The 2020 Romance Project

A fanfic lover takes a year to decide if she likes romance novels. Wait, what? Twitter

[the2020romanceproject]

If you want to try a more old-school romance I recommend "The Proposition" by Judith Ivory.

Could be fun—thanks! I’m aiming to focus more on the recent genre, but I don’t mind mixing it up. It would definitely be fun to get a sense of how the genre has changed over the years!

[the2020romanceproject]

I'd like to rec Sidney Bell's The Woodbury Boys series for great hurt/comfort! And if you're willing to read BDSM, Alexis Hall's For Real has a really compelling small dom/big sub age difference pairing.

re: The Woodbury Boys series and For Real, they're both M/M

Thanks—these sound fun! I’d definitely be open to reading a BDSM-themed romance novel. I’m loving the variety of recs I’m getting!

[the2020romanceproject]

Not really similar to RWRB, but I saw your reply to someone else and I wanted to say that “Salt Magic, Skin Magic” by Lee Welch is one of those romance novels that is tropey in a similar way to some fanfic that I like!

Thank you! I will add that to my list of books to get through. I am super here for tropiness in my romance novels. 😄

[the2020romanceproject]

moxie-nox replied to your post “Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue”

I haven't read any published romance which has as much of the stuff I love in fanfic as RWRB, so I'm really hoping you find more. And thanks for the fic recs.

That’s what I’m afraid of! Hopefully I will find at least some of the ingredients I love in fanfic, and also come to love some new things. 😊

Hope you enjoy the fic!!

[the2020romanceproject]

Fanfic that did it better

Here are a couple of recs based on the romance novels I’ve read so far:

Fake Dating

If you liked The Wedding Date but wanted the fake dating part of the story to last longer, you might want to try World Ain’t Ready by idiopathicsmile. It’s slash instead of het, and it deals with a lot more issues of mental health than The Wedding Date did, but it’s amazingly written and WOW the tension.

Regency

If you liked The Soldier’s Scoundrel but wanted more a compelling love story, you might want to try Prise de Fer by altri_uccelli. One of my all-time favorites, and Regency the way it really should be done. (TW for past sexual assault allegations against the real-life counterpart of one of these characters; that is something I’m comfortable keeping separate from fiction, but ymmv.)

[the2020romanceproject]

Review: Red, White, and Royal Blue

You guys. This book. This book is FREAKING AMAZING. This is basically everything I wanted from a romance novel. I am probably ruined for other romance novels now because this one is SO GREAT.

Not going to do a full summary of this one, because 1) lots of stuff happens (which is part of why it’s so great), and 2) I want everyone to read it and don’t want to completely spoil it. But the basic premise is that Alex is the son of the sitting U.S. president and Henry is a prince of England, and—according to Alex, anyway—they start out hating each other. Then they inadvertently cause an international incident and have to pretend to be friends for P.R. reasons, and feelings happen and so do lots and lots of other things and it is ADORABLE and ANGSTY and PLOTTY and all the characters are amazing and I can marry this book, yes? Thank you.

I was worried when I started reading romance novels. I was worried that the strength of the romance-focused plots found in fanfiction would be diluted by the need to include other aspects of plot. Then I read a couple of romance novels and was worried that the strength of the romance-focused plot would be diluted by romance-genre customs like having the characters sleep together halfway through even if that destroys all the tension. This book is proof that neither of those things has to be a problem. It had an excellent romance plot that was only enhanced by the very robust political and interpersonal subplots that happened around it. I am SO impressed.

Okay, the romance plot first. Here are some of the things I liked about it (spoilers, caution):

Alex didn’t realize he was attracted! He didn’t even realize he was bi!*

But he obviously was attracted to Henry

Henry was obviously into him (obvious to everyone except Alex, that is)

We were only in Alex’s POV and not Henry’s and so we got to enjoy the dramatic irony of the above

Alex is very stupid about his own sexual past and how normal best friends act together

Everyone else knew basically all of this before Alex did

Even after they got together, Alex lied to himself about how he was falling in love even those it was clear that he was

Henry had real reasons for backing off from the relationship and being scared

The characters had SO MUCH DEPTH omg

Their banter! It was so good

I really liked both of them and believed that they were better together

(*It’s super legit to write characters who do know they’re queer. I just personally love it when they don’t know, because it speaks to my didn’t-realize-she-was-bi-until-age-25 soul.)

These plot elements are not specific to fanfiction. There’s plenty of fanfiction that doesn’t do all or even any these things. But they’re also all very common in fic, and when you put them all together it felt very much like the kind of romance plot I might have come across on AO3. I hope these plot elements aren’t unusual in the romance genre, either, because I find them SO effective and satisfying.

Take Alex not realizing at first that he was attracted. This is something I was surprised by in the other romance novels I’ve read so far: that those characters saw each other and were immediately like, “Yup, that’s my type of person, super into that body!” And...that’s fine, I guess? A little alien to me, since I don’t tend to experience attraction that way, but I guess there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity, though, because it jumps right over the potential tension of us watching and waiting for the character to realize they’re attracted.

