You need two (or more) people to be a romance
Co-owners of WanderLust mobile bookshop Allison Couture and Marie Nitschke share their definition of what makes a romance novel a romance novel.
Note from Tucker
To “serious” readers, romance gets a bad knock. Of being frivolous, totally not serious, a pretty distraction. Uninteresting or disengaged. Gossip fodder.
But romance novels are about the single most important relationships a person can have: the people you love; the people you end up spending the most time with and get to know the best. The journey of creating those important relationships, and sustaining, or ending them. Usually, or presumably, of course.
The romance genre is about relationships — the most important part of being alive. At least to me. The plot of that story is about what may be stopping or accelerating that relationship.
So many good stories have that component, or incorporate that gear within the matrix of a larger story.
Allison Couture and Marie Nitschke, co-owners of the recently-opened romance bookstore the WanderLust Mobile Bookstore, who talked to me on Book Stuff this week, gave me this definition of a romance novel: A romance novel is where there is a couple (although throples, or more, are welcomed in this definition) who get together in the end. You’re chasing that question: will they get together?
“There’s so many ways to tell that story,” to co-owners told me. “There’s mysteries, there’s science fiction versions of it, there’s contemporary versions of it, there’s historical versions of it. So we have all of those like sub-genres and I would ay varying ranges within..that catch people saying, ‘oh, this is a romance.’”
If nothing else, romance demands the respect: it’s the highest selling genre of fiction, by a wide margin. Romance bookstores, like WanderLust, have blossomed across the U.S. and the world in the last 6 years. Sales have doubled in the US over the last 5 years.
It’s a vibrant, living community. It’s proof that bookstores — and books themselves — have the ability to thrive in 2026. “Serious” readers, readers of all kinds, should take note and learn lessons from this beautiful world. A world I was happy to talk with for a brief moment.
Bookmarked (episode-inspired useful links and more reading recs)
If you happen to be in Madison, Giant Jones will be hosting WanderLust’s bus for Bookstore Romance Day. It’ll be a blockparty!
THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE THE TIME WAR by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone.
End notes
I’m going to be teaching an On-Air Performance at Madison College. If you’re in the area and interested, or if know of others who might be, send it along. Class starts at the end of this month!
Check out Chicago Review of Books
My favorite recent review: A Head Stuffed with Spirits in “Bedlam”
Shelf stuff
Add a comment: