I would love to know your thoughts on Katee Robert’s Deal with a Demon series covers. The monster clinch covers are my favorites. Also thank you for sharing this essay, it definitely changed my perspective on some things!
What is super depressing is this cynical move often works. I can tell you this is the only way my non-romance friends will read romance. They openly laugh at historical romance covers and old school titles. But many of them read The Kiss Quotient. That was a hot book! So yes, it comes down to puritanical shame. It’s like the illustrated cover gives them permission to read romance.
Late to this but love it! I’ve been noticing that there’s a certain type of book (lit fic by women usually) that has cartoon covers, maybe with people in them and they remind me a lot of some romance novels. I’m thinking Sally Rooney, Huma Qureshi, Naoise Dolan. And I wonder if there’s an attempt to make romance novels palatable to readers who read those types of novels. Emily Henry books remind me of this in particular. Actually, as do all first editions of Beth O’Leary books. Now that I think of it, it’s very interesting to me that British rom coms (with no sex whatsoever usually and slightly different genre conventions) are also entirely indistinguishable from romance now. Do you have a sense of when this trend started? I’d be interested to know. It seems to be very recent
Love this - I’ve always hated the cartoon covers but have never been able to put into words why. It just follows these stereotypes that romance is a genre just for women (screw that) and it’s all cute and fluffy and happy with no real substance, which is just absolutely not true on both counts. I also adore Katee Robert’s book covers in general, the monster romances are beautifully done. I’m a sucker for big dresses.
I would love to know your thoughts on Katee Robert’s Deal with a Demon series covers. The monster clinch covers are my favorites. Also thank you for sharing this essay, it definitely changed my perspective on some things!
What is super depressing is this cynical move often works. I can tell you this is the only way my non-romance friends will read romance. They openly laugh at historical romance covers and old school titles. But many of them read The Kiss Quotient. That was a hot book! So yes, it comes down to puritanical shame. It’s like the illustrated cover gives them permission to read romance.
Late to this but love it! I’ve been noticing that there’s a certain type of book (lit fic by women usually) that has cartoon covers, maybe with people in them and they remind me a lot of some romance novels. I’m thinking Sally Rooney, Huma Qureshi, Naoise Dolan. And I wonder if there’s an attempt to make romance novels palatable to readers who read those types of novels. Emily Henry books remind me of this in particular. Actually, as do all first editions of Beth O’Leary books. Now that I think of it, it’s very interesting to me that British rom coms (with no sex whatsoever usually and slightly different genre conventions) are also entirely indistinguishable from romance now. Do you have a sense of when this trend started? I’d be interested to know. It seems to be very recent
Love this - I’ve always hated the cartoon covers but have never been able to put into words why. It just follows these stereotypes that romance is a genre just for women (screw that) and it’s all cute and fluffy and happy with no real substance, which is just absolutely not true on both counts. I also adore Katee Robert’s book covers in general, the monster romances are beautifully done. I’m a sucker for big dresses.