i can't really explain it, but i feel like a lot of romance and y/n novels are so eager to be adapted to the screen that it just neglected features of writing medium that simply cannot be translated into script. ofc i understand that having your work being adapted is probably the only way to make a decent living nowadays as a writer, but i wish more authors would use the medium to their advantage.
this isn't a shade to any books or anyone who enjoyed it, I'm just looking for books that puts depth in the experience of reading, where it's not just familiar prompts and tags with very similar writing style from one another, and i simply don't know where to look
by massiecureblock
7 Comments
No suggestions, just wanted to validate that I notice (and hate) this too.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
I enjoyed Book Lovers by Emily Henry. Not the best thing I’ve ever read but I enjoyed it!
The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
Probably not considered a romance per se, it’s more in the literary/realist fiction arena, but I’m not much of a romance reader and this is what comes to mind
These books are more books that feature romantic relationships rather than explicitly romance but i recommend *Kairos*, *Cleopatra & Frankenstein*, and any Sally Rooney book. And as far as classics, I think Hemingway has written interesting relationship dynamics, my favorite being *The Sun Also Rises*, and, of course, any Jane Austen.
‘A Room With a View’ by E. M. Forster. It has my favorite passage ever written:
“Be his wife. He is already part of you. Though you never see him again, or forget his very name, George will work in your thoughts till you die. It isn’t possible to love and to part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal. When I think what life is, and how seldom love is answered by love—Marry him; it is one of the moments for which the world was made.”
I think classics might be for you – were not written to be movies (because they didn’t even exist lol), a lot of depth in the experience of reading, not really tropey (or if they are, it’s because that literally where the tope came from) etc.
If Romance is your thing, Jane Austen is a good place to start.