding that I’m so distracted by the world building that my interest in the characters is sidelined.

Which leads me to a question:

Are omegaverse romances not paranormal?

Is the issue that I’m going in with paranormal romance expectations (prompted by “shifters,” which pings paranormal to moi, an elder millennial) and omegaverse actually has different subgenre expectations?

For example, if you break down the hierarchical relationships between genre and subgenre, is omegaverse a sub-subgenre under paranormal romance, or is it a separate subgenre?

For the purposes of this post, I’m going to use the following hierarchy:

• Genre

  • Subgenre

    • Sub-subgenre4

Let’s start with some examples:

• Popular Romance Fiction

  • Historical Romance

    • Regency Romance

    • Medieval Romance

  • Contemporary Romance

    • Sports Romance

    • Dark Romance

All Regency Romances are also Historical Romances. If you say “Dark Romance,” the expectation is that you’re talking about a contemporary romance with particular subgenre conventions.5

So, is omegaverse a subset of paranormal romance, like this?

• Popular Romance Fiction

  • Paranormal Romance

    • Omegaverse

    • Shifter Romance

    • Vampire Romance

Or, are Paranormal and Omegaverse completely separate subgenres, like this?

• Popular Romance Fiction

  • Paranormal Romance

    • Shifter Romance

    • Vampire Romance

  • Omegaverse

Perhaps it seems that I’m being pedantic, but from a genre convention standpoint, I think this is an important distinction.

For example, I have learned through reading many paranormal romances that I should expect that the paranormal creatures have to hide their existence from the world at large. Sometimes every main character is already part of the world and sometimes one or more characters are slowly discovering this world exists — either way, a key element is guarding the secret.

What about True Blood and The Southern Vampire Mysteries by Charlaine Harris? We enter the world of the TV show and book series at a point where vampires have revealed themselves to the public — the secret is out. I think what makes this series still feel like a paranormal is that the audience and characters are still constantly discovering new paranormal creatures that are not publicly known and understood, and also it’s a world where for most of history, vampires were a secret.

Are the subgenre expectations for omegaverse fundamentally different? Is the pleasure not supposed to come from that discovery element, and instead it’s supposed to be found in other elements?

For example, I get the sense that I’m supposed to be attuned to the question of biological attraction versus “true” romantic attraction (do they love each other, or is it just pants feelings?), as well as consent politics. Can an omega consent when she’s in heat? Is it similar to being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but biologically induced?

I am a naive reader when it comes to the omegaverse subgenre, even though I’m an “expert” romance reader. I can still evaluate if this book satisfies my expectations for romance, but I don’t have enough experience with a big enough corpus of omegaverse texts to actually understand the expectations for this subgenre and how to situate it within my mental genre taxonomy.

My subgenre naivety means I can’t really evaluate if this book is a “successful” omegaverse romance — I don’t have enough of a foothold to understand what I’m supposed to be noticing or what to expect. I do know it’s not meeting my expectations for paranormal, which is what prompted me to wonder if that’s actually how I should be approaching the book.

Cover art confusion

I’m not the first to observe that cover art design trends are increasingly making it difficult to accurately clock subgenre (or sub-subgenre).

Here’s the cover for The Mating Game:

With the exception of the subtle wolf prints in the snow leading up to the main characters, the style of this cover screams “contemporary romance!” to me. The previous book in this series uses a similar visual clue that this is paranormal, but in a way that’s actually even more puzzling:

(Is the floor of this hospital extremely dusty? Also why are his footprints leading to his current position, while hers are walking away? Did she walk backwards to her current position and then swivel? Are the hygiene standards of omegaverse medical facilities very different from our own? Do they throw sawdust down, like at Medieval Times, to soak up all the hormones and other bodily emissions?)

I’m so distracted!

As a cover counterpoint, here’s the cover from Cate C. Wells’ popular omegaverse series:

While I could see this cover working for either a paranormal werewolf/shifter book or omegaverse, it definitely does more to set subgenre expectations than The Mating Game.

To be fair, Wells is self-published and Ferguson is traditionally published, so there are also production differences and format expectations — for example, Wells is primarily selling ebooks, while Ferguson’s covers optimize for a trade paperback format. I also think Ferguson’s cover is trying to establish a lighter, quirkier tone than Wells, who has a more dramatic and angsty style.

Subgenre conventions, expectations, and execution

I don’t have a problem with books playing with the established boundaries of subgenre — but doing so increases the requirements for flawless execution. The more an author deviates from an established path of reader expectations, the harder they need to work to clearly set reader expectations and stick the landing.

I’ve noted before that books that stick to heavily trodden genre paths can skate by with gestures to conventions that expert readers will use to fill in the blanks and create a richer, more pleasurable experience by relying on internalized subgenre knowledge. Meanwhile, naive readers will likely be completely lost.

Fanfiction works in a similar way — by building on a world that already exists in the writer and readers’ minds, the writer can embellish rooms in the existing architecture of the IP without needing to pay attention to the foundation and structural elements.

This is also why fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off6 can feel unmoored and decontextualized — it’s built on a foundation that has been purposefully deconstructed. It’s why such work is promoted in a way that gives the consumer as many clues as possible to cue them to imagine the infrastructure still exists, even while maintaining plausible deniability to avoid copyright infringement.

I read Ali Hazelwood’s The Love Hypothesis and absolutely had no idea it was originally Reylo fanfic (or Adam Driver/Daisy Ridley fanfic, depending on whom you ask). I haven’t watched any of the newer Star Wars movies and there were definitely points in the reading experience where I felt like a reference was going over my head.

(And yes, I was also deeply disturbed by a student sitting on a professor’s lap during a lecture, speaking of super strange world-building that was disorienting as a human who exists in the real world.)

—

Those are my stray thoughts for the day. Feel free to educate this omegaverse-naive reader or weigh in with your opinions or observations!

She was a great cat… she may have even been in the running for best cat if her bathroom activities were a bit more demure. She lived on the streets for the first year of her life and, thanks to animal welfare programs, lived out her remaining years in complete, resplendent luxury as our spoiled little baby. She was the poster child for successful cat class mobility thanks to community investment in social programs.

She was definitely our favorite cat. (Sorry, Jake.)

I’m still not quite in the mood to write super deep thoughts about romance, so today I thought I would celebrate cats in romance. This one is for you, all you fellow crazy cat ladies.

Cats in Romance

A Perfect Arrangement

First, here’s an original oil painting I bought exclusively because it featured a cat. The painting is by John Ennis.

Of course I got the book as well. It was published in 1992.

Have I read it? No

Do I feel bad about not reading it? No, I did it for the art

Romeo & Julia

This 1999 Love Spell romance called Romeo & Julia seems to have some plot related to an animal shelter. I bought it for the cat on the cover.

Have I read it? No

Do I feel bad about not reading it? Nope — look at that title font!

I bought this at The Book Barn in Niantic, CT, a bookstore known for its love of cats (and in-house bookstore cats).

Rejar

Rejar by Dara Joy also came out in 1999. What a year for cats! Rejar is an ageless shapeshifter being, a cat, and also Lord Byron.

Have I read it? I started it….

Do I feel bad about not finishing it? I do. I just need to get into the right whimsical headspace to enjoy it.

The Cat’s Fancy

The Cat’s Fancy is another Love Spell, this one from 2000. It’s a paranormal where a little lady cat is granted the chance to make a man fall in love with her and turns into a sexy woman.

Have I read it? No, didn’t even look up the plot until just now.

Do I feel bad about not finishing it? I kind of do, now. It has intrigued me. Just checked Goodreads reviews and I may need to read it purely because of this review:

…I had a rough time with this one. On the one hand, I liked virtually everyone in the book. On the other hand, I was rather offended by the taint of beastiality (sic). I have a black cat. I don’t like thinking of her being sexy in anyone’s eyes.

If it hadn’t been for the beastiality (sic), I’d have given this five stars.

Cats in the Belfry

Despite the Norman Rockwell-esque cover art, this Harlequin was published in 1992, not 1962. This one seems to be a battle of the sexes, where the heroine inherits seven cats and is pitted against her new neighbor who has an abundance of dogs. Woof.

Have I read it? No

Do I feel bad about not reading it? Absolutely not. I just like that the cover is so focused on cats that it seems to have forgotten the couple completely. I think that’s a child, not the the adult heroine (although who can tell with early 1990s haircuts? A puzzling time).

A Well-Timed Enchantment

This 1990 middle grade/young adult novel may not technically be a romance, but I actually like the romantic arc. Oliver (the black cat) jumps into an enchanted well with our teenaged protagonist and is turned into a human youth by some mischievous elves to becomes her adventure companion.

Have I read it? Hells yeah — as a youth and as an adult. One day I’ll even get my child to read it, but I may have to bribe her to do so. She doesn’t know what she’s missing.

