Sometimes, all you have the energy for is a good, light-hearted romance, preferably without those awkward "I'm serious, me" sections where the heroine Learns About Herself or has to get over some family drama of the decidedly-not-fun-kind. But where to find a romance that is not too embarrassing? I no longer automatically reach for the latest Sophie Kinsella, as she seems to be leaning a bit too much into lesson-learning nowadays. Emily Henry is a find, but she can hardly be expected to turn out more than one book per year. So what else does the genre have to offer?
After a newspaper article recommended Sophie Irwin's A Lady's Guide to Fortune-Hunting, I bought it but was unconvinced by the first couple of paragraphs. Luckily, I gave the novel another try this year, and found that it improved considerably after the first chapter or so. This is classic Regency romance fare: you may not be too surprised by how things turn out, but it's highly enjoyable all the same, and not too anachronistic-seeming. I've stumbled on some shockers in this genre, which were essentially just modern chick-lit in fancy dress, but this feels if not genuinely 19th-century, at least genuinely Georgette Heyerish.
Also, it's uncommonly clean for a modern romance novel, which is a plus in my book. Honestly, there are only so many sex scenes using "of him" and "of her" phrases ("the scent of him", "the wondrous touch of her") and featuring supernaturally patient guys I can take. More power to Irwin for sparing us them. Her second book A Lady's Guide to Scandal is just as good, even a touch better when it comes to the plotting (at one time, I was genuinely unsure of where the story was going), but the obvious play for the Bridgerton audience bothered me a little.
Elsewhere, Emily Henry seems to have started a new trend: the meta romance. I hesitated before buying Katie Holt's Not in My Book as the plot seemed uncomfortably close to the one in Henry's Beach Read. But though it features a(n aspiring) romance writer and a broody love interest who's into literary fiction and who criticises her in creative writing classes, it's sufficiently its own thing not to feel like a rip-off. The heroine is cute, the hero bearable and "enemies to lovers" a very solid trope.
I can't help it, I tend to enjoy romances about writing romances – and more often than not I prefer the book-related stuff to the romantic scenes, which was also the case here. Yes, there are sex scenes this time around, with the patient-guy factor very much in evidence, but I'll say this for Holt: when it comes to these scenes, she manages them better than Emily Henry, though Henry has the edge in other aspects. Ideal for travelling.
The meta romance sub-genre has its pit-falls, though. Even though I had a good enough time with Cristina Wolf's How to Write a Rom-Com, I had expected more of the premise – jaded publishing assistant sent to a small-town to gather ideas for a romance writer, though she really doesn't enjoy small-town romances – than I got. Pointing out that something is a trope doesn't make it less of a trope in your own story if you don't put a different spin on it. Here, the heroine succumbs to the charms of the small town and the small-town hunk way too easily, plus there's a Liar Revealed story baked in, and that's not a favourite plot-line of mine. But hey, I read the novel. I'm by no means tired of meta romances yet.