Granted, it can be hard in a book with original characters to signal to the reader right away that yes, these two people are going to be into each other. I can see why many romance novels include that initial recognition of attraction. But this book is proof that you don’t need to do it that way. It’s completely clear to the reader that Alex is going to be into Henry—that he already is, and isn’t recognizing that attraction for what it is—and we still get to watch him go on the delightful journey from, “Ew, this guy is the worst” to “Oh crap I’m actually super into him.”

I think this is getting at a fundamental type of tension that was missing from the first two romance novels I read. I talked about the difference between sexual and romantic tension, and that stands, but each of those comes in a couple varieties: there’s the tension between what the characters want and what they have, and then there’s the tension between what the characters want and what they THINK they want. In The Soldier’s Scoundrel, those two things are pretty much the same: the two characters know they’re attracted to each other, and then, as they go through each step of falling in love, they acknowledge it openly in the narration. That’s fine but kind of boring, and it means that instead of waiting for the characters to catch up to their own feelings, we’re waiting for those feelings to form. It is just plain not as interesting to wait for a character to develop a feeling as it is to wait for them to acknowledge a feeling they’re hiding from themselves. Plus, people are bad at recognizing their own desires! It’s a thing! Especially when those desires are inconvenient or unexpected or would leave them vulnerable. There are plenty of good ways to introduce this tension without it feeling forced, and it can add so much.

(This is probably part of why I like characters who don’t recognize that they’re queer, actually—it adds another layer to the knowledge gap. But, again, that’s largely a personal preference, and I recognize the value of a variety of queer experiences in literature.)

The other thing this book did that I think strengthened the romantic plot in a major way was to stick to one point of view. I honestly don’t think I would have said a month ago that I felt so strongly about this. Most of the fic I’ve read is in one point of view, and I’ve never really thought about the alternative. But I’m starting to realize that switching points of view can take a reader out of the characters’ heads in really unfortunate ways. The human experience just never involves knowing absolutely what someone else is thinking. So if you’re living through a character’s eyes, experiencing the world as them...you shouldn’t know what a different character is thinking. Not every story has to immerse us in a character’s head to this degree—but romance should, I think. That’s the fun of it. And it just doesn’t work as well with two points of view. Plus, you lose the question of what exactly the other person is thinking, and even if you can pretty much guess—well, again, you’re going to be more fully in the main character’s head if you have to guess instead of knowing.

And the tension. Oh man. There isn’t one thing this book did to ensure continual tension in its romantic plot; it just did a fantastic job of transitioning between one kind of tension and the next. (Major spoilers ahead.) First Alex doesn’t think he’s into Henry, even though the reader can tell he has a crush. Then Henry kisses him and Alex realizes he’s attracted, but we get sexual tension because Henry’s not talking to him and then because it’s hard for them to end up in the same place at the same time (situational tension). Then we start to get romantic tension where Alex is in love but doesn’t recognize it, and then later when Alex knows he’s in love but isn’t saying it yet. Then more romantic tension when Alex finally confesses and Henry walks away (which, btw, major props to this book for succeeding at having someone walk away from a love confession and not having me think any less of their potential relationship). Then they finally get together for real but there’s the situational tension of them maybe doing serious damage their respective governments. Every single time one kind of tension gets resolved, there’s another kind waiting in the wings, ready to take over. It’s just...what a masterpiece.

So, yes, excellent romance plot, top marks. Everything surrounding the romance was fantastic, too, which just...that is SO HARD TO DO. One of my questions at the start of this year of reading was whether romance novels would feel more like novels than fanfiction does, and this one certainly does. There’s a phenomenon in fanfiction, and I noticed it in previous romance novels, too, where the outside world just sort of...dips into view where convenient, and then recedes from view without having real consequences or significant continuity. And that’s fine. It works better in fanfiction than in original works, I think, because fanfiction can draw on an independent canon or fanon. But in both places, it results (or can result) in a very strong romance where nothing else in the world matters much to the story, and that’s okay.

But this book. There was so much plot! So much world, and I cared about all of it! ALL the characters are extremely well-drawn, and I cared about their mini-arcs. The political situation interacted with and enhanced the romance plot but also mattered in its own right and had its own complexities. And none of it made the romance feel any less present or central or powerful. It was so well done.

Okay. I’m done gushing now. I’m moving on to what I hope will be a recurring new feature: fanfiction I’m going to recommend based on this book. These are all stories that I thought about while reading Red, White, and Royal Blue, and if you liked the book, you might want to explore these. (It’s worth noting that I regularly read fanfiction without knowing anything about the canon. I know that weirds some people out, but if you’re on the fence, I would encourage you to give it a try!)

Let Toretto Be Toretto (The Fast and the Furious political AU, by astolat)—oh man, astolat. Truly the best of us all. This one is much shorter and doesn’t have the prince aspect, but it’s a fanastic journey through gay pining and the presidency.

The Student Prince (Arthur/Merlin college AU, by fayjay)—this felt like the most obvious comparison story for me. Fanfiction boasts a plethora of modern-day prince AUs across many fandoms, but this is one I read recently and really enjoyed. The non-romance plot is less robust than in Red, White, and Royal Blue, but there are a lot of strong similarities.

Not Easily Conquered (Steve/Bucky, by dropdeaddreams and WhatAreFears)—Henry and Alex’s emails reminded me so strongly of this one. All-around gorgeous.

