A Hard-Earned HEA
Jess and Trisha talk about what’s great and what can be challenging about book clubs, the role of romances that address social and cultural issues, and some recs for books that do just that.
This episode is sponsored by Book Riot’s blind date with a book giveaway, Twice in a Blue Moon by Christina Lauren, available now from Gallery Books, and The Library of Lost Things by Laura Taylor Namey.
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News and Updates
Thanks again to Jackie Horne from Romance Novels for Feminists for her book list on romance history and romance literary criticism:
- John Markert’s Publishing Romance: The History of An Industry, 1940s to the Present (McFarland, 2016)
- Jayashree Kamblé’s Making Meaning in Popular Romance Fiction: An Epistemology (Palgrave Macmillan 2014)
- Susan Ostrov Weisser’s The Glass Slipper: Women and Love Stories (Rutgers UP, 2013)
- Catherine M. Roach’s Happily Ever After: The Romance Story in Popular Culture (Indiana UP, 2016)
- Laura Vivanco’s For Love and Money: The Literary Art of the Harlequin Mills & Boon Romance (Humanities Ebook, 2011)
- Sarah S. G. Frantz & Eric Murphy Selinger’s New Approaches to Popular Romance Fiction: Critical Essays (McFarland, 2012)
- Kristin Ramsdell, ed. Encyclopedia of Romance Fiction (Greenwood 2018)
- Johnathan A. Allan’s Men, Masculinities, and Popular Romance (coming out next month from Routledge)
- William A. Gleason and Eric Murphy Selinger, eds. Romance Fiction and American Culture: Love as the Practice of Freedom? (Ashgate 2016)
- Janice A. Radway’s Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (U of North Carolina P, 1984)
- Tania Modleski’s Loving with a Vengeance: Mass-Produced Fantasies for Women (Routledge 1982)
And check out Sense and Disability and the RomBkPod podcast for great romances that include disability rep!
Books
Butterfly Swords by Jeannie Lin
Intercepted by Alexa Martin
The Bride Test by Helen Hoang
The Right Swipe by Alisha Rai
His Convenient Husband by Robin Covington
Fumbled by Alexa Martin
Thirsty and Trashed by Mia Hopkins
Roomies by Christina Lauren
Ayesha At Last by Uzma Jalaluddin
American Love Story and American Fairytale by Adriana Herrera
Goalie Interference by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn
Can’t Escape Love by Alyssa Cole
Tell us your thoughts about book cubs (and specifically the When in Romance book club) and romances that deal with serious social issues. As always, you can find Jess and Trisha at the WIR email address (wheninromance@bookriot.com). You can also find us on Twitter (@jessisreading and @trishahaleybrwn), or Instagram (@jess_is_reading and @trishahaleybrown).