—

Actions don’t always have consequences, wrongs aren’t always righted, and the villain in our life story is often triumphant.

Romance novels begin by presenting a world that is familiar to us: an unjust world. This world stirs us with discomfort—it’s a problem to be solved, and our brains and hearts are compelled to remain engaged and aroused until the discomfort can be resolved.

The fantasy element of a romance novel is that throughout the story, the unjust world is repaired into a just world. The pleasure is found in a fictional resolution that is rarely so complete, assured, or permanent in the “real” world.

Let’s use Alice Coldbreath’s novels as a case study for this phenomenon.

Victorian Prizefighters Series

Creating an Unjust World

I reread Alice Coldbreath’s Victorian Prizefighters series at least once a year, going on 4 years now. I often find myself reaching for them in audiobook when I’m engaged in some sort of intense hands-on activity like sewing or house projects, where I don’t feel I have the attention span for something completely new, and I want a “sure thing.”

Last weekend I found myself in one such situation, feverishly sewing garments with the hyperfocus of someone with ADHD teetering into burnout. (“Someone” = me.)

Each book opens with extreme injustice:

A Bride for the Prizefighter: the heroine’s father dies, leaving her virtually penniless, abandoned and treated unfairly by people she thought were allies, and foisted onto a previously unknown half brother who is the epitome of “hurt people hurt people.” She is hastily married to a surly, hulking Publican (owner of a pub/inn), deposited in a remote, unfriendly landscape with threatening cliffs and cruel-seeming, mocking people.

A Substitute Wife for the Prizefighter: the orphan heroine, whose always been in the shadow of her pretty, vivacious cousin, is thrown out of her aunt and uncle’s home after standing up for the truth. She is destitute, thrown from a liminal middle class life as a poor relative into sleeping on the floor of what is essentially a garment sweatshop, with no prospects and likely future of descending further into ruin.

A Contracted Spouse for the Prizefighter: a lifelong actress raised in a theater family with a love for the craft is told in the space of 24 hours, by all three of her closest relatives/friends, that she has no future on stage, she’s always sucked, and she’ll be most useful as an unpaid housekeeper. Her unique gifts are disparaged, she is completely unseen and misunderstood by people she cares about, and the business and home she legally owns 25% of is essentially stolen from her, in addition to any sense of power or autonomy over her life.

It’s SO extreme! It’s the epitome of what Northrop Frye described in The Secular Scripture1 when he wrote about polarity in romance2. The plot of a romance dives from the “status quo” to the subterranean world we don’t want, populated by the “vicious them.”

Across the 3 books in this series, each opening scenario lays out a framework for not only what we don’t want, but what we don’t deserve. I started listing it all out and realized that Coldbreath essentially deconstructs Maslow’s entire hierarchy of our protagonist’s needs in quick succession:

• Physiological needs: suddenly at risk — uncertain food and shelter

• Safety needs: thrust into unstable and unsafe spaces

• Love & belonging: betrayed by friends, family, potential romantic interests

• Esteem: self-confidence in tatters — reputation ruined, loss of respect from others

• Self actualization: they weren’t here to begin with, but now they seem farther than ever from realizing their creative potential or achieving a meaningful life

It’s so unfair! The protagonist has literally done nothing to deserve this! I’m angry on her behalf, and I’m angry on my own behalf, because darn it, I know what this feels like! Maybe I haven’t had my entire world destroyed in the space of a few days, but I can certainly sympathize with every single feeling of injury.

Creating a Just World

Now, you’re here so I’m guessing you’ve read a romance novel in your life and you know what’s going to happen next. Over the course of each novel in the Victorian Prizefighters series, each step of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is resolved one by one, almost exactly in order from bottom to top.

Through a relationship with their love interest (all are M/F romances), first their physical needs are met, then their sense of safety. What I appreciate about Coldbreath’s books is that she addresses the highest levels of needs with support from a wider community of characters, and oftentimes the protagonist circles back to shoring up financial security with her own contributions.

Once their basic needs are supported, Coldbreath’s heroines start to thrive. They build a community around them — they turn skeptics and antagonists into allies, and they earn loyalty not in spite of being themselves but because they are being true to their character.

The “virtuous us” becomes seen, known, understood. They create opportunities to be competent and recognized for their skills, and discover that survival isn’t the only goal — they can actually thrive and live whatever life they figure out is meaningful for them. They are desired as they are, completely and passionately, not because they align with some preexisting ideal, but because their love interest comes to see them and desires them.

The “vicious them” get their comeuppance — not always by dramatically and villainously falling into a vat of acid,3 but the wrong is righted, and sometimes the vicious them repents.

The unjust world we don’t want, that causes us (er, I mean, them) such daily pain, is transformed into the idyllic world we want: a just world.

What We Deserve

“Deserve” is such a funny word. It means “to be worthy of.” To be worthy, you must “earn” it. It’s about merit as opposed to an inborn right.

A just world depends on the idea that our actions control the world.

That’s the toughest pill to swallow, in real life, isn’t it? Obviously our actions have some impact on the world — if I shake a vending machine and it falls on me, maybe I deserved it. If I cut someone off in traffic and get a ticket, maybe I deserved that, too.

Interpersonal relationships are a bit trickier — while our actions with others have some influence on their responses, there’s a lot more we can’t control or anticipate. Do I deserve a rude comment in response to an innocent remark? Maybe from that other person’s perspective, but not from mine.

Then there are the things we have absolutely no control over — geopolitical events, natural disasters, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, our DNA or genetic mutations that wreak havoc on our health and lifespan.

It’s so distressing! There’s no cause and effect, no rhyme or reason, and bad things happen to “good” people who don’t “deserve” it.

So yeah, it feels good to believe that we get what we “deserve” because that means our actions can control the world we live in.

The Function of Romance

Fiction is a world in which the author decides what to include or exclude, and therefore controls the story and influences the emotional response I’ll have when reading it.

I’m drawn to romance novels, at least in part, because of the emotional resolution it provides for me. The feeling of pleasure is a direct result of righting wrongs that were consensually inflicted upon me by the author.

Romances are most satisfying when they tie up all the loose ends that were plaguing us throughout the story. The universe is thrown back into balance — each action has an opposite and proportional reaction. Tragedy is chased with ecstasy in equal measure.

The satisfaction of romance novels comes from a completely unrealistic just world, where we get what we deserve. We can problematize why that’s a harmful worldview in real life and how stories reinforce these harmful cultural beliefs, and we should — but we also have to accept our longing for that just world.4

We want our lives to make sense, and have a sense of autonomy and control: it feels good. Why wouldn’t we want to transport ourselves into a just world, even knowing that we’ll return to an unjust world?

The pleasure of getting what we deserve is real, even if it’s not reality.

Hey… speaking of stupid shit we can’t control…

In my last Substack post, I shared an upcoming event with Dame Jodie Slaughter, which sadly did not happen as she had to cancel her visit to my neck of the woods.

Just before the event, Jodie’s younger sister learned that she may have cancer. Jodie needed to focus on helping her through the diagnosis process, which unfortunately ended up being confirmed a few weeks ago as stage 2 Hodgkins Lymphoma.

Jodie’s sister, Angel, is just 23 years old. She just started treatment and is undergoing chemotherapy, but I know that her health concerns are compounded by financial insecurity. She doesn’t have reliable transportation, will need to take time off of work and will lose income, and doesn’t have a financial safety net to rely on.

If you are in a position to financially support the GoFundMe that Jodie set up for her sister, it would make a huge difference.5 If you are able to help spread the word about this effort, that also can make a huge difference. Whatever is within your control: thank you!

Give to Angel's GoFundMe

That’s why I’m thrilled to let you know about this upcoming event with Lovestruck Books to celebrate Dame Jodie Slaughter’s new book, Ready to Score.

DATE / TIME: Monday, June 9th 7:00 PM-9:00 PM

LOCATION: Lovestruck Books, Cambridge, MA

Join us at Lovestruck Books for an evening of laughter, longing, and love on Monday, June 9th, as we celebrate the release of Ready To Score, the highly anticipated sapphic sports romance from acclaimed author Jodie Slaughter!

Your event ticket purchase includes a copy of Ready to Score!

Jodie will be joined in conversation by Andrea Martucci, host of the Shelf Love Podcast, for a discussion that dives deep into craft, queerness, and the complexities of modern romance storytelling. Whether you’re a diehard fan or just discovering Jodie’s sharp, heartfelt prose, this is a can’t-miss night of bookish joy and meaningful connection.

Come for the conversation. Stay for the community, signing, and celebration.

Tickets are limited, so grab yours soon!

Get Tickets & Learn More

I am excited for another evening at Lovestruck Books, especially after all the fun we had around Halloween last year at their Alice Hoffman event, and of course I’m thrilled to be doing this with my literal best friend, Dame Jodie Slaughter.