And now, on to the next romance novel that I will almost inevitably be disappointed in after this phenomenon. Someone tell me when Casey McQuiston publishes something else.

[the2020romanceproject]

Review: The Wedding Date

(Or: Maybe I should only read the first half of romance novels from now on?)

Book two of my year of romance was Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date! I was excited about this one, since I had actually heard of it before I started reading romance, and also it has fake dating which is always gold. And I did enjoy it...up to a point. More on that below. :)

First, a summary: Alexa is chief of staff to the mayor of Berkeley. Drew is a pediatric surgeon in L.A. They get stuck in an elevator together when Drew is in San Francisco for his ex-girlfriend’s wedding to his med school classmate. Drew was supposed to have a date for the wedding, but she cancelled, and on a whim he asks Alexa to go with him instead as his pretend new girlfriend. She says yes, and they have a great time at the wedding and fall in bed afterward and have great sex. Drew secretly changes his flight to leave later in the day on Sunday, and they spend the day together. They’re both hesitant because they know the other person isn’t looking for anything real here—Alexa in particular knows Drew doesn’t do relationships—but they keep reaching out to each other, and Alexa goes down to L.A. to stay with Drew the next weekend. There’s a brief blip where she texts him to ask if he’s sleeping with other people and he makes a joke instead of answering seriously and she cancels their next weekend together; then he runs into her (very conveniently) when he’s back in SF for a conference and they fall into bed again. Then there’s a more serious blip where she meets a bunch of his exes who let it slip that he broke up with each of them around the two-month mark when it seemed to be going really well. Alexa gets upset, refuses to let Drew say anything about his intentions because she doesn’t want to be hurt, and sneaks out of his apartment in the middle of the night to fly home early. Drew realizes how much she means to him and flies up to L.A. to support her at a hearing for the at-risk-youth arts initiative she’s pushing for, and the two of them happily reconcile (and the initiative passes). He shows her the job offer he got from his mentor at a San Francisco hospital, and she tells him yes, she wants him to move here. There’s an epilogue a year later where he takes her back to the elevator where they met and proposes.

I feel like I spent my last review talking entirely about why the book fell apart in the middle for me. This book also fell apart in the middle, but I’m going to start with some things I liked/noted about it, so as to not spend ALL my time complaining about shortcomings. :)

Things I really liked:

Chemistry. Alexa and Drew are both super charming. Their back-and-forth was really enjoyable to read. It was a big part of what got me into the book: I wanted to see these two charming people grow to like each other. All the thing where they’re at the rehearsal dinner and wedding and enjoy touching each other were really nice to read.

Tropes. This one had such good tropes! Stuck in an elevator together! Fake dating! Anything with plausible deniability, where they’re acting like they really like each other but each one thinks it might not denote real interest, is just the most fun. This one gave up the plausible deniability aspect way sooner than I would have expected, but still: great tropes.

Race. Alexa is black and Drew is white. I am also white, so my perspective here is not informed by personal experience, but I really liked how this was handled. Alexa does experience some microaggressions and outright racism—not from Drew—in ways that felt realistic to me. Drew doesn’t try to explain away any of the racism, which made him seem like a good potential partner to her. There was also a thing where he failed to understand a thing in her past that was impacted by race, and when she explained it he listened and accepted his ignorance. She was still concerned that he’d like her less for having made him aware of his privilege, which felt like a very sad and real fear. Overall, it felt like racial dynamics were allowed to come into the text in nuanced and organic ways that kept Alexa from being a token POC. (Jasmine Guillory is a POC herself, so I’m not surprised that this is handled well, and there are probably other things about it that I as a white person didn’t even pick up.)

Body type. Alexa is curvy! She’s embarrassed about it! But Drew loves it! As someone who fills out the top of a cocktail dress pretty well myself, I really appreciated both sides of this: the realistic body issues from someone raised in a society that valorizes thinness, and the way the text kept affirming Drew’s attraction to her. There’s a racial component to this as well—lots of skinny blond girls in this book—but it was something I was able to identify with even from my different societal context.

Things I noted/was surprised by:

How soon they had sex. At some point I’ll stop being surprised by this in romance novels. I’ve read a lot of fake dating stories, and written some, and I would have expected the charade to go on a lot longer before they had actual sex that couldn’t at all be explained away by the fake dating scenario. The purported fakeness of it is the fun part! They both think the other one isn’t interested for real, while their own feelings continue to grow! Why would you cut that part short?? As soon as they kissed and admitted to each other that they wanted it for real, the tension dropped from a ten to about a two. This book got a decent amount of mileage out of that lower level of tension—more on that below—but it’s so surprising to me that it didn’t keep the much more interesting and trope-y tension going longer.

Consent and power dynamics. This book was super good about consent: Drew made sure to check in about what Alexa wanted, and it was played for sexual intensity, where he clearly got a kick out of hearing her say it. But it was very, very one-sided. There was no implication that Alexa needed to check in with Drew on what he wanted. This wasn’t a surprise, exactly, but it did stand out to me, since I don’t read a lot of het (and honestly this is a big part of why—I don’t want to encounter gendered power dynamics in my leisure reading). Consent felt like a thing the woman had to give the man. I’m not saying this is a problem, necessarily; just something I noticed.

