It’s Not All Porn: Defending Romance Novels

My mum’s day job is rather unusual. She wakes up at 7am, drives my dad to the train station, she tidies the house… and then she writes about sex all day!

OK, I’m exaggerating. But this is what most people assume when I tell them she is a romance author. Her genre is ‘historical romance’, and she writes for Mills and Boon – the books you may have seen your mother reading at some point. Their covers frequently include scantily-clad women draped over hunky long-haired men.

Despite some of the suggestive front covers and titles, she doesn’t really just write about sex. She writes love stories. And clearly, she’s quite good at it. Not to gloat (but I will anyway, because my Mum rules), but she’s frequently number one on the Amazon historical romance chart.

My mum’s day job is rather unusual. She wakes up at 7am, drives my dad to the train station, she tidies the house… and then she writes about sex all day!

The romance genre is incredibly popular globally. So why does it get such a bad rep for not being ‘proper’ fiction? I am aware that I am very biased. I have been reading these books since I was 11 years old, and there is always a new one lying around my room. But I adamantly believe that they really are gripping stories, with complete and well-structured plotlines.

Romance won’t be changing the world anytime soon, but this is not the genre’s intention. The aim is to bring a bit of excitement to the lives of the people that read them, and to make the reader all fuzzy with the prospect that fairy-tale love can exist.

In my experience, a lot of the negative attention the genre gets is from men. My boyfriend picked up one of the romances off my desk, scoffed at the title ‘That Despicable Rogue’, and renounced it as porn. However I would like to mention that after reading the first page for the ‘bants’, he was completely hooked, and had to finish the chapter before we could go out.

After reading the first page for the ‘bants’, he was completely hooked, and had to finish the chapter before we could go out.

Clearly, these books aren’t bad if you give them a chance, and more people are slowly starting to realise this. My mum is gaining an increasing number of male followers on Twitter, many of whom are active servicemen who enjoy reading them whilst serving abroad.

People like to read romance more than they would care to admit. With the recent increase in the use of e-readers, people are enjoying romance novels more than ever. If so many people appreciate them, maybe it’s time people actually considered the genre as ‘real literature’.

Why is it when people read books that make them feel good, people feel they can look down their nose at that person’s choice?

My mum had this to say to me when I called her about writing this article: ‘Everybody has favourite films. Nobody would put you down if you preferred Love Actually over Schindler’s List. They would understand that you liked watching that film because it made you feel good. So why is it when people read books that make them feel good, people feel they can look down their nose at that person’s choice? Good stories are good stories, after all.’

And I don’t think I could have said it better myself.