This is a blog about romance novels.

Lately I’ve found myself reading a lot of romance, and reading a lot of literature about romance. I want to know: how does the genre work? Why is this genre so fun, even when characters are two-dimensional, or make choices that are so deranged that you end up wondering if the author has ever actually met another person in their whole life? And why do I enjoy reading these so much even if I find myself groaning at The Gender of It All?

Hilariously, I never thought of myself as a romance reader, even though I spent my entire teenage experience trawling for fan fiction on LiveJournal. Romance is “women’s writing,” but fan fiction is a secret third thing. Totally different!

But I’ve been out here reading romance (and watching rom coms) for as long as I can remember, and I’m starting to lean in real hard. And this current romantasy moment is so hilarious and fun because now everybody is very publicly horny about guys with wings.

Romance fiction, especially romantasy, is often not very good (though to be fair, a lot of books are often not very good). Still, this is the genre I find myself reaching for when I need something comforting. Even if it’s bad, I’m going to read it, and it’s going to give me the little dopamine hit I’m looking for.

For example: the ACOTAR books are fine, often veering on bad, but I will happily read the series for as long as Sarah J. Maas writes them. My favorite of the bunch is A Court of Silver Flames, which I’ve read at least five times at this point. The entire premise of the book is “I’m hot for my personal trainer,” and I’m here for it. It’s heteronormative in a way that makes me roll my eyes. The interpersonal conflicts are uninteresting and the high-fantasy politics seem shoehorned in as an afterthought. And yet! I still want to read about Cassian and Nesta fucking on their trauma-informed hiking trip.

My Husband Whom I Love also reads the Booktok darlings, and we have a great time together talking about them: we enjoy cataloging the many narrative traps these books inevitably run into, the hilarity of how often characters will threaten war crimes if their lover is harmed, and the weird Gender of It All.

Right now, my thoughts and my reading are unstructured. It’s all informal, just for fun. But I keep adding articles to my Zotero, and I keep feeling moved to write down my ideas.

So this blog is about Learning in Public. It’s something like a literature review, but it’s also just a journal so I can capture my thoughts somewhere. There is no thesis, just an intent to think about why this genre is so successful, and what it says about gender, sexuality, erotics, class, and liberation.

Anyway, if anyone is reading this, thank you for being here. Let’s chat about books.