Romance + Mending Ripped Bodices
…yes, 72% of my personality is because Bridget Jones’ Diary got stuck in the DVD player growing up.
Reading romance is a singular experience for me — I get to slough off my seahag barnacles for an afternoon, stretch out my calloused feet (from trudging barefoot through deliciously nihilist literary fiction), and get lost in the are-they-blue-or-are-they-green eyes of some hot, be-cardiganned curmudgeon.
I get it — I understand why people avoid the section entirely; it’s a genre whose most problematic authors get rewarded (in sales, publicity, good n’ meaty marketing budgets) by proliferating trends and tropes that promote some pretty ick shit (very technical term.) But I can’t lie and say I’m not 72% of who I am because I was raised by a copy of the Bridget Jone’s Diary movie stuck in the DVD player.
People forget publishing is a business and not a magical, bustling fount of benevolent, book-loving elves publishing Only The Good Words In The Best Order. We’ve all finished a book and thrown it against a wall. And romance is a more than worthy lens to view publishing as a whole.
The concept of the “ripped bodice” genre of romances also has a hairy herstory in romance writing — nonconsensual ravishing, some real Outlander shit. I highly recommend the 99% Invisible (“The Clinch”) episode on it. And honestly, the “ripped bodice” concept still sells, although it’s a bit more subtly packaged in contemporary romance. These are what I call a “Bad Romance” — like when you watch your friend careen head-first into the arms of a dude with a really bad neck tattoo who is afraid of his mother and doesn’t tip waitstaff well.
A Bad Romance, actively performs as much as it avoids. The fast-track way to make me cringe-read a book includes the following: the presence of a lover-as-savior, bad communication as plot device, unearned intimacy (Immediate nicknames?! Referring to each other by last name?! ew ew) and so much more.
A Good Romance (not going to call it “healthy”, because that is So Relative) is a tenuous combo of many things: messy-yet-realistic heroes/heroines (not this ‘she doesn’t know she’s beautiful’ John Green nonsense), characters building then destroying prisons of their own making, understandable hang-ups. A Good Romance arrives on time, but not because the characters have been waiting on it, have rearranged their heart and ribs and guts to fit into the all-too-tight bodice.
It’s not at all sweeping string quartets. It’s more of an auspiciously-timed polka band playing in a small town you happen to detour to off of I-40 — and whoa hey, corndogs!
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry
Let me say this in the most eloquent way I can: I would murder for Emily Henry. Like, if we still had renaissance-era patrons, supporting artists and feeding them their supper and lavishing them with riches and paint made from the finest goose blood, I Would Do That So Emily Henry Keeps Supplying Me With A Steady Stream of Romances. She gives you hot grumps, a truly will-they-or-won’t-they romance (I got scared for a moment there), and some wanderlust satisfied: what else do you need and why do you enjoy being so greedy?
RIYL: Believing in love long enough to download a dating app for 15 minutes before deleting it again, “The Right Side of my Neck” by Faye Webster, the saying “but it’s a dry heat”.
The Summer Job by Lizzy Dent
You know that friend, the friend who has the cool job and doesn’t know it, and despite the bounds of space and time, you find a loophole way to Freaky-Friday with them for a summer and just, like, BE a sommelier in the Scottish Highlands? This shit is my personal daydream, I admit.
Read if you like: Fleabag, beefy Scottish chef forearms, canned wine.
The Paris Connection by Lorraine Brown
We’ve all wanted to blue-skidoo in the Before Sunrise trilogy (“Baby! You’re gonna miss that plane.” ughjdjdhhfjfgk), and now you can — a woman mistakenly falls asleep on a train that diverts in half overnight, leaving her on the wrong train to Paris as her boyfriend heads to the Netherlands. We’ve got mishaps galore here, folks: a stolen phone and purse, a day in the Gare du Nord with a surly albeit intriguing Parisian seat-mate, and like, a lot of that moment in movies where the girl gets splashed with puddles a lot? Zut alors!
RIYL: The Before Sunrise trilogy, healthy skepticism for Francophilia, motorcycles.
