Why Romance?
What Is It and Why We Read It
By: Seth Betzler, Raquel Greene, Leah Thakur, & Shelby Cunningham
Shop this article (*affiliate links): https://bookshop.org/lists/romance-readin-magazineSwoony moments, witty banter, meet-cutes and tropes galore— I couldn’t help but wonder why the romance genre has grown so much in popularity in recent years and yet still faces some flack. The romance team here at Readin’ Magazine wants to give you an insight into why we read romance and what it sparks in each of us, as an introduction in a way to the genre and its impact.
Romance novels, as defined by the Romance Writers of America, contain a love story and have an optimistic ending: the ever-lauded Happily Ever After. Besides those two HUGE things, the tone, the style, setting, spice, all of that is up to the author. This is why romance is such a LARGE genre, encompassing historical and contemporary, fantastical and monsters. Each of the team here at Readin’ Magazine read various types of romance, so let’s dive in, shall we?
Seth’s Version
Why (Contemporary) Romance
My journey with reading has been a long and winding one, starting when I was little all the way through to now. I had started dabbling in Queer YA romances right after graduating college, and I was finally starting to see queer love depicted. I found that reading Queer YA romances really started to heal my inner child, the one who grew up without many examples. From then until fall of last year I bounced around, reading a little more YA romance, reading lit fic, etc., until I discovered Emily Henry’s canon from a friend’s recommendation.
Reading Beach Read, People We Meet on Vacation, Book Lovers, & Happy Place back-to-back threw me into the world of contemporary romance, seeing these people fall in love in various scenarios, watching Emily deftly respect and defy the conventions of the romance genre. All of that sucked me in so far to the romance genre that I haven’t left. Without Emily’s works, I don’t know if I would have even discovered how romance makes me feel. These books were the first time in a long time where I felt really seen; it felt like someone wrote parts of my life experience into their work, and that feeling really struck me. Happy Place specifically, with a woman on the cusp of 30 trying to figure out how to puzzle her life together, hit home as someone who was just about to turn 30 myself. Moreover, Emily’s books are centered around straight cis women, an experience that is not my own as a gay cis man, yet I was able to find pieces of myself in her work and characters. I realized that these stories that are not about people who look just like me can hit just as hard via these universal themes and truths we all share. This opened doors to such a vast landscape of romance, and I couldn’t be happier to have now read so widely across this genre.
Emily’s books also led me to discover other authors and works, and I started to have a better understanding of how romance can crack you open and stitch you back together, how romance is a direct reflection of the world around you and allows you to see inside yourself for a little while, doing so all while knowing the end is guaranteed. That’s why I read romance now: that heart-piercing feeling that these books leave me with, through tears and smiles, all ending with that Happily Ever After.
Raquel’s Version
Why (Monster) Romance
Reading about mothmen (and women), minotaurs, seven-foot-tall blue aliens (Ice Planet Barbarians), and dragon shifters may seem outrageous to many new readers, but I feel like I was perfectly primed to be its number one fan. I’ll start at the beginning, where I was obsessed with the supernatural and extraterrestrial as a preteen. My love of adventure shows like Doctor Who and Supernatural, paired with my love of romance in shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Rosewell, crafted my taste in books today.
My love of these shows led me to discover fandom and fanfiction through sites like Archiveofourown, where these vampires, werewolves, and aliens were doing everything and anything without a hint of shame. So when I got back into reading books in 2022, monster romance as a genre didn’t make me bat an eye. I was used to reading monsters doing explicit things with very different parts in new intriguing places. And once I read one, I had to read more and more, til it became my ‘thing’.
There’s something appealing about loving the unlovable and desiring the conventionally undesired. Monster romance takes old monster and alien tropes and breathes new life into them with fascinating lore and imaginative worlds (e.g. old paranormal plots mixed with isekai to create Bro and the Beast by L.C. Davis). They also take contemporary tropes and reinvent and subvert them in hilarious ways (e.g. workplace romance plus sports romance tropes result in the excellence that is False Comeback by Lily Mayne). The current state of modern dating might also play a factor: I often prefer giggling and kicking my feet over very fictional lizardmen (especially when they’re written by Regine Abel in I Married a Lizardman) than downloading a dating app. I also love the sexual freedom in the monster romance genre. It’s a genre where anything feels possible and probable in a world of monsters, aliens, and magic. Gender, sexuality, kink, non-monogamy, race, class— anything and everything explored in a community that I feel at home in. It’s broadened my horizons on what is possible and introduced me to many indie romance authors I would have never found otherwise.
