How I Went from a Romance Novel Hater to a (Sometimes) Lover

Lately, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. The amount of time I read varies depending on how much free time I have. Right now, I am prioritizing taking breaks while sitting down. I’m not a fan of what is currently on TV, so I decided to pick up books and read them.

As I have been doing a lot of reading, I began to realize how many romance novels in my to be read list. I’m very surprised by this because I used to not like romance novels. Instead, I hated them.

As a teenager, I hated romance novels. In fact, I hated them so much that I avoided reading them for anything but school work. I did read Jane Austen and loved her books, but other than Jane Austen, I didn’t like romance novels. At all.

One of the major reasons why I hated reading romance novels is because of the spice in them. The descriptions of this side of the relationship was not something I enjoyed reading. When I used to talk about this to others, they would complain about my “childish” mind and how I need to get use to talking about the spicier side of romance.

Hearing this, especially from other women, made me angry. When I was a teenager, I had a very hard time with finding a boyfriend. I wanted one and wanted to get married, but I also wanted to save all the relationship spice for marriage. Most of the single guys at my high school seemed to disagree. Add in a major health crisis that I dealt with secretly as well as problems at home (Also dealt with secretly) and I had no choice to be boyfriendless. 

This is why I hated all the spice in romance novels! I wanted stories about a healthy relationship and how it develops. I wanted the drama from two people learning to love and grow into a happy, healthy relationship. I wanted stories that reflected the kind of relationship I wanted to have but didn’t have at that point in time. And yet, all the romance novels I could get a hold of had nothing but spice in them.

After reading many books, I found a few that I began to enjoy. Jane Austen is one of the novelists I loved. No spice. Just people acting the way people would in their situations, good or bad. I found a few contemporary novels by romance authors I loved as well. Over time, my hatred of romance novels began to soften and I began to become more interested about reading romance novels.

Over the past year, I began to find myself reversing my opinions about romance novels. I began to hate them again. And I mean really hate them.  After a lot of thought, I realized my hatred towards these novels were not caused by anything but the books I was reading. I read a lot of books clearly inspired by celebrities and the gossip about their relationships. The only reason why this was is because they were new, easy to find and purchase, and were very popular. I thought the stories sounded promising, so I tried to read them. Sometimes I didn’t make it all the way through the book before I hated what I read.

Not only is spice there, so are a lot of plots of stories that make me upset. There are happy ever afters, but I don’t like them. They don’t sound realistic. Also, I sometimes really hate the characters. As for the plots? Some of them are interesting. Others sound more interesting in their book blurb. Also, there are stories about people with health problems like mine. I can’t tell if it is the pessimistic side of me or the fact I lived through the health problems and have a sensitive nerve about them, but I despise many if not all the recently released romance books I read in the past few years.

To be honest, the romance genre is not my favorite genre. Action and adventure are. That’s why I’m so picky about romance novels. Action and adventure books sometimes include love stories in them. Yet, it isn’t the main driving source of the plot. So, in short, I feel like I am forcing myself to read books that are just not my taste. I just wish there were more popular action and adventure novels available to read today instead of romance. Then I will probably be much happier and excited to read books.

That’s all for now! Thank you for reading!

 

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