FAQ

What can I expect at a Jodie x Andrea extravaganza?

Absolute mayhem.

Who is Dame Jodie Slaughter?

Dame Jodie Slaughter wears many hats:

• Shelf Love’s Sad Media Correspondent

• Shelf Love’s Feather Fetish Understander

• Shelf Love’s Foremost Vampire Defender

• Shelf Love’s Kink Correspondent

• Shelf Love’s Defender of Bisexual Villainesses

• Shelf Love’s Youth Culture Media Correspondent

She has been a guest on Shelf Love so often that we had to come up with an elaborate running gag that has just now paid off.

Dame Jodie Slaughter is also a romance author. You can learn more about her fabulous books here.

Has “Dame” Jodie Slaughter been knighted?

Yes, if by “knighted” you mean “given the title of ‘Dame’ by yours truly.”

What is Ready to Score about?

Ready to Score is Jodie’s latest book, out June 3, 2025!:

Cleat Cute meets Friday Night Lights in this funny, spicy, emotional new sapphic romance from Jodie Slaughter.

Jade Dunn has spent years trying to climb her way to the top of the southern high school football food chain. Now, the only thing standing between her and that future head coach spot is years of small-town good ‘ol boy politics. When she scores an invite to a highly coveted monthly poker game perfect for networking, she jumps at the chance for a seat at the table. Only to find the one person with the ability to shake her there. An infuriatingly sexy art teacher who plays her cards like she’s gunning for Jade’s deserved spot.

Francesca Lim never thought she’d be happy in a small town, not after living and breathing hardcore Texas football her whole life. But two years ago, the promise of forever love had her leaving behind a burgeoning coaching career for a new life - only for it to burst into flames. Now, she has a chance to gain back a piece of her life she thought she’d left in Houston. The only one standing in the way? The prickly assistant coach that Francesca can’t keep her mind or hands off of.

Not wanting to risk losing out on a dream job, Jade and Francesca can’t afford to give in to the iron hot attraction that simmers beneath their biting interactions, so they try desperately to ignore it. Too bad their hearts don’t seem to be as on board with the game plan.

Jodie Slaughter’s Ready to Score shows how sometimes you have to go big or go home to get the life - and love - you deserve.

I’ve heard you have matching tattoos…?

The rumors are true. If you want to see the evidence, you need to come to the event!

If you’re able to join us June 9, I’m so excited to see you. If you’re a Shelf Love listener/Substack reader who attends, I hope you say hi and let me know!

Learn more and get your ticket here.

If you aren’t in the area or have other plans that night, that’s a huge bummer, but I get it — no matter what, I hope you check out Ready to Score by Jodie Slaughter and pre-order a copy from your favorite local independent bookstore!

PS: I (lovingly) bullied Jodie into starting a Substack, and you can subscribe to it here:

Jodie Slaughter

i feel so much, and so i must write

Except… if you look farther back in time, even just a little bit farther, data suggests that romance novel print sales are nowhere near where they used to be.

Today, I’d like to dispel the myth that romance in 2025 is bigger than it’s ever been before.

This is the latest in my Romance Data Mythbuster Series, which started with:

Quick note before we dive in — I will note throughout whether data describes print sales only vs. all units in any format, or if sales are US vs. worldwide. Before the 2000s, assume all data describes print only and represents all unit sales. At the end, I’ll address the digital revolution in romance.

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1970s Best-Selling Romance Titles vs. 2020s Bestsellers

While erotic historical romance had a big moment in the 1970s, I’ve yet to find any data on the size of the entire romance genre at the time.2

However, it is instructive to compare sales of individual best-selling titles at the time to best-selling current romances, to get a sense of scale.

We do know that best-selling single-title paperback romance novels by authors like Kathleen Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers were selling between 1 to 3+ million copies each in the 1970s, making their total sales comparable to today’s bestselling authors like Sarah J. Maas (avg. 2.6 million copies over 15 books, likely in all formats) or Rebecca Yarros (avg. 2.6 million each over three Empyrean series books).

If you take into account that the US population is 63% higher today than in 1972, 1970s romance bestsellers would sell an equivalent 1.6 to 4.9 million copies each, if they penetrated the same proportion of the US population of available readers.3 That’s comparable to or higher than most of today’s bestselling romance titles. For example, current best-selling author Emily Henry’s 10 books have sold 9 million copies, averaging just under 1 million copies each.

This rough population inflation calculation still has 1970s romance bestsellers falling short of sales of recent break-out romance titles like It Ends with Us, by Colleen Hoover, which reportedly sold 10 million copies in all formats (worldwide), helped along by a film adaptation.

Never let it be said that I cherry pick data to fit my narrative — there are definitely a few examples of recent best-selling romance titles that blow 1970s numbers out of the water. Bear in mind, though, that these examples are the exception and not the rule: they are outliers that skew the overall picture.4

Conclusion: the most popular romance titles from the 1970s were selling fairly similar quantities compared with bestselling romance titles from the 2020s. It’s hard to say that the most popular romances today are significantly more popular than in the 1970s.

In the 1980s, Romance Boomed Bigly

In March 1982, Harlequin placed an ad in Publisher’s Weekly claiming that they sold nearly 200 million romances worldwide in 1981. Just 2 months later, another Harlequin ad was printed with the claim that romance fiction overall sold 250 million paperbacks a year in the United States alone.

If this was true, then the high of 39 million romance print sales in the US in ~2023 is barely 16% of romance print sales in 1982.

The proliferation of romance media and online discussion, romance bookstores, or romance community events in the 2020s are often cited as evidence of a current romance boom. Is this unique, in the grand scheme of romance history?

In the 1980s, the romance boom garnered much media attention, and publishers threw money at creating brand awareness for themselves and romance. This was also the era when romance professionalized — the Romance Writers of America organization was founded, media publications like Romantic Times sprung up to serve romance enthusiasts and editor Kathryn Falk became a Queen-maker in the industry. Independent bookstores that catered to romance readers, like Rainy Day Books in Kansas City, owned by Vivien Jennings, created robust local romance communities and also made influencers out of romance-friendly bookstore owners. Romance events like bookstore author signings and romance novel fan conventions had a moment, documented in 1987’s Where the Heart Roams documentary.

Conclusion: based on print sales data alone, the 1980s romance boom was over 6 times bigger than the current surge in popularity. Digital sales of romance and self-published romance sales in the 2020s would need to be 84% of the entire market for those avenues to make up the difference and enable today’s romance unit sales to match the 1980s, not even accounting for population growth.

1990s Romance: Echoes of the Boom

Let’s jump ahead a decade into the 1990s. An article about romance novel distribution from Publisher’s Weekly in 1994 extrapolated from Book Industry Study Group data that 177 million mass market paperback romances were sold in 1992.

If accurate, romance in the 1990s had declined 30% compared to the big 1980s boom. That’s pretty significant! And yet, 177 million paperback romances in 1992 is still 4.5x the size of 2023’s print romance market.

Conclusion: the print romance market in 2023 is just 22% of print romance sales in 1992.

2000s: Y2, Brute?

The 2000s were tumultuous for the publishing industry and the economy. I’ll bring in one available data point, reported in RWA’s 2009 RomStat report.

According to Nielsen BookScan data (Nielsen is now Circana, the source of most of today’s romance and book industry data), romance unit sales in 2008 were about 40 million.

That means romance dropped a whopping 137 million sales in the 16 years since 1992’s data, yet they were still 1 million units higher than today’s print sales of romance.

Conclusion: romance was not booming in 2008, compared to previous decades, but unit sales were still slightly higher than 2023 print sales.

2020s - a Romance Whimper

I mean, I think I’ve proven my point, but let’s get visual, because a picture paints a thousand words.

Here’s a nice bar chart from Circana, showing the current romance “boom.” Impressive recent growth!

Now, let’s zoom out a bit. I made this bar chart:

Is romance bigger than it’s ever been? Not if by “ever,” we go back farther than six years.

But What About Digital Romance Sales?!

Obviously, in 2025 you can buy a romance book in more formats than print, so maybe digital romance sales make a huge difference in the overall romance boom.

It’s possible! I certainly read lots of eBooks and audiobooks of traditionally-published romance, plus I read tons of self-published romance in digital formats. This brings me to three big complicating factors that make it really hard to compare historical romance data and today’s romance data.

Print vs. Digital Trad Pub Sales

According to Nielsen’s data (now Circana), recent eBook sales of all books (not just romance) peaked in 2013, declining overall and as a proportion of overall unit sales since then. The 2020 data showed 188 million ebooks sold, ~20% of all units sold that year. I’m assuming this data is largely or entirely representing traditionally-published books as NPD PubTrack Digital reported on retail data, including Amazon, but I don’t think it includes self-published ebooks.5

Anecdotally, it seems like romance readers are more likely to consume their books digitally compared with format choice for other types of books, so maybe the proportion of romance sold digitally is higher than 20%. Maybe!

But even if 50% of traditionally-published romance sales were digital, at best that would bring trad pub romance unit sales to 78 million — still far below 1980s and 1990s numbers.

What About Self-Published Romance?

To this, I must throw my hands up in the air and say that really, we have no idea. Nobody has any idea how much self-published romance is selling every year, except for Amazon, and believe me, they are not sharing that data.

What About New Romance Content Formats?

Lots of content we’d consider “romance novels” is consumed via subscription- or coin-based platforms like Wattpad and Radish, as well as Kindle Unlimited, which counts consumption as page reads, not books sold.

Again — this is essentially impossible to understand via publicly-available data. The technology platforms own this data. I will preserve my sanity and not attempt to explain it.

Are Romance Novels Bigger Than They’ve Ever Been Before?

Probably not!

Romance print sales are bigger now than they have been in the last 20 years, however in the historical sense, the current surge in public interest and engagement with romance novels is not representative of the biggest romance boom the US has ever experienced.

This is, arguably, a romance novel podcast/Substack, so my point here isn’t to hate on romance — it’s to remind you, me, journalists, the romance curious, and the old-time romance fans, that romance novels, their history, and the data about them, is a bit more nuanced than it may seem at first glance.

I obviously think it’s important to contextualize what’s happening in romance now in the wider history of time and the genre — it’s kind of what I do here. Engaging with the romance booms and busts of the past can help us better understand why the romance novel genre and its readers are so interesting, and also help us meaningfully interpret the narratives spun about romance and its readers and their function, when they differ from reality.

“Often father and daughter look down on mother (woman) together. They exchange meaningful glances when she misses a point. They agree that she is not bright as they are, cannot reason as they do. This collusion does not save the daughter from the mother’s fate.”

― Bonnie Burstow, Radical Feminist Therapy: Working in the Context of Violence

A few years ago, I bought a “Votes for Women” teapot in Newport, Rhode Island, after visiting the Marble House — the Mansion where Alva Vanderbilt held a 1909 women’s suffrage rally.

My family uses this teapot almost every day, as we like to have tea together after dinner. When I first got this teapot in 2023, it was quaint, a daily reminder of how far we’ve come. Women couldn’t just vote: they ran for president. Now, in 2025, it feels like a more serious warning that progress is not linear and that gains can be lost much more easily than they were won. Women can run for president, but it’s still inconceivable for many that they have the right to win the race.

How quickly our perception of things can change.

The Newport mansions themselves are a physical reminder of oligarchs who once ruled from palaces on the sea only to discover that they could not sustain their position on top of the world. For each Marble Palace that was preserved for today’s tours by a historical society, there is a Breakwater that was torn down before its owner was cold in the ground.

The Newport mansions are also a reminder that oligarchy isn’t a distant, quaint memory. As we exited the gardens of Marble House and walked along the Cliff Walk edging the sea coast, we passed four adjacent properties all owned by the seventh richest man in the world, a tech billionaire.

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“Not Your Mother’s Romance Novel”

In the romance community, progress is framed as distancing not just from the genre’s history, but from the people, often women, who created and consumed the genre.

“Not your mother’s (insert noun here)” is a well-known phrase used to convey progress for women by stepping on the women who made the future possible.

It is the equivalent of the meaningful glance, an agreement between young women and the patriarchy that our mothers cannot reason as we do.

The rhapsodizing about how each new generation is pushing for change in the romance genre is a denigration of the tastes and trends of the previous generation, without recognizing that while cover styles and subgenre trends may come and go, we are drawn to romance for all the same reasons as our mothers’ generation.

Cultural context evolves, sure, and our media will adapt to mirror our reality. The louder parts may get quieter, but the whispers tell the same stories.

Time marches on and each new generation gets the privilege of coming of age, at which point they get to discover and “improve” and radicalize that which came before.

The sad truth about time and human mortality is that was once young and fresh becomes old and stale. Today’s twenty-something cool girls are tomorrow’s forty-something boring moms who transform into their final form as crazy old cat ladies before being relegated to dust. Whether a woman reproduces or not, she can’t escape the inevitable decline into pitiable figure: the unfuckable hag who serves as media and social foil to the new crop of young women whose choices are worthy of attention until they’re not.

If it seems like I’m cherry picking major media publication headlines, let me assure you that it would be harder to find those that contradict the narrative I’m trying to convey than ones that do.

The narrative goes like so:

“Romance is more popular than ever” (citation needed), “driven by [depending on what year it’s published] Gen Z/Millennials/Gen X/‘the youths,’” and “new romances and their readers aren’t regressive like they used to be: [insert derogative example of embarrassing fantasies of old].”

It’s not a new narrative. I’m as likely to find examples of this from the 1970s and 1980s as I am to find it in an article published this decade. For example, from The New York Times in 1983:

With the boom has come an evolution of the romance novel. Although the form has remained much the same and there are happy endings to each book, the heroine often is now the more powerful half of the relationship.

''In the early romances when the heroine looked at the hero, she shivered and shook but she didn't know why,'' Mrs. Gissony said. ''The books have come to represent a filtered-down feminism. Certainly it's not aggressive, but now women often make the first move. We have a heroine in one of our books who is an astronaut.'' …

According to editors at the conference, the average reader of the romance novel, as well as the writer, is a woman, between 25 and 40 years old, who works outside the home and reads the books for escape.

I could go on, but I’m pressed for time and Substack email length limits, and you get the picture.1

Strangely, it never occurs to anyone writing these trend pieces to consider that the median age in the US has consistently fallen between 25 and 40 years old for the past 100 years, making it far less interesting or notable that the typical romance reader is in fact just the profile of a typical woman.

I’m exactly the median age of a US citizen. I teetered into boring mom a full decade ago and if spotted in a bookstore buying romance when a lifestyle journalist visited, I wouldn’t be selected as a representative of the cool young generation clamoring to romance.

One of the benefits of age is perspective, and I have the added benefit of 25 years of reading romance and an interest in reading romances published before I was born.

I can recognize how the genre has evolved to adapt to its changing environment while also respecting that the bodice rippers of ye olde days, the ones my mother never read but could have, are just as likely to be revolutionary, prosaic, cringeworthy, regressive, and appealing as the ones published today.2

Of course our desire is to make progress — the idea that the romance genre has come a long way, baby3, is a fantasy that has been sold to us because it makes us feel good. It’s the same wishful thinking that convinces us that we’ll never get older and become the very thing we positioned ourselves as superior to: our mothers.

Further reading

Romance Reader Stereotype:

Actually, romance probably isn’t bigger than it ever was before, but we should understand the appeal of that narrative:

You see, I started to write a post about the nature of podcasting. I had been wondering how long I could go without releasing a podcast to claim to be a podcaster.

But the more I thought about it, the more I realized: it doesn’t matter anymore, especially for the audience reading this on Substack. More than half of you who subscribe to Shelf Love on Substack have never even listened to an episode of the podcast.1 At this point, the majority of people in the world who have consumed “Shelf Love” content have done so through non-podcast content.

This made me think about something I started talking about in Who Owns Romance Reader Data? (answer: technology companies), and how traditionally-published romance authors are being encouraged (nay, forced) by their publishers to master creating TikTok videos as a way to grow their visibility with readers on #booktok.

You’d think that publishers would want writers to dedicate their time to writing the books — you know, the thing that can be sold and make them money. What purpose does it serve to ask authors to develop an entirely different skillset (creating videos) and encourage them to engage in the time-consuming audience-building activities that are better suited to a publisher’s marketing team? Does building an audience who likes your TikTok content even translate to selling more books? (Anecdotally, it seems like no.)

It made me think that romance publishers had lost the plot (they have, in my opinion), but also — wasn’t I guilty of the same confusion when it came to how I spent my time cultivating an audience of critical romance readers as Shelf Love?

If I was a podcaster, why was I fooling around with Canva graphic templates, repackaging excerpts from episodes for Instagram Reels, writing text threads about romance for the platform formerly-known-as Twitter or Bluesky, and eventually writing long-form essays about romance with original research on Substack?

Buckle in babes — we’re diving into the death of traditional mass media, the rise of the omnichannel attention economy, the ecstasy of media, and the exhausted subject.

This post will use romance examples, but this phenomenon is not limited to the romance media landscape.

The Omnichannel Attention Economy

First: I should define “omnichannel.”

You can probably guess — “omni” means “all” or “in all ways or places.” It’s a term that’s increasingly used in business and marketing to talk about the shift from “traditional” business models where distribution did most of the work (you walk into a grocery store and you find food on shelves that you can buy), to multichannel (where information is communicated on a variety of channels, but in a disconnected way such as different channels for different consumers), to omnichannel.

