A Completely Comprehensive and Totally Unbiased Introduction to Romance (the genre) (Part 3)
In Part 1 of this newsletter series, I talked about why I love the romance genre so much and in Part 2, I recommended some specific authors and books. I mentioned a few queer romances in Part 2, but for today's newsletter, I'm focusing entirely on queer romance.
Let's begin with a couple of caveats:
I'm focusing on books that I've actually read, but I know about a ton of queer romances that I haven't read yet. So, if you're looking for a particular genre/trope, let me know and it's possible I can recommend a book or two even though I can't personally vouch for them. For example, there's a lot of contemporary lesbian romances that revolve around sports, which doesn't really do it for me, but if you want to read about roller derby or hockey players (ooh, or I might know of one about curling?!) falling in love, let me know and I can get you a list of titles.
Unfortunately, most of the queer romances that I've read, I have... liked, but not loved. I would definitely still recommend many of them (and I'm going to!), but I have yet to find an author writing queer romance where I have been like, yes, this totally works for me, let me read your entire backlog!
Men Loving Men (MLM)
I'm starting with this section because I don't read much MLM romance, so it should be pretty short. Why don't I read a lot of MLM romance? Well... in part, because I think it's kind of an odd genre. Romance novels about men falling in love with other men tend to be written and read primarily by women. I'm not saying that women shouldn't write or enjoy MLM romance, but it's worth thinking about who tells (and profits from!) queer stories. Gosh, so many caveats in this newsletter. Let's get to some recommendations, already!
Red, White, & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston (who I just looked up and is queer and non-binary, fyi) is a fun variation on the fake dating trope - the First Son and a British Prince are advised by their PR teams to fake a friendship and end up in a secret relationship. Be aware that it's kind of 'New Adult' and there's a decent amount of angst around coming out and being queer in politics.
In Adriana Herrera's Dreamers series (of which I've read the first two), however, everyone has been out for a while. These are pretty classic contemporary romances where the main characters have jobs they care about and realistic relationship conflicts arise. I think I tend to like my contemporary romances a little sillier or quirkier, which is part of why I haven't read the rest of the series, but Herrera's a good writer, and we're going to see her again in the next section...
Women Loving Women (WLW)
Would you look at that? We made it to the next section already! Adriana Herrera's Mangoes and Mistletoe is a holiday novella about two women competing in a televised baking competition. I remember feeling like the grumpier of the two women was a little too back and forth with her feelings, but the premise was cute and the book included some of the hottest WLW sex scenes that I've read.
As I said in Part 2 of this newsletter series, everyone has different preferences when it comes to sex scenes. But I've found that in many of the WLW romances I've read, the sex is often one of the things that's lacking. At the risk of giving too much away about my own sexual predilections, I think sometimes the sex in WLW romances is too tender? I want my characters real horny for each other, I guess, haha.
Another common issue with WLW romance is that it's often relegated to the realm of the novella. I just looked through Herrera's books on her website and it seems like she might have one or two other WLW novellas, but no full-length books. Similarly, until last year, my fave romance author, Alyssa Cole, had two WLW novellas and no full-length books. Unfortunately, I didn't love her first full-length WLW effort, How to Find a Princess -- it started strong and the leads are great individual characters, but the plot had pacing issues. I also listened to it on audio around the time that we were moving last year and barely finished it before it was due back at the library, so I keep meaning to return to it when I'm a little less stressed and see if I like it more? Anyway, if you like novellas, I think Cole's Once Ghosted, Twice Shy is her strongest WLW narrative. I also want to recommend Treasure by Rebekah Weatherspoon, which is another WLW novella that I found quite sexy. But enough with the novellas!
Part of my inability to find really strong WLW romances might be that I keep reading authors I like, but who don't primarily write WLW romance. Then again, I've tried several authors whose focus is WLW and, as I said at the beginning of this newsletter in caveat #2, I’ve yet to find any new favorites.
Regardless, I want to shout out a couple of Regency(ish) romance writers: Olivia Waite and Jane Walsh.
