I confessed in a recent newsletter that I’m a literary fiction snob (true!) who reads romance (also true!). It’s rare the two genres intersect, but enter Writers & Lovers by Lily King. It’s a work literary fiction that romance writers seem to love. I put it on my TBR after hearing it discussed on the Culture Studies podcast (which has excellent coverage of book culture). A month or two later, I was at a romance author event at a local bookstore, and the moderator and author were both gushing about it. Finally, I recently read the romance novel Battle of the Bookstores, and it was name-dropped in that book.

Writers & Lovers has a romance subplot, sort of, but it’s mostly about a young woman figuring out her life. Casey, our main character, is a writer in her early 30s barely surviving in Boston. In her day job, she’s a waitress at a fine dining restaurant in Harvard Square. She’s grieving the loss of her mother, dating a few different men (all writers), and struggling to pay off her student loans. Her life is a mess, but she is working on a novel that has real potential.

I won’t spoil anything, but this book is a gem. I felt completely immersed and invested in the main character. Boston felt so alive – I actually started to miss the city a little bit. I read Lily King’s Euphoria about a decade ago, and I loved it. I don’t know why I’ve slept on her other books since then.

As to why romance writers and readers love this book so much, my best guess is that it shares enough narrative DNA with romance novels, and it doesn’t read as too pretentious. It’s an accessible book, and I think it effectively critiques the literary fiction scene and ego-driven male writers (the types who will, without hesitation, disparage the romance genre).

As for Battle of the Bookstores, a more typical romance novel also set in Boston, I was disappointed. It’s something of a take on You’ve Got Mail. (I could write an entire newsletter on the trend of romance novelists retelling Nora Ephron movies.) But in this case, it’s a pale imitation of the source material. If Boston comes alive in Writers & Loves, it was merely a painted backdrop in Battle. The book hinges entirely on beef between literary fiction readers and romance readers (as if people like me don’t exist), and I don’t believe the authors (who co-write under a pen name) have actually read much lit fic.

On paper, Battle of the Bookstores is a romance I should have loved, but it felt too contrived, too formulaic. If you want romance in Boston that makes you feel something, go with Lily King instead.