Leah’s Version
Why (All) Romance
I am what happens when you allow children to watch Disney Princess movies nonstop and then teach them to read when they’re three years old. I was born loving romance and will continue to love it until my dying breath. I vividly remember reading my first Sarah Dessen book in middle school and knew then that my life was forever changed. A hopeless romantic, desperate for love stories, the genre was, and continues to be, everything to me. I was hooked on the way two characters would share a glance and get butterflies, the way their chests would warm after they stayed up all night having vulnerable conversations, the way they’d float after a kiss
My need for these experiences was insatiable, and I sought after all the romantic media I could find. I started off in YA romance with what I consider classics, like The Truth About Forever and Just Listen by Sarah Dessen. As an adult, I discovered contemporary romance like Beach Read by Emily Henry, why-choose romance like Court of the Vampire Queen by Katee Robert, monster romance like Yours Insatiably by Aveda Vice, queer romance like Love & Other Disasters by Anita Kelly, Black romance like Only For The Week by Natasha Bishop, kinky romance like Praise by Sara Cate, sports romance like Collide by Bal Khabra, manga romance like A Sign Of Affection by Suu Morishita and Sasaki and Miyano by Shou Harusono, any type of romance, you name it!
Romance books taught me how to be loved and that I was worthy of it. They taught me to take charge of my sexuality and to be proud of my body. They taught me how to understand my gender. They taught me how to conceptualize and adore my Blackness. They gave me friends and a community. They gave me hope and joy in the darkest of times. Romance books taught me to be proud of who I am and the things I enjoy. They taught me that sharing my joy is consequential.
Now, I’ve grown up a lot since I was three, and I’ve been lucky enough to have found my own fairytale love story. While love in the real world is quite different from the love we find between the pages of a book, I can’t help but think that my favorite fictional couples would be proud of the love I continue to build each day, and I can’t help but thank them for all they’ve given me.
Shelby’s Version
Why (Historical) Romance
I have been a reader my entire life, but I didn’t become the romance enthusiast I am today until the pandemic. I needed an escape and an outlet, something to fill the now endless time at home with more than Netflix. Just like I would gravitate towards shows with a lot of seasons that I knew would keep me occupied, I discovered that historical romance authors had created entire worlds and interconnected characters that I could stay with throughout multiple books.
From a young age, I developed an appreciation for the beauty, drama, and romance of period stories. I was raised on PBS, Masterpiece Classics, BBC miniseries, and library books, so maybe it was my destiny to fall in love with historical romance. I keep returning to these books for the same reason I always put on my favorite sitcoms like 30 Rock or Abbott Elementary— comfort, reliability, and joy. There’s a soothing rhythm to the journey— challenges arise, but love triumphs. My favorite historical romances, like Ana María and the Fox by Liana de la Rosa and Evie Dunmore’s League of Extraordinary Women, are about reclaiming a time when women’s and other marginalized communities’ voices were often silenced, and giving them agency, passion, and happily-ever-afters.
Diverse and queer historical romances like Indigo by Beverly Jenkins and A Lady for a Duke by Alexis Hall have expanded my perspective, teaching me history that I never learned in school and highlighting narratives that were often hidden. These stories not only broaden my understanding, but celebrate love in all its forms, defying the constraints of the eras they’re set in. In historical romance, I find both escape and empowerment— a chance to dream of a past where love conquers all, while honoring the stories that were too often untold.
The Ever After
Each of us— Raquel, Shelby, Leah, and myself— all with different stories, different life paths, but all of us found romance novels, and there are so many others out there who love them just as much as us. This genre is so important and has spoken to each of us, burrowing its way into our hearts, and that’s why we read romance.
