The Aardvark Blog

What Makes for Perfect Romantic Fiction
29/01/2021

As some of you may already know, this week is the last week in the bookshop for R who has been a stalwart colleague for us for the last 18 months, and an absolute gem over the past 10 months since the start of the strange technicolour ride that has been the pandemic, and the various lockdowns and unlockdowns we have gone through.

One of the things we have spent the week doing is tweaking our list of Romance novels on bookshop.org - click here for the list.

It has led us to formulate a list of elements that we like in a romance story, and I present them to you below:

1) Unconventional heroes/heroines are appreciated. Its tough to really go for someone who is just too perfect.

2) Interesting or exotic locations really help - particularly when reading during the winter. Mary Stewart, for example, was brilliant at combining warmth in relationships with warm weather.

3) Humour is essential.

4) There should also be some pathos (particularly effective when mixed with the above).

5) If raunchiness is present, there should not be so much as to make one not want to be seen reading the book in public.

6) Best friends/subsidiary plots etc. need not to be too annoying or too extensive.

7) Bonus points are to be had for mad housekeepers, ex-wives, jealous lovers etc.

8) An historic setting with some decent background research adds gravy to the stew.

9) The 'Meet cute' needs to be believable and not too banal. We can all meet someone at a bar, wedding or college reunion, but a really interesting initial collision makes one perk up.

10) The obstacles in the way of true love need to seem real, to be enduring, to involve some jeopardy and not just be the result of whims or 'I have never fancied short men/tall women/blondes/red heads etc. There needs to be drama, and to use a terrible phrase, we need to believe that we have been on a journey.

And finally, there needs to be a happy ending! We are talking romance after all, and in 2020/21 we can do with any happy endings we can find.