Not a Hopeless Romantic
Romance is not my genre. Not that I haven't tried! Once I got into the world of readers on the internet, I learned that everything I'd been told about the Romance genre was basically wrong. They weren't trashy and stupid. Romance novels are like sonnets: there are very specific constraints you have to follow, but that's why they're fun.
The thing about me as a reader is that I don't like constraints. Romance isn't my genre because I don't want to know going in that there will be a happy ending! I want to spend the book wondering what will happen. This is part of why I enjoy horror (while there are a lot of tried and true horror endings, as a genre it has a whole lot of unresolved endings, lots of twists, and a high likelihood that the whole thing ends badly instead of well.). Even Mystery, while it often identifies the killer (though not always), a good one doesn't go the way you expect it to.
I love that there is a genre all about knowing what you will get generally with room for variation. That is what I want when I order a croissant or a cheeseburger, it's a very real pleasure. It's just not how I work with books or movies. (Alas, I basically cannot tolerate action movies for the same reason! Action movies are the masc equivalent of romance novels!)
Nevertheless, this summer I read three romance novels, WAY more than usual. I also read them in pretty close succession. Seemed right at the time. I had been out of the genre so long, it was nice to get back in for a dip.
First up was the new Rainbow Rowell. Rowell does not always get it right, but she is usually fun to read and she hasn't written an adult novel in a while so I was curious. And there was a lot to like about this book! A second chance romance about high school best friends who had a very short-lived love affair as teens and now find themselves back together 15 years later.
It is a goddamn relief to read a novel in the US in a PLACE that cares about the place and the place is not New York, LA, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco. Like honestly I am sick to death of books set in these cities. I love that Rowell keeps writing books set in Nebraska, absolutely fantastic. And I love how Cary and Shiloh feel like two people I could actually know. They are people who made choices and whose lives took them in directions, nothing about it ever feels like autopilot or a character sketch.
And I did really enjoy watching these two fumble their way together! They really made it hard! They messed up and avoided having important conversations and got upset and resentful in ways that are deeply familiar to anyone who has ever been in a relationship.
But since I am me, I actually enjoyed the parts where it was trouble more than the parts where they figured it out. As soon as it got easier I was like Where is the DRAMA?? See, if that HEA wasn't a guarantee I would've been more in it. This is my cross to bear.
Once I'd cracked open the genre, I found myself confronted with yet another Emily Henry update on my Goodreads timeline. Everyone EVERYONE is reading Emily Henry and she keeps putting out more books. So I thought okay fine since I am already in, might as well see what all the fuss is about.
How was it? Fine. It was a perfectly nice romance novel. Which means I found it pretty boring. I'm sorry! This is my problem not the book's! The characters were nice and engaging, the dialogue was snappy, there were plenty of good things happening. I just never got past mildly interested.
My final outing into Romance was The Pairing. Casey McQuiston was one of the writers I enjoyed during my last romance outing with Red White & Royal Blue which I thought was very cute. I had tried but not connected with One Last Stop. But when I saw that this book was about two bisexual ex's on a food & wine tour I knew this might be my ideal McQuiston novel. And it was!
I enjoyed the hell out of this, truly. Even though at first I thought it was doing all the things I don't like in romance. We know Kit and Theo broke up quite dramatically on a flight to Paris and haven't seen each other since. And now they are stuck together as the only not-couple on a two-week food & wine tour. The pacing is, honestly, not a strong point. It was totally unclear to me for most of the book why these two hadn't already gotten back together already. (And this is over 400 pages, so it takes a loooooong time!)
Luckily. This book doesn't really care that much about pacing! What it wants to do is take you along on this leisurely tour. It wants to indulge. It wants to meander. You really need to just give in and stop caring about the destination and enjoy the journey.