Sex scenes. The sex scenes almost faded to black but not quite. Maybe they faded to gray? I felt like I knew pretty much what sex act they were doing and when, but they weren’t described in any real detail. It was an interesting compromise, like the book was trying to give us a clear sense of their sexual relationship without any real titillation. I wonder if this is a genre thing—I’m not sure this book was published strictly as romance—or if it’s just Guillory’s style.

Romcom careers. They’re chief of staff to the mayor of Berkeley and a pediatric surgeon. Those have GOT to be two squares on the romcom career bingo card. I’m teasing a little, but I think this kind of character background serves an important role: we have to know that they’re accomplished, valuable people, so that when they feel rejected or insecure we can revel in it—look, they feel like I once felt! But it’s unjustified and they’ll end up happy!—instead of actually questioning the characters’ worth. Fanfiction usually gets over this hurdle by writing about characters the readers already know and respect and love, or, in the case of RPF, writing about people who are for-real successful and famous. Romance novels have to introduce us to brand-new characters, and one of the easiest ways to make us feel sure that these characters are worthy of our respect and of the other character’s love is to give them prestigious and intellectually or creatively rigorous careers. I’ll be interested to see how many other instances of this I run across.

Two points of view. It strikes again! Do all romance novels include both points of view? I don’t hate it, necessarily—but it does decrease the overall tension. You don’t get caught up in one character’s desires as strongly when you’re seeing both POVs.

Immediate attraction. Another thing I should probably stop being surprised by. Both Alexa and Drew are very physically into each other as soon as they meet; he has trouble not looking at her breasts, and there are so many narrative references to her wanting his touch, wanting to move closer to him, etc. To be fair, I think I’m pretty far toward the “not attracted to complete strangers” side of the spectrum, so I might not be the best judge of this, but it did feel a little over the top. I suspect this was an attempt to make us really want these two to be together. I think it was trying too hard—a more genuine reserve would have been more compelling to me, where they like each other but don’t immediately want to jump each other. Also, they’re going to a wedding together as fake dates! You don’t have to try that hard to make us interested!

Food as comfort. This was such a strong recurring thread in this novel. Alexa has a sweet tooth, and Drew is always getting her doughnuts; they get a lot of very satisfying takeout. It gelled for me with the thing where a lot of the satisfaction in the novel came from the comfort of “oh, this person is touching me; oh, they like me back.” Comfort instead of angst.

Subplots. One of my questions in approaching this genre was whether romance novels needed to be more novel-like than fic—i.e. whether they needed to engage with a plot beyond the romance. This does have a very slight B plot (Alexa’s youth initiative, which is connected to her difficult relationship with her sister) but it’s VERY slight. The book has an even less prominent subplot about one of Drew’s patients who develops cancer. Alexa’s subplot resolves, whereas Drew’s is only backdrop. Drew’s in particular is used the way I’d use a subplot in fic: it’s included to provide an excuse for scenes with or about Alexa, or to affect Drew’s mood in ways that reflect or influence the romance plot. It serves the romance instead of being an independent plot in its own right.

Okay, so those are my observations. Time to dig into the thing where this book lost me in the middle—much like the last book I reviewed, but for entirely different reasons.

I’ve already talked about the drastic drop-off in tension after they slept together. That actually was not what lost me this time. This novel managed to build enough of a rapport between the two characters that I was invested in their relationship becoming real. To be clear, I would have preferred that the fake dating trope go on longer and create opportunities for actual longing. But this novel wasn’t so much about longing; it was about that delightful feeling when you like someone and you reach out tentatively and they meet you in the middle. It was the very, very gentle tension of, “Maybe we could hang out today?” “Sure!” over and over, as a relationship builds. It was fluff-adjacent tension. Super enjoyable, the way a warm bath is enjoyable. I wasn’t dying to get to the end or anything, but it was nice.

I did wonder, about halfway through, how the heck this book could possibly keep going like that. And it turned out it couldn’t. That was when it introduced: the Misunderstanding Plot.

Don’t get me wrong. I love a good misunderstanding plot. But they are hard to do well. They work best when they feel unforced and genuine, and don’t make either of the characters carry the idiot ball. Like, say, if Drew and Alexa hadn’t had enthusiastic sex where they talked about how much they wanted each other, and they were still under the impression that it was a fake relationship, it would be very easy to have the other character accidentally confirm that and drive a wedge between the two of them. Or if one of them was starting to think it WAS real, and then they overheard the other person confessing to someone else that it was totally fake. (Don’t mind me; just thinking about ways I might write it.)

The problem with this one was that they were basically just dating at this point, so in order for drama to arise, the characters had to act badly in ways that felt forced and off-putting. They’d known each other for a week and a half; things had been happy and a little giddy and chill between them so far. Then Alexa texts in the middle of the workday to ask if Drew is sleeping with anyone else. (Because that is the perfect way to initiate an important relationship conversation, obviously.) He makes a joke, because he is clearly also very good at this, and they don’t speak to each other for a week and a half.

Guess which one of them this makes me like more? That’s right! Neither!!

Look. I like characters who are stupid about their own feelings and blind to other people’s. But I also like characters who, when they know about the other person’s feelings, are very, very considerate of them. Drew was not—and Alexa compounded the problem by being confrontational with the question and then abruptly pulling back as soon as she didn’t get the magical easy answer. In short, it made me think that they were bad for each other.

