Contemporary Romance Novels Suck

Since no one is reading this blog, I don’t feel bad about being Debbie Downersauce. With my old WP blog, I felt obligated to be cheerful at least sometimes when really every day could have been a Monday peeve. Here it's all peeves all the time, at least so far, and I have many more floating around in my brainpan. Today’s moan is about romance novels, and not the old-timey ones affectionately known as “bodice rippers,” but contemporary romance novels (CRNs). Actually, the bodice rippers are the best kind of romance novels because the plots are somewhat believable, and they're set so far outside of our lives now that we don't sit there going nope, nope, that would never happen. I mean, why wouldn’t a handsome duke fall in love with his daughter’s fetching governess? No convoluted situation is needed to throw the protagonists together because obviously the governess has to live in the fabulous castle on the lush country estate, as well as accompany dukey to his fashionable London townhouse during "the season."

The first problem I have with CRNs is that they are invariably written in first-person POV. Instead of being able to delightfully immerse oneself in the world of fancy dances and lacy corsets and high tea, the reader is given this diary type format. Instead of a narrator walking us down the cobblestones with the princess or her maid, we're stuck inside some chick's head where she's obsessing about her mother, her weight, her ex, her boss, her bestie, yada. It's too much like real life! Also, when the writer utilizes third-person narration, she can switch to another character (but no head-hops please ~ stay in one head per scene), and we can get a glimpse of what the duke is thinking or peek into the window of his nasty cousin who's plotting to murder him for the title, or any other character's POV. With the first-person CRNs, the only way to switch to another character is to narrate them in first person too, which is really awkward and can be confusing for the reader, yet it's very prevalent in the garbage novels all over Amazon.

You get what you pay for. Yeah yeah. 

Another issue I have with CRNs, though it doesn't have to be this way, is that the protag/ heroine is always graceless and awkward, and at some point she invariably crashes into the hero, usually spilling a beverage all over one or both of them. It's so tiresome. Do they all have to be such clumsy dorks? Gah, it reminds me too much of myself and my balance issues.

I'm also tired of the tropes: the billionaire, the boss, the fake date, the hate date, the brother's best friend, yada.

Also, sex scenes. In first-person POV, they are so cringey to read, while in third person they seem to slide by more smoothly. I don't know why. At least the first person ones are less explicit, usually, but even so I prefer to skim them in third. I do skim them all now because after so many decades of reading sex scenes, they are just boring even when the writer tries to add in some BDSM or whatever. Yawn. And when the narration is third person, we might get a sex scene from the POV of the hero, which is sometimes more interesting, but no one wants to read that in first, especially if the writer tries to be "accurate." Ish. Give me the imaginary man's viewpoint please.

I guess I like my romance novels to be in the fantasy realm but not in the fantasy genre with unicorns and dragons and magic, if that makes any sense. Welp, the great thing about having no readers is I don't have to make sense to anyone else, hah. I like to be taken outside myself, outside my own world, when I'm reading a book. I don't want the story/characters/setting to be true to life, except it can't be too crazy or I won't be able to immerse in it. I have a lot of reading needs, apparently, which is one of the reasons I began writing my own books, but that is a lot of fucking work. So, I'll just continue to grab cheap or free reads off Amazon and complain about them.

Lately, I've mostly been reading mysteries anyway, which are often annoyingly written in first-person, present tense, but sometimes I still want to read romance.