I think, maybe, if there was a genre of books that were just like romance books except the characters’ goals were to be platonically together rather than wedding and/or bedding, that might be my favorite genre. There are some things that really entice me about romance books, if it wasn’t for the actual romance part of it (I’m aromantic and reading much of that just makes me kind of sad). But it’s harder to search for them in non-romance books. I have a couple suggestion requests that fall under this.
1) I would love to find more books where two characters have (or gain) a very close platonic relationship which is a central aspect of the novel. A deep, rich friendship, or something that one might describe as queerplatonic. Ignoring season two of the TV show, i might classify Good Omens as something that falls under this category.
2) Unabashed self-indulgent cheesiness, please! It seems to me like I see that a lot more in romance books than in other ones, or at least in the romance books that come across my feed or that are marketed to me.
If you’ve got another suggestion for a book that reads like romance but isn’t, but doesn’t fall under those two categories, I’d still be interested to hear it.
Non-YA preferred but not a dealbreaker. Bonus points for nonhuman characters, bonus points for unlikely or forbidden romance friendship. Yeah, I really liked The Shape of Water.
Thanks!
by Sipedon