What differentiates omnichannel communication strategies is the idea that the a consumer is at the center and benefits from consistent messaging across devices, platforms, and media. The theory is that consumers desire this integrated experience.

You’re experiencing the result of omnichannel strategies when you:

• Search for “Ali Hazelwood” on Google and find lots of websites with consistent information about the author:

  • Author website

  • Retail websites with results for Ali Hazelwood’s books (such as Amazon.com or Bookshop.org.)

• Browse social media romance content and discover influencer content about Ali Hazelwood courtesy of publisher PR efforts.

• Search for contemporary romance books on Amazon and receive paid advertisements about Ali Hazelwood’s books.

• Read major and niche media publications and discover stories about the author or books reviews (such as Entertainment Weekly or smartbitchestrashybooks.com)

• Search for Ali Hazelwood on Instagram or other social platforms and find author-managed pages with information about the same books you can find on Amazon.

• Walk into Barnes and Noble and find Ali Hazelwood books on the front table.

  

• Search for tomorrow’s weather and get retargeted with ads about Ali Hazelwood books, as a result of all of that data indicating you’re interested in Ali Hazelwood.

This all makes sense for a consumer product, right? The result of all of this effort is people buy things, thus creating income to pay for all the expenses and labor that went into making this happen.

The idea is that no matter where the consumer spends time, they can engage with Ali Hazelwood. It’s all for YOU! This is for YOUR experience!

Except, how this works in practice is:

• Omnichannel is extremely resource intensive to execute for businesses:

  • In traditional romance publishing, that means that only bestselling authors will receive a level of support from the publisher that enables this. Mid-list authors are expected to pick up the promotional slack themselves.

  • In order to compete, indie authors are expected to do all of this as well, although they don’t scale on their side.

    • Result for businesses: doing more with less — stretching resources to the breaking point.

    • Result for consumers: “bestseller” media environment where a few books/authors are everywhere and everyone else is struggling to get any attention.

• Omnichannel is overwhelming for consumers:

  • Too many places to find information, too many platform accounts to keep up with. Not only are businesses everywhere: our communities, friends, family, and networks are everywhere.

    • Result for consumers: exhaustion and platform fatigue.

• Omnichannel becomes the norm, so consumers and creatives start to act like businesses:

  • As consumers, we’ve become used to being everywhere and posting in different places for different reasons. The more we consume omnichannel communication, the more we internalize that we are all content creators and producers. What’s the line between someone who posts Goodreads reviews for themselves or friends from a reviewer or influencer? If you’re posting the review on Goodreads, why not also post it on Instagram to share with more people? And if you’re posting on Instagram, why not make a nice graphic so it’s more engaging? It’s a slippery slope.

    • Result for consumers: consumers become overwhelmed, exhausted producers, but without clear material reasons.

I started a romance novel podcast for fun to share conversations about romance novels, and somewhere along the way, I started building a labor-intensive media platform that creates free content to financially benefit for-profit technology companies.

The Ecstasy of Media

Jean Baudrillard anticipated this eventuality in 1983 when he wrote Fatal Strategies and The Ecstasy of Communication. (He didn’t anticipate me starting a romance novel podcast that careened out of hand, rather the idea that contemporary society will expand and excrete “ever more goods, services, information, messages, and demands, surpassing all rational ends and boundaries in a spiral of uncontrolled growth and replication.”2)

Baudrillard wrote:

“We no longer partake of the drama of alienation, but are in the ecstasy of communication… the promiscuity which reigns over the communication networks is one of a superficial saturation, an endless harassment, an extermination of interstitial space.”

The ecstasy of communication so overwhelms us, that it creates “a catastrophe for the subject.” (That’s us: we’re the subjects.) Baudrillard believes that this creates a situation where “the objects themselves come to dominate the exhausted subject, whose fascination with the play of objects turns to apathy, stupefaction, and inertia.”

“For Baudrillard, the “ecstasy of communication” means that the subject is in close proximity to instantaneous images and information, in an overexposed and transparent world…

In other words, an individual in a postmodern world becomes merely an entity influenced by media, technological experience, and the hyperreal.”3

Mindlessly consuming media at all times is an example of the ecstasy of communication. Scrolling through Instagram Reels or TikTok videos with trending audio and endlessly regurgitated memes that you’ve heard repeated so much that you can speak along beat for beat but you don’t even know where it even came from — that’s what Baudrillard would call pure simulacra: a copy of a copy with no original.

The feeling that we can’t stop scrolling even when you’re not necessarily enjoying it is an example of our apathy, stupefaction, and inertia. Baudrillard gives the example of overlapping FM radio stations that crowded out the empty space between stations.

“The word is free, but I am not; the space is so saturated, the pressure of all which wants to be heard so strong that I am no longer capable of knowing what I want.”

Here, Baudrillard points to how all of this supposed freedom of choice actually leads to paralysis and the inability to choose.

We are constantly consuming media in the omnichannel world, but we are often doing so at the direction of an algorithm, rather than making an intentional, subjective choice. When we let the algorithm decide, we are being dominated by the object.

So what do you think? Is this omnichannel media environment a benefit to you? Or are you tired?

I’m tired.

The Exhausted Subject in an Omnichannel World

Let’s go back to how I started this post: what do I mean when I write “Welcome to My Omnichannel Romance Novel Discourse Media Platform”?

First, is Shelf Love a romance novel podcast if it’s actually also a Substack publication that arrives in your inbox, with derivative and original content on Bluesky, Instagram, YouTube, and Threads?

I’d argue that at this juncture, Shelf Love is an omnichannel media platform, not a podcast (single channel).

…but why the hell am I following the communication strategy playbook of a for-profit corporation for my hobby? If I really want to be writing about romance or talking to people about romance, (and somewhere in there, reading romance), why am I also a graphic designer, videographer, and social media strategist who is trying to optimize performance of completely different content from the actual thing I want to create?

I would argue that this is an example of how I have lost contact with reality and am caught up in a hyperreality. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t my job: I’m treating it like it’s my job. I’ve been completely consumed — as many of us have — by the models, images, and codes of the hyperreal, omnichannel environment, which has come to control my thoughts and behaviors.

When I look at that diagram above, with “you” at the center, and Shelf Love harassing and encroaching from all sides — I’m exhausted, and I bet you are too.

Baudrillard wrote about the “pressure of all which wants to be heard” — gosh, I hope I’m not just sending noise out into the universe!

“The word is free; but I am not” — I want to be free and I want you to be free to choose.

Practically speaking, materially: what does this mean? Like, I can divest from the aspects of this omnichannel media platform that bring me no joy and that are diversions from the actual thing I choose to create and that I hope people choose to engage with. But realistically, as a professional communicator who understands too well how the system is set up/rigged, I know that would essentially lead to even fewer people choosing to engage simply because it would never even be visible in an omnichannel world.

It’s scary to think about tearing down this media platform that I’ve built, even if its maintenance exhausts me. If a podcaster releases a podcast but nobody knows about it, does the podcast even exist?

I don’t know. I don’t have the answers.4 But I do want to keep thinking about how I can be more intentional — you know, exercise my subjectivity and ability to choose — about how I create and participate in romance discourse.

By the way: I am aware of the irony of using memes throughout this post to illustrate my points.

1

You can still vote in this poll here: https://shelflovepodcast.substack.com/p/notes-on-romance-novels-as-camp

Learn more about how contemporary category romance publishers used require authors to have pseudonyms and how this evolved to eventually enable authors to build stronger brands outside of publisher-associated lines.

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—

Transcript:

Did you know that Jayne Castle, Stephanie James, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Amanda Quick are all the same person?

All of these books are written by the exact same person, Jayne Ann Krentz.

The reason these books published between 1980 and 1991 all have different author names is because of the way romance publishers used to require pseudonyms.

My name is Andrea Martucci, I am an independent scholar and collector of romance novels, and I have a podcast and Substack called Shelf Love.

There's a lot of sources that talk about why publishers used to do this, but I'm gonna refer to one in particular called Love Lines from 1983.

Authors have been using pseudonyms for a long time and there's lots of reasons. Sometimes it's to preserve distance between one's real identity and writing career. Sometimes it's to preserve their real name for their more serious work, which becomes particularly relevant with romance novels, which aren't known to be the most well respected genre in the world.

But what you may not know is that it actually used to be really important and required by publishers that authors used pseudonyms.

And that's because it was an important branding differentiator for different romance publishers. Candlelight Ecstasy was published by Dell, Silhouette Desire was published by Silhouette, and Harlequin published the Temptation line.

Particularly in the 1970s and 80s, romance category publishers would require authors to use different pseudonyms for different publishers.

Now, if you go to the copyright page, you can often still find the author's real name.

It was a really big deal in 1983 when Bantam's LoveSwept line allowed writers and in fact required them to publish under their real name. Here's an example by Sandra Brown, who you may know of as Sandra Brown.

