Explore 2019 #293: Romance books

Do you read romance books? Not much embarrasses me but I'm clearly still working on not feeling embarrassed about romance books! I posted earlier this year that Helen Hoang's books completely changed my understanding of romance books (I ordered them without realizing they were categorized as contemporary romance). Until reading her work I had not realized you could layer steam atop complex characters and substantial plot!

But when I hit the library yesterday to pick up some holds and was like, "Hey! I'm going to get grab some contemporary romance!" I found myself embarrassed to look through the small format paperback carousels (with the big ROMANCE label on top), because it all looked like cheesy romance (about which there is nothing wrong, but I clearly have a hangup!) which was not what I was looking for. And then I found myself too embarrassed to ask if contemporary romance lives in a separate section. And then I found myself Googling "best contemporary romance" for author names and walking through the fiction stacks to see if contemporary romance somehow gets filed with general fiction (it does). And then I found myself giggling when I realized that, like mystery books that get a special spine sticker, contemporary romance books get a heart spine sticker. And then I stepped back and realized that there were a ton of hearts amidst the fiction in the stacks.

So this is my public GET OVER YOURSELF, CHRISTINE statement about romance books. I look forward to mixing in fun contemporary romance amidst my usual novel picks! If you have favorite contemporary romance authors (especially women of color) I'd love to hear about them!