Olivia Waite's three most recent releases are all WLW romances in her Feminine Pursuits series, which is published by Avon Impulse (in case you don't already know, Avon is a big name in romance publishing). The first book, The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics (great title, right?), received a pretty big marketing push, which I mention because it was kind of a big deal for a mainstream publisher to really push a queer romance. What I found after reading The Lady's Guide to Celestial Mechanics and the third book in the series, The Hellion's Waltz (which I think I preferred) is that Waite is an excellent writer of historical fiction, but her romances aren't swoony enough for me.
I've only read one of Jane Walsh's Regency romances (Her Lady to Love), and it was actually what inspired me to write that bit of fiction I shared with you all back in December. I liked aspects of Walsh's book a lot - her queer folks existed in community with each other (like real queer people!) and I know I keep harping on this, but the sex scenes, they were good! But the book didn't explore a lot of aspects of being a queer woman during the Regency era that intrigue me (and the ending was way too tidy), which is why I felt inspired to think about/write my own WLW Regency-ish story. In looking Jane Walsh up just now for this newsletter, I'm thinking I'll try another one of her books, specifically the follow-up to Her Lady to Love, which is called Her Countess to Cherish and stars one of the most intriguing supporting characters from the first book. I'm just going to go ahead and pull the copy from the publisher, "Lady Georgina Smith has a secret she must keep at all costs: she divides her time running a bluestocking salon as Gina, and carousing across London as George."
Which bring me to my next section...
Trans, Nonbinary, and Gender Non-Conforming Characters in Romance
Remember, we're focusing on books I've actually read (caveat #1) not books I know about, so I have just two recommendations here, and both are historical fiction:
Unmasked by the Marquess by Cat Sebastian, which "is the story of a servant who dresses as a man to impersonate her employer, realizes she doesn’t identify as a woman anymore, and accidentally falls in love with a prickly bisexual aristocrat." (I spent a couple of minutes trying to think of a plot description and decided to just take the copy from the author's website.) It's a fun book and this is a pretty random thing to highlight about it, but... if you've ever read 'girl dresses up as boy to go on adventures and other boy falls for her without knowing she's a girl' fiction (ex. Alanna by Tamora Pierce) and wanted a little more exploration of the boy's sexuality beyond 'oh don't worry she's secretly a girl so the lad's still a healthy heterosexual,' Unmasked by the Marquess kind of provides that.
Backwards to Oregon by Jae is described as a lesbian romance and both main characters use she/her pronouns. However, Luke lives as a man, feels more comfortable that way, has no intention of ever living as a woman again, and just reads Very Trans. I have one main hesitation when it comes to recommending this book, which is that it takes place on the Oregon Trail, and to pull from my goodreads review of this book, "the portrayal of Native Americans in this book was bad, but not as bad as it could have been, for whatever that's worth."
A note on the terminology in this newsletter
I'm purposely using MLM and WLW because I find these terms inclusive. Is it a lesbian romance if one of the women identifies as a lesbian and the other identifies as pansexual? What if it's a historical romance and doesn't include any contemporary labels for the characters' sexualities? Generally, what you see in romance novel descriptions is m/m, f/f, or m/f to describe the central romantic pairing. Or, if it's a polyamorous romance: m/m/f, f/f/m, etc. Personally, I don't love this labeling because 'm' stands for 'male' and 'f' stands for 'female,' and, whether those terms are being used as adjectives (male people and female people) or nouns (males and females), I would rather talk about humans as men and women and genderqueer people (or genderfluid people or nonbinary people or whatever term is correct for the person I'm talking about). These identities (man, woman, enby, etc.) are more obviously socially constructed and don't have as much of the sheen of biological determinism on them as 'male' and 'female' do. I should also note that Sapphic romance is another commonly used term for WLW romance, and it's one I do quite like, but I went with MLM and WLW for consistency.
Phew, I'm done!
...For now, anyway. I've continued to keep this series focused on adult romance, rather than YA so I could still do another edition and talk about YA. I also could have included a whole section on romances featuring bisexual characters in relationships that read as straight, and talked about why I think it's important to acknowledge those books as queer romances, but, ya know, this newsletter is approaching 2000 words. Maybe I'll write another edition, maybe I'll call it good here. For now, this newsletter is cycling 'off' for a couple of weeks and will be back on May 16th. Thanks for reading!