As quoted in Love Lines, the editor actually said, "I'm not really interested in those writers who want to write under a pseudonym because they consider themselves to be a certain type of writer and not a real romance writer. Also, the inside front and back covers are used to showcase the authors with their photos and biographies."

This was a really notable turning point, particularly for contemporary romances, which were published primarily as category romances, as opposed to single title romances.

Single title historicals often were published by authors under their real names.

In a single title romance, the author brand takes precedence. With category romances, they were usually more interested in having a cohesive brand across the category line.

This change really helped usher in an era where contemporary romance authors also started to build their author brands and be published as single title romances.

Even once this practice went away contractually, there's still reasons why authors publish under different names. For example, Jayne Ann Krentz continued to write her contemporaries as Jayne Ann Krentz, but wrote historical romance under Amanda Quick.

That ensures that readers who pick up an Amanda Quick book understand that they're getting a historical romance as opposed to a contemporary romance.

—

Testing out a new format to share romance publishing history tidbits. What do you think?

[Edit - hilariously, I accidentally clicked “Pls stop: I’m here to read words” in my own poll, but that was an accident that I can’t undo. This should both increase and decrease your confidence in the democratic process: I can’t manipulate the results, but also the results are impacted by human fallibility.]

I’m also finishing up a long-form post about the nature of being a podcaster who doesn’t podcast as much anymore. Ironically, a central question in that post is separating format from function.

Coincidentally, I recorded a podcast episode today with Rebecca Romney. She last visited the podcast ~4 years ago and it was great to catch up and discuss her new book, Jane Austen’s Bookshelf. Stay tuned for that episode in the next week.

Romance publishers used to collect a lot of data from their readers, and this was especially true in the incredibly competitive, disruptive era of the “Romance Wars” in the early 1980s. (More on this later!)

Who owns romance reader data in 2025? That would be Amazon, TikTok, Meta, Google…

You get the picture. All of these companies — whether you think of them as retailers, search engines, or social media platforms — are essentially data companies.

Data is power: it’s the ability to predict, to personalize, and promote. Data is power, and power is control.

Major media and publishing media platforms claim that BookTok is a huge reason why romance is selling more print copies in recent years.1

Huge, if true, because that means that a primary source of data about romance readers is a black box to publishers, and the platform influencing them is one that is singularly focused on keeping people scrolling on the platform instead of buying and reading books.

What happened to romance reader surveys and audience research by publishers?! And, oopsie, was it kind of a mistake for publishers to abdicate control of their reader data?

Know Thy Audience

It’s a bit of a jump scare when I’m operating in the context of “Shelf Love” Andrea and realize it would be helpful to tap into “professional marketer” Andrea. It turns out that the LinkedIn page version of me has a lot to say about data, audience research, and romance publishing.2

The key to a good strategy period is knowing your audience. Marketing is not about selling things to anyone who will buy it — it’s about connecting a product with the people who find value in your product.

The best products come from insights about not just who the product is for and what they say they want, but understanding what benefits your target audience is seeking.

Romance Publishers’ War on Data

Data about romance readers is a valuable competitive advantage. This was never more clear to romance publishers than in the early 1980s.

For most of the 1970s, Harlequin (the dominant publisher of romance novels in North America at the time) worked with Simon & Schuster to handle distribution in America. In 1978, Harlequin notified S&S that they would handle it themselves going forward. Simon & Schuster wasn’t happy to lose their piece of the romance supply chain pie, and responded by launching Silhouette romance in 1980 to give Harlequin some competition for once.

Thus began “The Romance Wars,” a term coined by Vivien Lee Jennings in a 1984 Publishers Weekly article.

What’s notable about this period is that it was a period of huge capital investment to gain market share, which also resulted in growing the overall market. There was an explosion of new romance publishing imprints, category lines, and growth in retail store space and in the public consciousness.3

[If your ears are perking up because this sounds like how the current romance renaissance is playing out, with the “newfound acceptance for romance” and an explosion of romance bookstores, you get an A.]

Harlequin and Silhouette were at each others’ throats, throwing millions of dollars at advertising in an attempt to claim more market share, but pretty much every paperback publisher threw their hat in the ring, too.

Each new category line and imprint needed to stake out a distinct position in the market along lines of subgenre, level of on-page sensuality, hero and heroine archetypes, and cover style.

This was a bit of educated sociological guesswork on the part of editors (for example, Vivian Stephens did her own informal study of romance buyers before pitching the sexy-for-its-time Dell Candlelight Ecstasy), but most lines tested their hypothesis with focus groups prior to publication (especially Harlequin and Silhouette) and reader surveys after publication, found in the pages of the books themselves. These surveys would provide invaluable information about who was reading their books, how they bought them, and what they liked or disliked about the book, category line, or elements of the story.

I have 1,737 romance novels4, so I grabbed a few examples:

(Ironically, all of the surveys above are for unsuccessful or short-lived lines — data doesn’t guarantee success.)

Other tools to gather and maintain/control romance reader audience data included mail-order subscription lists, which also cut out a third-party retailer and guaranteed repeat sales, as well as romance reader newsletters and mailing lists. All of those sweepstakes offers in old paperbacks were a way to collect data about their audience so they could market more effectively to them.

I don’t have any insider information on this, but as a Professional Marketer™ I would speculate that these lists of readers and their data were leveraged for additional marketing or reader research.

For example, direct mail offers could be sent to readers’ addresses once collected for a no-obligation sweepstakes, or they could understand metros where readers were concentrated and could strategically plan author tours or bookstore signings.

Codes embedded in the response cards would likely be tied to specific books, thus enabling publishers to get some understanding of which titles were successfully converting new loyal readers, or which books and authors appealed to specific readers.

Publishers Give Up on Reader Data?

It kind of seems like, somewhere along the way, publishers gave up on collecting romance reader data.5

From my perspective, it seems like publishers are looking at social media stats to “understand” the market, as if a trending hashtag equals a meaningful insight. There doesn’t seem to be any sense of audience segmentation and targeting different books to different audiences. It seems like publishers gave up on building useful email marketing lists and instead push readers to follow them or authors on social media.

Romance publishers are not using the physical real estate they control to attempt to gather data on romance readers. I don’t have any data on this, but I would imagine that Harlequin’s mail-order subscriber circulation has reduced dramatically, especially among younger readers, leading to even more reliance on third-party retail sites (physical and digital) that control sales and reader data.

Even if publishers encourage social media connections, we all know by now that individuals and companies do not “own” that data, right? The platforms can limit access to people who opt in, charge you to even show them your content, dictate terms of service, and can choose to close your account down completely if they want to.

Data is Power: Data is Control

Let’s come back to those tech giants that control all of our data generally, but pertinent to the content of this newsletter, also control the data about romance readers and the romance market.

What are their incentives? How do they make money and create value?

On any social media platform, you are the product. Your attention is what is being sold to advertisers. Why did Amazon acquire Goodreads? Not to make the platform better! It was to get your data.

TikTok doesn’t sell books: TikTok sells access to you…in other words, your data. You’re data.

TikTok wants you to spend as much time on the platform as possible, endlessly scrolling book content where you’re building your TBR and liking pictures of color-coordinated shelves and book stacks, and maybe also engaging with interesting or rage-bait discourse. Some of this is fun, or relaxing, or helping create a feeling of community.

TikTok does NOT want you to leave TikTok to read a book. Maybe you succeed in doing so, but that is not TikTok’s goal. The only way they will use romance reader data is to keep you on TikTok.6 They certainly won’t be sharing anything with publishers to help them understand what’s really resonating with readers so they can acquire the right books and connect them with the right readers.

And so now, publishers are standing on the outside, just like us, trying to read the tea leaves of trends based on the noise, but potentially missing the signal.

Publishers still have data on number of copies sold, of course, but there’s a big difference between buying a book and reading it or enjoying it. Amazon knows how much of an eBook we read before giving up, but publishers don’t.

Purely my opinion here, but I think that traditional publishing’s output also shows that they don’t know what readers want anymore, and are perhaps confused about who their target audience is and where to focus their energy.

…but I don’t have the data on that, so who could say?

Misc. and Sundry

• I’ve been toiling away on a beast of a post for the better part of 2 months. (Not this one.) If I’m honest with myself, the ambition of that post is more aligned with a book than a Substack post, so I decided to put it aside for today and tackle something more bite-sized. (Well…I tried anyway.)

• I finished my built in bookshelves and catalogued my entire romance and romance scholarship collection!

• As I was writing this, this post from Kyla (“human-centric economic analysis”) came through about the evolution of value creation. It’s interesting in the context of the post you just read…

Kyla’s Newsletter

Trumpcoin and TikTok

I think all of the below important to think about. But please note: everything could all go amazingly well, and I really hope it does…

Read more

2 years ago · 89 likes · 21 comments · kyla scanlon

Hello dearest family, friends, and fans,

Well, we made it through another year. We Cravens needed a bit of a respite since the events of last year — so tumultuous!