They recover from the texting thing when they just so happen to run into each other (I mean, I can’t throw stones, I’ll buy the coincidence) and are happy to see each other, and apologize, and everything’s fine. But by this point the novel had lost me. I had been enjoying the happy dance of “Does s/he like me? Ooh, s/he does!” but only so long as it lasted. They didn’t have a strong enough core after a week and a half to get through the badness of those texts. They were happy again, but I wasn’t invested. I was mostly reading so I could write this review.

Then, fascinatingly, the book won me back.

It was a very specific passage that did it. On page 190 of the paperback, Alexa talks in the narration about how she wouldn’t admit this to anyone other than herself, but ever since that first weekend with Drew, she’d imagined him in bed with her every night as she fell asleep. And I was sold. I mean, it was still very gentle tension. But! A thing the character wanted that she wasn’t getting! I could be into this again!

And then...well, this is already super long, so I won’t go into all the details of the misunderstanding that ended the book. It had a lot in common with the text message fiasco: Alexa felt insecure, got upset that Drew might not be into her, and refused to engage with him about whether that was true. (Okay, it was actually more egregious than the texts, in that she wouldn’t let him speak.) Her getting upset made sense, but her refusing to let him speak when he was clearly trying to felt SO forced.

The funny thing is, there was actually a seed of potential real conflict there: Drew hadn’t really admitted to himself that he wanted a long-term thing with her. He could have told her that. He could have done anything, really, to indicate that and create a real conflict. (Also tricky to handle without him coming off as not actually interested—but doable, I think.) As it was, he didn’t call her his girlfriend at a party—which, it had been like a month, and they hadn’t discussed it privately, so it’s totally appropriate not to throw the term around in public yet!—and...that’s it. Everything else was just her fears, and the very cowardly way she handled them. I guess that’s relatable? But it felt so engineered. It didn’t so much make me dislike her as make me annoyed with the text for twisting her response so that they couldn’t have the very short conversation that would have cleared everything up.

In fairness to Guillory, a friend who’s read the whole series tells me she does better with misunderstanding plots later. But I’m really, really excited to read a romance plot that doesn’t lose me halfway through.

Next up is Red, White, and Royal Blue. I’ve been told this was basically written for me, so I’m hopeful. Fingers crossed it sticks the landing!

[the2020romanceproject]

Next Book: The Wedding Date

I decided to mix it up by diving into some contemporary M/F this week. I picked up Jasmine Guillory’s The Wedding Date yesterday and am already halfway through it. Definitely enjoying it so far—and, of course, I already have some thoughts!

[the2020romanceproject]

Ok I’m so excited to share these with you it made me literally do my first tumblr comment. Valor on the Move or Kidnapped By The Pirate by Keira Andrews. Wheels Up by Annabeth Albert. And Coach’s Challenge by Avon Gale cause I had to throw in a hockey one. All of these feature delicious pining, outstanding sources of tension, and amazing resolutions. Really hope to see your reviews of these and anything else you’re reading! You’re on of my very very favorite authors and I love your writing!

Awww thank you so much for breaking your tumblr silence for me! I’m honored. :D (And so thrilled to be one of your favorite authors!!)

These recs sound awesome—thank you! Definitely looking forward to making comparisons that go beyond “not enough pining.” 😄

[the2020romanceproject]

Review: The Soldier's Scoundrel by Cat Sebastian

(Or: three types of tension, and how this book fails to balance them)

You guys! I read my first romance novel! I enjoyed it in a lot of respects; there were also ways it disappointed me. More below the cut.

A few caveats before I dig in. First, this is the first full romance novel I've ever read. I’m going to try not to make too many wild conjectures about the genre as a whole, but forgive me if I leap to a few inaccurate conclusions. Second, I'll be making comparisons to fanfiction, and while I have read widely, I definitely haven’t hit all the corners of fandom. The comparisons will be biased towards the kinds of fanfiction I happen to have read (mostly slash, mostly on AO3).

Finally, I’m going to say at the outset that I feel a little weird saying critical things about an author's work in general. This is definitely an effect of fandom, where unsolicited concrit is a no-go. But this is a published novel, and there's a whole different review culture around published works, so I'm going to go ahead and be critical. If anyone feels like I'm being inappropriately harsh or cruel about any book at any point, please let me know.

So, The Soldier's Scoundrel! A quick plot summary, with spoilers: Jack grew up in the gutter and is now a roguish detective-type in Regency London, going around the law to solve problems for ladies and other people down on their luck (but never gentlemen; he hates gentlemen). Oliver is the younger son of an earl who's been in the army for a decade but got injured in battle and is back in London, living off a modest income. He goes to see Jack because he discovers that his sister paid Jack a large amount of money several years ago and wants to know why. The two men are immediately attracted to each other but adversarial. Oliver disapproves of Jack's law-breaking but gets embroiled in his current case, and the two end up traveling together, sleeping together, and falling in love. Jack eventually tells Oliver to screw off because he can’t see himself having a place in a gentleman's life; Oliver then tries to get himself ruined so that Jack will be comfortable being with him. Jack stops him from ruining himself but sees that Oliver is determined for them to be together, so they find a small house they can both live in and set up a life together.