Can't remember the last book I read that felt this decadent. Yes, there is a lot about food! If you just want all the smooching and don't want food, then sorry this book is not for you! Also there is a LOT of sex, and it's very queer sex. If you want something more modest, you should pass. Not only is there a lot of sex, but there's a lot of sex that Kit and Theo have with other people while they are trying very hard to prove to themselves and each other that they are not going to get back together. For a lot of romance readers, this is probably not great. You don't want your protagonists to be so slutty, you believe in this one pairing. This is something that I don't like about traditional romance. I love slutty bisexuals! I am one! These are my people! I loved getting to see Kit and Theo jump from person to person until there was no one left to jump to but each other. I also loved the way this book explored gender, particularly in relationships and in sex.
The stuff that didn't work for me here had nothing to do with Romance. Instead it was just how clueless 20-something these characters were. They view the world in a way that I have long since moved past. Their problems are silly and easily solved but they fret about them as if they their entire life's purpose is at stake.
There are a few more romance-adjacent books I read recently but they were re-reads and that is probably what the next newsletter will be about. So we'll get back to that another time. For now I enjoyed my foray into romance and now I will go back to not reading it. Somehow despite all this When Harry Met Sally is one of my favorite movies. So is Moonstruck. (I think part of what I like is how they push against the genre, but also a lot of it is the comfort and familiarity! The exact things that bother me about the genre! I contain multitudes!)
August releases! Hopefully my dates are right. I recently wrote up Colored Television which it turns out won't be out until September. And one of my September galleys it turns out won't be out until December. It's very annoying. But I'll do my best.
August is tricky because there were books I liked but not a lot I loved. Let's start with my favorites.
Yes, the new Elizabeth Strout is good. I mentioned it in my last newsletter about how it was part of a long stretch of books I just read and read and read while on vacation. I was not a fan of her last one, Lucy by the Sea, but this one I was back to enjoying. Even though it feels kind of like The Avengers of the Strout Literary Universe, in the opening scene Lucy Barton meets Olive Kitteridge. But I actually found that this distance from Lucy was quite nice, she can be a lot. Her optimism and faith in people sometimes drives me up the wall. Having Olive and others to balance her out was nice. And we spend most of our time with Bob Burgess. (If you do not remember Bob Burgess, or any of the other characters, don't worry! Strout is very good at giving you a quick catch up on what you need to know.)
Helen Phillips' last novel, The Need, remains one of my favorites of the last several years. Her follow up, Hum, is not as tense but she is once again looking at the anxieties of parenting and bringing her vast imagination to a speculative story. It's short, much more focused, practically a novella. But if your nightmare is a family where everyone is on their phones all the time, this will burrow into your brain.
And now a few that I liked just fine.
A couple borrowing a lake house pretend they're the rich owners, which starts as a lark but slowly builds into something out of control. It's got a lot of tension around social niceties and interactions that look bland but could be quite hostile, and that's something I always like. Agnes Ravatn is a very under the radar Norwegian writer I like quite a lot. This isn't as good as her last one (The Seven Doors) but it's still interesting. Mostly it's just not quite enough for a novel, I think it would have made a really great short story.
This is Lyons' third book and clearly he has a formula: characters are in a terrible situation, supernatural forces enter to make the terrible situation much worse. This time the terrible situation is a bank heist gone wrong, which gives you a lot more to play with and may be why I think this is his best book. But otherwise it suffers from Horror Novel Bloat. Just like we need to make horror movies 85 minutes again, we need to make horror novels under 300 pages again.
August had a surprisingly high number of books that I did not like at all and wrote harsh reviews about. (Even A Mask of Flies I gave only 2.5 stars, but I suspect most horror people will like it more than me.) The new Karin Slaughter– This Is Why We Lied--is okay, which honestly is a big compliment. I was so annoyed by the recent Will Trent books that I'd quit reading them all together, but I sped through this one and was just mildly annoyed in the way I've been mildly annoyed by all of the books in this series. (I have been reading Sara Linton novels since 2006, it has been nearly 20 years, heaps and heaps of unspeakable tragedy and trauma, but she still seems to be a well-adjusted and hot woman in her mid-30s, it's wild.)
But September is capital-F Fall, the Big Book Month, and sure enough I read a lot and enjoyed a lot so I'll be back soon with those.