After Derek’s gambling den burned down, and I was nearly murdered by Derek’s jaded former lover Joyce, and I shot a man dead in the streets… I couldn’t fathom that life could get more exciting and yet it has!

My newest novel has been released under my nom de plume, S. R. Fielding: Erik explores the dangerous world of chimney sweeps and one boy’s climb out of the gutter using only his bootstraps and his enormous member wits to become London’s most notorious boxing club owner who often finds himself lathered in sweat and quite without a shirt on his back.

I was surprised to find that despite the tragic yet salacious subject, the story has captured the hearts of the simple unwashed masses just like my last work, Mathilda. I’ve heard it’s all the rage for the girls working on BookDock to claim they’ve met Erik!

(As with all of my novels, I’ve conducted hands-on research but this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any persons real or fictional is entirely coincidental.)

Derek and I welcomed our first child, Lydia Tabitha Craven. She’s such a dear and I feel as if I truly have it all — I never believed I would find professional success, sexual marital bliss, and fulfillment as a mother.

I often share in my lectures to women’s groups that one must “careen in” if one wishes to be a full person. When I speak at assemblies of maids and washer women, the advice that seems to resonate the most — it always creates such a murmur! — is to bring one’s child to work and hire a nurse to see after their care.

You may worry Derek was all sixes and sevens after that whole scare with the fire, but thankfully he had his fortune to fall back on and has taken to being a man of leisure with aplomb. (Despite the rumors, he most assuredly is not a secret philanthropist.) My beloved husband would quite chafe at the compliment, but he’s been positively lapping up fatherhood since dear Lydia’s arrival, spending an astounding hour a day in our child’s company!

We are dreaming of yew-filled salons brimming with love this holiday season, and wishing one and all a happy ever after new year.

Yr humble billionaires,

The Cravens

Sara, Derek, and Lydia

P.S. If you’re wondering what to get for the woman who has everything, new spectacles are always welcome.

This is a work of speculative fiction. Any resemblance to real romance books is purely coincidental.

Speaking of Good Cheer…

It’s not too late to sprinkle some good cheer this holiday season! Romancelandia Holiday Fairies is a mutual aid effort for the "Romancelandia" romance novel reader community to support anyone in the community who could use help with purchasing gifts for themselves or loved ones this holiday season.

Since 2020, the romance community has supported hundreds of wishlists and purchased thousands of gifts, making a real difference in the lives of families around the world.

Here’s how it works: Anyone who needs help this holiday season submits an Amazon wishlist and then holiday fairies browse available wishlists and send gifts directly to recipients.

Learn More About Holiday Fairies

There are 36 wishlists available right now and this weekend is a great time to take action if you’re in a position to be a Holiday Fairy!

I don’t hate holidays, but in the lead up to them I tend to focus on the list of to dos that stress me out and forget the reasons why they can be magical.

I tend to associate a “holiday” most with an annual event that is celebrated by a community of people all at once, but it’s really any celebratory event that disrupts the daily grind.

The last few months have reminded me that holidays make us pause, lift our heads up out of the muck of day-to-day, and come together.

Here are some recent romance community examples.

Practical Magic with Alice Hoffman & Lovestruck Books

On October 29th, I was honored to moderate a conversation with the brilliant novelist Alice Hoffman prior to a screening of Practical Magic, which is based on her novel of the same name.

Practical Magic has become a bit of a rom-com cult hit, especially around Halloween. The movie’s vibes conjure crisp autumn leaves, moody candle-lit rooms, and an unmistakeable New England aesthetic. The book the movie is based on has similar witchy vibes, and while it’s not a romance novel, it explores love and romance and ends happily.

There really is something magical about an event like this: people got dressed up and were ready to have a great time and nerd out over their love of Alice Hoffman’s work and a mutual love of a good story. The energy of the sold out crowd in Brattle Theatre’s cozy space was thrumming.

Here’s a short video my husband shot during the Q&A. We were talking about the memorable last lines of the movie and the book and Alice shared a hilarious behind the scenes story about how her first editor wanted to cut the lines!

The event was hosted by Lovestruck Books, a new bookstore that’s opening in Harvard Square (Cambridge, Massachusetts). Local romance bookstores seem to be popping up all over, and I’m thrilled that the greater Boston area1 will have a dedicated space where we can find community with one another.

I am so thankful for the opportunity to be a part of this event.

When in Dallas…

As an introvert, I am perfectly happy staying home. It’s where my family and books are, and it’s mine. I work from home, too, but my job also entails a decent amount of travel.

In November, I had reason to travel to Dallas for work and so of course I used the opportunity to connect with a romance community friend whom I’ve spoken with for hours but never actually met: Hannah Hearts Romance!

Hannah joined me for two full-length episodes over the years, discussing The Rakess by Scarlett Peckham (gushing!) and The Flame and the Flower by Kathleen Woodiwiss (less than gushing!).

As I headed out to meet a stranger from the internet, I told my colleagues that if I never returned, they should talk to Hannah Hearts Romance on Instagram…

This got some laughs and I think my colleagues were actually a bit concerned that I was meeting someone I knew from the internet, but my strongest friend connections are with people I met in the online romance community. (For example, Dame Jodie Slaughter is my literal best friend.)

Hannah and I met up for authentic Tex-Mex cuisine and it was like sitting down with an old friend because that’s exactly what it was!

When I’m at home, it’s easier to stay in than make plans with my friends. “What may be done at any time will be done at no time.” Travel, even when it’s not quite a holiday, prompts me to be more active in making plans with friends and taking advantage of perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to meet in person someone I love speaking with virtually.

Romancelandia Holiday Fairies

As we come to the end of 2024, “holidays” tend to be top of mind for many of us. There’s the sense that we’re closing out one year, cramming in as much time with family and friends as possible, and also trying to recharge and reset before the coming new year.

It’s also a time to strengthen the romance community.

For the 5th year, I’m hosting “Romancelandia Holiday Fairies” — a mutual aid effort for the "Romancelandia" romance novel reader community to support anyone in the community who could use help with purchasing gifts for themselves or loved ones this holiday season.

Since 2020, the romance community has supported hundreds of wishlists and purchased thousands of gifts, making a real difference in the lives of families around the world.

Here’s how it works: Anyone who needs help this holiday season submits an Amazon wishlist and then holiday fairies browse available wishlists and send gifts directly to recipients.

Learn More About Holiday Fairies

There are 36 wishlists available right now and this weekend is a great time to take action if you’re in a position to be a Holiday Fairy.

Organizing this event is an annual reminder to me that nothing feels better than helping someone when I’m able to.

It’s also a reminder that being able to ask for help and receive it is what makes a community stronger. We live in a society that makes us feel shame for needing help and seeks to make interpersonal relationships transactional. Communities make us stronger, and therefore a threat to systems of oppression.

I’ve written before about how romance novels help us access hope and emotional experiences.

While we’re a “romance community” because of our shared love for romance novels, the way the romance community shows care reminds me that the real power of romance novels is about bringing what we learn about relationships and emotions into the real world.

In Honor of Melinda

2024 Holiday Fairies is dedicated to the memory of Melinda Utendorf. Melinda was a beloved member of the romance reader community, and a supporter of holiday fairies.

In her last year, when she needed the support, she was a wishlist recipient herself. On January 1st, 2024, Melinda sent me this email.

Hi, Andrea,

I just wanted to reach out now that the holidays are over and let you know how amazing the Romancelandia wishlist made mine. I signed up when I was in the hospital and my stay kept getting extended.

And when I was released, I came home to a few items for my wishlist and it was exactly what I needed. The coloring books and puzzles I received have been sanity saving for me in the last few weeks. Truly my mental health was so much improved by all of this. I can't even express it properly.

So, thank you. And thanks to anyone who's involved.

Melinda.

Melinda passed away on January 10th, 2024. She was 41 years old.

Whether you knew Melinda or not, I think the message that she shared exemplifies the power of us coming together as a romance community.

If you're in a position to be a holiday fairy this season, I hope that you'll take it as an opportunity to help others.

The best time to help out with Holiday Fairies is before December 31st.

Be a Holiday Fairy

What I’ve Been Up To

Podcasting

I’m still podcasting about romance, although on my own sporadic schedule.

Recent episodes include Sampling Secrets of a Summer Night with The Historical Romance Sampler (hosted by author Katherine Grant) and Horror Romance and Land of the Beautiful Dead with my friend and new author Laura J. Mayo.

I’ve been splitting my romance discourse time between Substack and the podcast, and Substack has generally been winning out this year.

I have no resolutions to make major changes on that front, but I do think discussing books with others for the podcast fills my well in a valuable way that’s slightly different from what I enjoy about writing these Substack posts.

BlueSky

I’m on BlueSky! The romance community on here seems to be ramping up. Maybe I’ll see you there?

Bookshelves

During Thanksgiving break I started a massive DIY built-in-bookshelf project. (I’m mostly posting about this on Instagram stories.) It’s basically consumed my life because who knew that constructing and painting, like, 18 linear feet of shelves would be a big project?

My goal is to be able to have my entire romance collection in one place and I can’t wait! But I’m trying to be realistic that I took on a monster project and it’s going to take time. Patience, Andrea.

I’m tearing through romance audiobooks. So far, did my annual re-read of Alice Coldbreath via audiobook, plus Heather Guerre’s new audiobook releases of Cold Hearted and Hot Blooded, and now I’m onto What I Did for a Duke by Julie Ann Long.

I’ve read and loved all of these books before, so they’re perfect project comfort listens!

I hope you're all having a great December and that you have plans to spend time with your loved ones, your found family, and an amazing romance novel.

I called my last reading journal “brutally honest,” and I felt ambivalent about continuing in the same vein.

Being Productively Honest

Having “a platform” in the internet age is weird. As I become older and wiser, I’m trying to really learn that being authentic and honest doesn’t mean I have to say everything I think.

To me, honesty means I’ll never say I enjoyed a book I didn’t, even if that would be the more politically advantageous thing to do. I also hate the idea that we should only talk about books we enjoy. There’s value in talking about the problems in books, not just as a way to share with other potential consumers but as a way to better understand books and romance novels more broadly.

My biggest concern is how to talk about books that are “not competent,” meaning there are issues with execution or craft that impact my ability to read the book or have anything interesting to say if I do soldier through. It feels like punching down on top of not being very productive or generative, especially when the books are relatively unknown and/or written by self-published authors.

I will continue with these honest reading journal dispatches with the goal of productive honesty. Primarily, that means I may not share all of my DNFs. Onward!

August 2024

The Muse of Maiden Lane by Mimi Matthews

Let’s jump into the deep end immediately.

I enjoyed Mimi Matthews’ A Holiday by Gaslight, which I discussed in a reading recap podcast episode in 2023 (Cold(breath) Comfort Reads). My understanding is her books are generally closed door, so I wasn’t expecting sexy but I was expecting robust romance feels.

The Muse of Maiden Lane featured a male main character who uses a wheelchair. I was intrigued to see how the disability representation would be handled, especially in a historical romance.

After sorting through my internalized ideas of masculinity and sexual scripts and interrogating if I’m the problem here, I still came away feeling like this book positioned the hero’s physical disability as the conflict in the romance.

On the one hand, it makes sense that the hero’s illness (that led to his physical disability) and use of a wheelchair for mobility impacts his life, relationships, and how he moves through the world, especially in a historical setting.

On the other hand, it felt like the hero was defined by his disability rather than it being a part of his characterization. I left the book feeling that every beat in the relationship centered his physical disability, mostly because there wasn’t much tension or conflict in general.

Part of what complicates this was what I perceived as a lack of sexual or romantic chemistry between the main characters. It seemed to play into harmful stereotypes about how people with disabilities aren’t attractive or sexy. The hegemonic sexual script in romance and society is that big, strong men are portrayed as more masculine and sexy: a hero living with a physical disability obviously challenges that societal assumption. The book tried to tell me that they characters were hot for each other, but it didn’t show me and I never felt it.

Matthews doesn’t write super sexy romance in the first place — is this just Matthews’ style? Did I only like A Holiday by Gaslight because I was superimposing North and South sexual chemistry on top of it?

Argh… this one was hard for me. Am I the problem? It seems inevitable that attempts to color outside established romance tropes and archetypes sets the bar higher for execution. Is it unfair to hold a book to the standard it’s setting for itself?

My Dearest Enemy by Connie Brockway

My Dearest Enemy is an enemies to lovers, M/F historical romance. This was a satisfying reread, however I remain confounded by the denouement.

The heroine is a staunch feminist who has vowed not to marry until women have equal rights in marriage. She has reasons: her mother’s first husband punished his wife by taking her children away from her when she ended the marriage, and her mother didn’t marry the heroine’s father for fear of the same thing happening again. As a feminist AND an illegitimate child, the heroine is an outsider in society.

Once they get over their whole enemies thing and move on to lovers, the primary conflict is that he desperately wants a loving family. Marriage and children, specifically, are important to him.

At the end, the heroine relents and agrees to marry him. She doesn’t give up her feminist activism after marriage, but the move undercuts a lot of the interesting things that happen prior to that point.

I don’t even disagree with either of their reasons as characters — it just jumps the shark from the narrative structure we were previously working in.

It’s a very interesting book and I recommend it heartily despite my puzzlement. He’s an adventurer who transforms from an Ugly Duckling into a hottie with a heart of gold. Their romance begins via antagonistic, then vulnerable, letters, and there’s a cast of interesting and complex side characters.

Stand and Defend by Sloane St. James

Contemporary M/F sports romance in which a woman leaves an abusive relationship and moves in with his family friend.

I rubbernecked this book longer than I wanted to. What broke the trance was a scene in which the MCs had penetrative sex in a bar, sitting in a booth next to the male MC’s teammates/colleagues.

Not my monkeys, not my fantasy.

Promise Me Heaven by Connie Brockway

This was another re-read. Like My Dearest Enemy, Promise Me Heaven is an M/F historical romance.

This one has a former/current spy caught up in a scheme by the heroine to enlist his help in teaching her how to catch a husband to support her family. Of course it turns into sex lessons, but also involves a daring escape from France when Napoleon threatens to return to power.

Connie Brockway is one of those authors who was pretty popular in the late 1990s and early 2000s but I don’t hear her spoken of much in romance circles these days, which is a tragedy. I think her body of work is significantly more interesting than certain other authors from the same time period…

Seducing the Sheriff of Nottingham by Cassandra Gannon

I’d call this book a fractured fairy tale that’s half Robin Hood/half Gargoyles fanfic. Goofy off-kilter fairy tale-inspired stories are my jam, and I definitely understand the appeal of Gargoyles fanfic…

I was charmed by the premise for a bit, but got the sense that the book was being padded out to milk Kindle Unlimited pageview dollars.

The gist of how authors get paid on Kindle Unlimited is that the more pages readers read, the bigger cut of the KU pot the author gets every month. Therefore, it’s in authors’ best interest to write longer books, however the catch is that to keep readers going, authors are also incentivized to have things happen on those pages.

I literally got to ~90% and things were finally happening but I didn’t like the feeling that I was being tricked into mindlessly turning pages to see what would happen so I stopped.

Only in Your Dreams by Ellie K. Wilde

This is an M/F contemporary romance with a twin brother’s best friend trope and another abusive ex-boyfriend (hot on the heels of Stand and Defend).

It was surprisingly sweet and the pining off the charts. You know I love pining. It’s my favorite. I enjoyed it!

Lights Out by Navessa Allen

Lights Out is a stalker dark romance (M/F contemporary). I knew that going in and I was trying to branch out. It seems to be a thing people are into so I was curious about it, especially because the appeal seems to be that the stalker breaks in to her house to take care of her and like, shovels the snow from her driveway.

I got about 50% of the way in and was enjoying parts of it but realized that I did not like any of the stalker romance parts.

It was a weird combination of pulling punches and punching too hard.

I’ve noticed that a lot of dark romances that veer into “taboo” topics want to have their cake and eat it too: they go out of their way to assure the reader that the situation is safe but want the reader to be excited by the thrill of danger.

The moment that I tapped out was when the stalker hero was encouraging the heroine to ride the handle of a knife he jammed into her mattress, ruining it, while the hero assured her that he cleaned the handle first with an antibacterial wipe and the author has his inner monologue assure us that he’s already ordered her a new mattress.

Not my monkeys, not my fantasy.

Time Served by Julianna Keyes

This book has the MOST flawed main characters in a very interesting way. This was a reread, and I covered it way back in episode 5 of Shelf Love with guest Kini Allen.

The Orc and the Innkeeper by Cora Crane

The Orc and the Innkeeper was recommended by Kassi in episode 162 about Old Skool Romantasy. It’s a… are orcs men if they’re not human? Whatever, it’s a heterosexual cozy fantasy interspecies romance with a childhood bully to lovers plot.

Bully romance isn’t really my thing, but this went down smooth and easy. It’s definitely cozy, a la Legends and Lattes by Travis Baldree, but a bit spicier. If you’re looking for Gilmore Girls vibes with orc anatomy, Cora Crane can hook you up.

Wrap Up

That’s it for this installment of my reading journal. I’ve been reading like a wild woman, so lots of books to catch up on from September and October!

What do you think?

• Have you read any of these?

• Have I enticed you to read anything?

• Have any thoughts on “productive honesty”?

Please share in the comments below!