First of all, let me say that the sexual tension in this book was TOP-NOTCH. No complaints there. There’s a scene in an alleyway early on where Oliver licks Jack’s thumb and it is delicious. Good job, Cat Sebastian, making me really want these two men to jump into bed together.

Unfortunately, that ended up being a bit of a problem, because as soon as they did jump into bed together—which happens just around the halfway point—I dramatically lost interest. They weren’t in love yet, or established as a couple, so there should have been a remaining source of tension, but I super didn’t feel it.

(Extra caveat: this was true FOR ME. YMMV.)

I have a theory as to why. I’m still thinking it through, but here’s a stab at it:

There are two primary kinds of tension in a story about two people getting together, which I’m going to call sexual tension and romantic tension. Sexual tension is X isn’t sleeping with Y but wants to be. Romantic tension is where X is in love with Y but thinks that Y isn’t in love with them. (It is NOT where X and Y are in love but can’t be together—but more on that below.) You often get the two types of tension at once: X is in love with Y and wants to sleep with them. But sometimes you just get romantic tension—where, say, they’re already sleeping together but feelings haven’t been admitted—or just sexual tension, where they’re attracted to each other but not in love.

This book starts out with just sexual tension. Jack and Oliver are immediately attracted to each other, and though they try to suppress the attraction, it only grows as they spend more time together. I was super there for all of that. But then they sleep together. Sexual tension: gone. This is where romantic tension could have stepped in and carried us through the second half of the book. But they weren’t in love yet. There WAS no romantic tension. Where they wanted to be (in bed together) and where they were (in bed together) lined up perfectly—and so I lost interest.

There are a few ingredients that contributed to this problem, I think. The period of time covered by the book was relatively short (I want to say a couple of weeks). The crucible forcing the two characters together was relatively weak, so there wasn’t a lot of excuse for them to spend time together if they weren’t sleeping together. They didn’t know each other at all before the start of the book. They were very honest, not with each other, but with themselves, about their feelings every step of the way, so there was never an indication that they might be feeling more strongly than the narration let on. We got both of their points of view so there was never any tension for the reader about what the other character was feeling—or even for the two of them about what the other was feeling, really. And they had sex relatively early in the story (for my expectations, anyway).

This is such a different combination of elements than I would have expected to find in fanfiction. Fanfiction has a definite advantage over romance when it comes to building romantic tension, because it can build on a preexisting canon relationship. It doesn’t always choose to—sometimes people write complete AUs—but even AUs get to build on a preexisting connection between the characters in the minds of the readers. So some of this difference is inherent to two the genres. But I’m going to go through a few of the things that I think contributed to the tension problem in the second half of the book, including how fanfic might have handled them differently.

Time & proximity. The timeline of this book was so short. Of course Jack and Oliver weren’t in love by the time they had sex; it had only been like a week, and they hadn’t spent that much time together. They weren’t roommates, or best friends, or colleagues, or teammates, or customers at each other’s coffee shops, or even rivals. These premises could exist in original fiction just as easily as in fanfiction. I don’t know if they do and this book is an exception, or if the premise of strangers meeting and then choosing to seek each other out is a genre standard. Either way, it made it very difficult for the characters to fall in love before falling into bed.

Honesty. I was surprised so often by the text TELLING us their feelings for each other every step of the way. Not that it’s not good to know your own emotions—it is very good! Very important!—but what’s good in people isn’t always good in protagonists. These two knew they were attracted right away, and then they knew they were falling in love, and that took some of the fun out of it for me. It also took some of the power out of their feelings. We are often bad at feelings, and we’re particularly bad at feelings when they’re important ones. In having the characters admit to themselves what they felt as soon as they started feeling it, the text made those feelings seem less significant. It also made it seem very unlikely that the characters were feeling more than they said. It deprived us of the potential tension of waiting for the characters to realize what they already felt. Withholding is a huge source of tension, and this text did not withhold.

Two POVs. The text didn’t even withhold the love interest’s point of view. One of my friends who reads more het than I do tells me that two points of view is more common in the fics she reads, but it is VERY uncommon in the ones I read. I can only think of one I’ve read recently (and in that one, both parties were desperately in love for years before they so much as kissed). In this book, there was never a possibility that the other person wouldn’t feel as strongly as the POV character, because we had seen both POVs and we knew they were in roughly the same place as each other.

There was no confession. Remember what I was saying about honesty above? They just told each other! How they felt! When they felt it! So boring!! I mean, yes, healthy and all, but a story needs conflict and this could have been a great source of it but wasn’t. I’ll grant you that misunderstanding plots and secret-keeping plots can be done very badly—sometimes you just end up yelling at the characters for not having the one simple conversation that would solve all their problems-—but they can also be done very well. There are real reasons people might be afraid to confess their desires to each other, or why they might think the other person could never return their feelings, and this didn’t present any of those. To its credit, it also didn’t give us bad or contrived reasons, which would have been much worse. But it just didn’t find any tension here. (I fully acknowledge that not every story HAS to use this as a source of tension. But it was one way this could have done it.)

