Do you become a happier person by reading Romance?
I think occasionally that I would be a happier, a little more harmonious person if I just started reading romance literature. Of all readers, it seems to me, those who like romance seem to read most and have the most fun.
And it’s in time. Because even though romantic stories have always been in the cry, the interest in the Romance genre has in recent years completely exploded. At Booktok, the literature -interested part of Tiktok, Romance writers have long been reigning queens and few writers in other genres can compete with Colleen Hoovers or Rebecca Yarro’s sales figures.
At the same time, the boundaries between romance and eroticism have become blurry. By this time have SVT’s investment in romance high readingincluding subsequent porn charges, hardly escaped anyone.
To navigate through This new landscape is not easy. The subgenres are many and, well, Specific. Language -sensitive readers are warned, because here comes a series of English terms: there are Cowboy RomanceThe Hockey romanceThe Office RomanceThe Billionaire RomanceThe Mafia romance … And this is just the tip of the erotic iceberg.
Tuva Haglund, postdoctorate in literary science at Uppsala University, researches on social reading. She says that in addition to all subgenres there are a lot of tropes such as friends of lovers, enemies of lovers, or the best friend of the brother. Here it is about what kind of relationship dynamics you like – which is also often related to what obstacles they are lovers face before they can finally get each other. Depending on what you put in the phrase « get each other »-half the pleasure with an « enemies of lovers » story is of course the hate sex.
Tuva Haglund believes that this type of categorization is hardly new. But as Tiktok has become an ever larger arena for book tips, it has become more visible.
– My picture is that this use of tropes and subgenres has emerged quite dynamically among readers and then book publishers have hooked on by, for example, linking marketing, not least book covers, clearly to some subgenres, she says. Most clearly this has been seen in the marketing of Romantasy.
Maybe just had Romantasy, then Romance in fantasybeen my natural entrance to the genre. Fantasy literature, after all, is my lifelong love. But I am afraid that it will have the opposite effect, that I should be too busy to call cracks in the world building to amused by eroticism. I need to find another way in.
I ask my friend Lisa, bookstore and Romance connoisseur, for advice. She is familiar with the shadowy springs of my soul and suggests a Dark Romancea modernized version of Hades and the Pershone Myth where the God of the underworld runs a nightclub. But it is sloppily written and to top it all has been hate their hair in a Man Bunso it doesn’t work. I get deep before our heroes even reached the bedroom.
There, my romance interest could have extinguished, if it were not for a copy of STEM-Roman writer Ali Hazelwood’s novel « Not Dear » lands on my table.
Stem, an abbreviation By « Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics » – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – at first glance does not feel like an area of massive sex appeal. If you google stem, you get cute illustrations of test tubes, gears and calculators. The acronym is extensively used, especially in the United States to describe the scientific high status profession, and women in STEM are often portrayed as feminist role models.
In « Not Dear », the action revolves around two central problems: Will bio engineer Rue, despite attachment problems, dare to let in the hunky venture capitalist Eli in his life? And is Eli’s company really looking to Norpa her colleagues’ research patent?
As the genre offers, large parts of the novel in Eli’s bed take place, but in addition to the many and detailed sex scenes, Hazelwood draws a convincing portrait of a high -performing researcher. She herself researches neuroscience when she does not write novels. The name Ali Hazelwood is a pseudonym, but in an interview with Washington Post she says that she never intended to separate her author identity from her research identity – because she never intended to become a writer.
Hazelwood’s way to The bestseller lists are far from the usual picture of the romance writer as a bored housewife. As a doctoral student, she began to spend her free time writing fanfiction about « Star Treks » highly loved science vulle Spock, to later write a love story about Kylo Ren and Rey from « Star Wars » placed in a lab environment. It was picked up by a literary agent and was released after minor rework with the title « Love hypothesis ». And became a success.
What is it that makes STEM-Romance attractive? Is it about identification for a new generation of professional women, or is it the imagination to « get everything », to satisfy both their career ambitions and their sexual desire, which is driving?
When I inaugurate an engineering friend in my scout, she is skeptical. Apparently, an average stem woman’s everyday life is not very hot, unless it is about stress testing different materials in high temperatures. Perhaps it is true that the target group is not the STEM women themselves, but that the books are rather aimed at us who never have to relate to research grants or the scientific method and therefore can romanticize what is hiding under a lab rock.
– Stories about women who move in classic male environments, I think we are many who are fascinated by, says Swedish romance writer Simona Ahrnstedt when I ask her why she thinks the research role has become sexy. She continues:
– I myself enjoy reading about intelligent women and writing about them. Giving female protagonists cool jobs becomes a resistance to a patriarchy who wants to put them in place. And then it is fun to read about science women and men who are primarily driven by their intellect, but who suddenly have to handle a lot of emotions they cannot control.
I think that She’s right. The tight science environments are in sharp contrast to the unreasonable sexuality and emotions that are not measurable. The noble, civilized search for knowledge encounters the most impulsive of desires – the self -self collides with the detike, and all this within the framework of an erotic charged leaf -bearer. No wonder it sells.
Does it have enough to transform me into that easy -going romance reader I can long to be? Maybe not really. But a door has been opened open and I learn to peek in through it again. Maybe already this summer – Ali Hazelwood has just released a sequel.
Read more:
New genre Romantasy: « Oh no, I’ve been married to the sexy elf king, how will it go? »
Forty years of betrayal, desire and fiery love – so the romantic literature has changed