The Best Laid Plans by Cameron Lund
A high school senior on the brink of graduating tries to rid herself of her virginity (with the help of her childhood best friend), so the college hottie she meets at her video-store job doesn’t lose interest. Let’s please move aside the obvious purity culture qualms and just enjoy this beyond cute, bubble-gum sweet bit of brain whipped cream — I know I could dissertate on this book alone, but I don’t want to. It’s fun and we are experiencing the heat-death of our planet. Chill out.
RIYL: High School movies that climax at The Big Party, your parents ordering you pizza before they go out with the neighbors, the smell of a Blockbuster.
State of the Union by Nick Hornby
A married couple in therapy detail the people-watching they do while grabbing beers before their their sessions. Each chapter is the moment before they walk across the street to the office couch— little candy-coated, bite-sized looks in the keyhole into a realistic, lived-in marriage without ever talking directly about it.
RIYL: the show Catastrophe, voyeurism, pubs.
Red, White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
We know this book, because it’s been written many times before but this time it’s GOOD: American “prince” (son of a president) meets British (actual) Prince and duh, they hate each other but in that hot kind of way. This book is emblematic of all the right things a romance novel can do — have diverse, non-token ensemble characters, flights of fancy, enemies-to-lovers with an actually believable origin story.
RIYL: Alt-history where Trump was never elected, grapefruit Topo Chicos, VEEP.
The Switch by Beth O’Leary
Beth O’Leary inhabits the part of my heart where Jojo Moyes also resides, along with all of my good sweaters, Richard Curtis movies, and when my days off coincide with a rainy day. Here we have a grandmother and a granddaughter, both stuck in their own ways, who swap homes (the English countryside and London, respectively) to reinvent themselves. I’m a sap for a British romance and I will hype-team my girl Beth’s books at every holiday where there involves gift-giving and even if there isn’t. Happy Arbor Day, here’s a book.
RIYL: the Nora Ephron Interiors Instagram account, jam jars, Grace and Frankie.
Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney
A customer at the bookstore approached me the other day, plainly asking: Can you suggest something…smutty? I asked her how much time she had before gathering a stack of books with Sally on top. Aren’t we all just writing our friends about our deepest philosophical yearnings only to then just get completely side-tracked by D?
RIYL: Casual-Marxism-meets-High-Erotica, soup weather, being in on The Joke.
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
A woman post-break-up splits an apartment with a man who works the graveyard shift, the two of them agreeing to schedule themselves accordingly so they don’t cross paths. A romance mostly unsullied by PESKY PHONES, the two of them share a bed without ever meeting, exchanging post-its that start from humble updates to develop into just like, a really sweet romance, okay? That can be enough.
RIYL: The idea of knitting, buying strange shit off Etsy at 2am, holding mugs of tea with both of your hands.
COMING SOON pre-orders are hot?
Book Lovers by Emily Henry (out May 2022, my bad)
There are some authors I trust whole-heartedly to destroy me and Emily Henry is one of them. An persnickety editor and a cut-throat agent inadvertently collaborate on a title that the agent realizes is inspired (unflatteringly) by her. They clash in a weird, small North Carolina town and then clash…with their MOUTHS. Thank god.
RIYL: Miranda Priestley, Caroline Polachek’s “So Hot You’re Hurting My Feelings”, high heels sinking into mud.
One Italian Summer by Rebecca Serle (out April 2022, sorryyyy)
You know that one completely devastating part of Mamma Mia 2 where Hologram Meryl Streep sings from beyond the crypt? Okay, so imagine that scene distilled into a whole book and you’ll get One Italian Summer. I would take a bullet for Rebecca Serle, even though each godforsaken book she writes puts my heart through a blender; she’s the MVP of writing all aspects of love — especially platonic! — this time, between a mother and daughter.
RIYL: Italy, and like, crying a lot. Like so much crying that it drips onto your shirt collar. Go get a new shirt, you tender-hearted lunatic.
CURRENTLY READING Cookbooks. A large chunk of the novel I’m working at is deeply indebted to food writing. I also just love to read cookbooks like they’re romance novels because, well, they kind of are; both have rote recipes, mishaps, opportunities for glory and destruction. The drama of a cookbook, ugh. Lately, they’ve been Italian because I’m also pretending I’ve been to Bologna for this novel: Bitter Honey, Italian Street Food, Getaways.
Also, In the Weeds, the new memoir from Anthony Bourdain’s former producer, Tom Vitale, which is way more dishy than I thought it’d be and thank god for that.