The wrong kind of obstacles (for me). I discovered in reading this book that while I love external obstacles to characters getting together, I strongly prefer the kind of obstacle that is a barrier to them telling each other they’re in love rather than the kind that keeps them from finding a happy place in the world together. Once they’ve confessed and are, to all intents and purposes, together, even if not in the eyes of the world, my interest largely stops. “This person is engaged to someone else; therefore he will never love me” is a million times more interesting to me than “this person is engaged to someone else and so even though we love each other we cannot marry.” Fic has very few of the latter and a lot of the former, in my experience.

The wrong kind of internal resistance (for me). Again, I like the kind of obstacle that makes X think Y will never love them, rather than the kind that makes X not want to be with Y. I’m just...not that interested in a character that doesn’t WANT to be with the other person. If that’s what they want, they’ve already got it, and my work as a reader is done!  Fanfiction does tend to feature a lot of internal resistance—I can’t fall in love with him; he’s another man!—but it usually takes the form of the POV character thinking the other person wouldn’t want them or would hate them for even feeling like this. Jack and Oliver both have reasons to not want to be with each other, and it does not make me interested in them getting together. It just makes me think, great, they’re sleeping together; they’re done.

Loss of sexual tension. So many of the problems with the tension could have been solved if the characters hadn’t had sex until the end of the novel. I suspect (and will be curious to investigate further) that this is a quasi-requirement of the romance genre: a sex scene well before the last tenth of the book, which is where I would have put it in this case. (To be fair, that would also have required a better crucible for the characters, because there was no good reason for them to spend so much time together if they weren’t having sex.) A sex scene halfway through the book can totally work, but only (for me) if there’s some other major source of tension preserved. Either they’re already in love but pretending it’s just sex, or (in a fun twist that preserves a good deal of the sexual tension) they’re pretending it’s practice, or just buddies, and that they don’t really feel the desire they do. There are probably other possibilities here, but this book didn’t really choose any of them.

This all might just be a way of saying I like pining. (It’s true; I do.) But I suspect there’s something else going on here, where romance readers might experience tension from a different source than I do. They might be reading not to see these two people who are in love get together, but to see these two people who aren’t in love fall in love. Which, I’ll admit, is often the case for all of us at the start of a story about two strangers meeting. But for me, for tension to be preserved, what the characters want needs to increase more quickly than what they get. This is very different from a healthy real-life dating situation, where what the two (or more) people want will match or be only very slightly ahead of what they get. Maybe romance, or at least this novel, is trying to mimic these healthier scenarios? I guess that’s fine, but it seems a little boring to me.

So, the novel didn’t have great romantic tension. One thing that could potentially have made up for it is a third type of tension: logistical. If sexual tension is wanting to sleep with someone but not, and romantic tension is wanting the person to be in love with you but thinking they’re not, then logistical tension is when you know the other person wants you and loves you but there’s some other force keeping you apart. It’s the external obstacle I mentioned above. There are versions of this that I find strongly compelling, but it has to be an ironclad external obstacle, and it should probably coincide with deprivation on other fronts: they’re in love but can’t see each other, definitely can’t sleep together, maybe don’t even get to talk to each other about their love. This book didn’t have any of that. They spent most of the book together, and a good half of it as lovers, and while there were societal obstacles to them being together, they were both financially solvent and relatively unattached, so the obstacles didn’t seem very strong to me.

There was also, it’s worth noting, a mystery plot. I haven’t touched on it a lot in this post. It was a fun thread, and definitely one of the things that helped me get through the post-sex middle, but it resolved fairly easily and wasn’t a big part of the story. It was mostly an excuse to have Jack and Oliver going places together. This was definitely a romance with a mystery in it rather than a mystery with a romance in it.

...Okay, this has gotten extremely long and there are still things I haven’t talked about! I should mention that there were a lot of things I did like about this book. (I mean, I liked it wholeheartedly until about halfway through.) Jack and Oliver were believable and likable characters who were very convincingly different from each other. They had opposing worldviews that made a lot of sense in light of their pasts, and their relationship with each other changed them in ways that made them both better people, which is something I really like in a romance. The sex scenes were great, and there were a lot of sweet moments that I enjoyed despite being annoyed at the general lack of romantic tension. There was some really nice hurt-comfort. It was well-written and enjoyable in general; I just wanted something to pull me more strongly through the second half.

There are a few things that came up here that I’d love to dig into more—honesty vs. dramatic irony in narration; the overlap between attraction and love—but I think I’ll save those for further reviews. Doesn’t look like I’m going to run out of material anytime soon. :) For now, I’ll just say that I fully recommend the first half of this book. And if you like watching two characters who are already sleeping together fall in love, I can go ahead and recommend the whole thing.

(P.S. If anyone has recs for romance novels that do have pining, send them my way!)

[the2020romanceproject]

My Amazon recs included books by KJ Charles and Cat Sebastian for ages, but I didn't read them until a wonderful, geeky LGBTQ* friendly bookshop opened in my town and had physical copies. So now I get a lot of recommendations from them. I suggest following @PortalBookshop on twitter, and maybe asking them for suggestions. Also, KJ Charles often posts recs on Twitter.

