Title.
By romance, it could also be as a subset genre to fantasy and YA.
I consider myself to be a pretty diverse reader. I enjoy nonfiction, contemporary, thriller, lit fics, and, not to be pretentious, classics most of all. A lot of them seem to have a sort of subtlety in their writing that makes the interaction between the characters more fluid; after all, there is a lot that could be signaled through the curve of a person’s lip and the glint in their eyes. I adore true literary romance. I adore the substance that transcends mere talk, the intense chemistry that makes my fingers tingle.
Yet when it comes to mainstream romance (e.g. TikTok books, just about every fantasy-romance at this point), I end up finding every one of them inadequate, in one way or another.
What makes mainstream books feel so clunky and contrived is that authors now resort to a more simpler, direct style of narrative, rather than delving into the nuances of things. Everything is just this and that, she did this, and he did that. And of course, there are the tropes, which are overdone at this point. Which brings a new question: do the popular authors of this genre write for enjoyment or commercial success? Romance has so much potential, but everything is catered towards BookTok and the people who somehow don’t get tired of reading cliche after cliche.
It’s questionable if people would go back to this type of romance if they experienced what literature could be.
​
by eyedrops2