Great recommendations! Just hit follow for both of them. Thank you -- I’m going to be awash in great books to read! 🥳📚

[the2020romanceproject]

From an anon:

Hey! I came to fanfic from romance which I started reading when I was 11 or 12. I'm now pushing 40. The one book I always used to reccomend to people who thought romance is junk is Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale. This is a classic, like it even had one of those cheesy Fabio covers back in the day. But it is a deeply emotional story. Had it been written today it would be a trade paperback and I think a popular and well respected historical. Let me know if you want more old school recs.

Ooh, fun! I like the idea of mixing it up a bit with some older stuff. It would be interesting to see where the genre has come from in recent decades. I don’t think I’m going to focus there, but if people have recs for particularly good ones pre-2000, I’d love to hear them!

[the2020romanceproject]

This project is a great idea! I've been meaning to read more romance but I simply just don't know where to start so I'm smashing the follow button! :D

Yessss! Join me on this crazy journey! If you actually want to read along with me, I’ll try to say what I’m reading next at the end of my reviews. But also you can just read the reviews and decide from there. 😄

[the2020romanceproject]

@defractum

Hello! I seem unable to send an ask to the romance novel sideblog, but I have loads of recs! Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid is a hockey romance if you want to ease in from fic (don't need to read the first in the series). Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston also reads like fic and is more YA. The Ruin of Gabriel Ashleigh by KJ Charles is a M/M novella and the rest of the series is also A++. Proper English also by K J Charles for a F/F period novel (and anything else by the same author).

This is great, thank you!! LOVE the hockey romance rec; I’ll definitely check that one out. :D I’ll put KJ Charles on my list as well. Red, White, and Royal Blue has been a universal recommendation. So excited to see what makes it more fic-like than other romance novels!

[the2020romanceproject]

Great idea! In my literary theory undergrad class, we read an excerpt of Janice Radway's "Reading the Romance." It's fascinating and is a really interesting look at what romance works mean to typical consumers, as well as an overview of the genre and what readers identify as good. (One thing that stuck with me is that Pride & Prejudice hits all of the criteria they identify!) I haven't read much romance, but my book club read Red, White, & Royal Blue recently and that was excellent (v fic-like).

Yesss, that one’s on my list! (Unfortunately, it’s also on everyone else’s list, so I might have to wait for it for a while at the library.)

Thanks for the Radway recommendation. I’ll put it on my other list for eventual reading. There’s a part of me that wants to dive into the criticism right away, but that seems like a bad idea when I don’t have any familiarity with the primary material yet. I’m starting with Cat Sebastian’s The Soldier’s Scoundrel on the recommendation of a friend, and I already have thoughts!

[the2020romanceproject]

Hey everyone! I am excited to announce my upcoming venture into...

Romance Novels

I don't know romance novels. I've never read romance novels. But I've spent much of the last ten years reading a crapload of (fan)fic, which is usually about romance. I love fic, I write fic, it's one of my favorite genres, and it presumably has some overlap with the commercial romance genre, but I have no idea how. So I'm planning to find out, mostly by reading a bunch of romance in this good ol' year of our Lord 2020.

A few questions I'm hoping to answer:

What are the tropes that tend to show up in the romance genre? Fanfic goes in for all kinds of out-there things like soul bonds, soulmates, de-aging, surprise!baby, mpreg...does romance have any of this? How about less out-there tropes, like friends to lovers, or oh-no-there's-only-one-bed?

Do romance novels look to push different buttons in their readers than fanfic does?

What's the impact of original characters on the genre? I read a lot of fic for canons I don't know, but fanfic in general trades on characters that the readers are already familiar with. How does it change the structure and content of a romantic story to have to introduce your readers to completely new characters every time?

What's the effect of not being able to tag things? Fanfic authors get to tell their readers what to expect, including what relationships to expect, in a more direct way than romance novel writers can, and my impression is that fanfic readers can be more relied upon to read the tags than novel readers can be relied upon to read the back cover (and authors don't usually get to control what's on the back cover anyway).

Are the sex descriptions different? (I feel like probably.)

Are the relationship dynamics different? How does this vary across M/F, M/M, F/F?

Are romance novels more like novels than fanfic is? This sounds like a stupid question, but there are some pretty big differences between your average good piece of fanfiction and your average published novel: fanfic doesn't have to pay as much attention to the background, or build any kind of plot other than the romance (though sometimes it does). Are romance novels like fic in this way, or do they have to build a more robust world?

Is the gaze different? I suspect romance novels are just as female-gaze-y as fanfic is, but does the gaze focus on different things?

Are the politics different? Romance is very different from what it was twenty years ago, but does it have different assumptions and preferences from fandom in terms of dubcon, pronouns, representation, trigger warnings, etc?

And finally:

Do I like romance novels, and do I want to write them?

For the duration of 2020, I plan to read one romance novel or story every week or two and write up a review. I'll be focusing on the romance genre as defined by publishing, and I'll plan to stick to 21st-century stuff. I'll also try to bring in other people's thoughts on the subject when I can find them—but I feel like it's important for me to have some knowledge of the material itself before I delve into the commentary on it.

I'll be starting with some recommendations from friends who love the romance genre. If you have recommendations for me, send them my way! Same if you know of anyone else writing about this topic. I'm sure there are many of them out there.

And now, bring on the heaving bosoms and their modern, feminist equivalents!