I used to think I hated country music. Johnny Cash made me reconsider. Now I admit that I do like some country, even if most of it isn’t to my tastes.

But what the devil got me into reading romance genre novels?

When I was younger I volunteered at a library (my hometown’s Fletcher Free, with the wonderful Lorrie and Bill). I handled everything that came through Circulation’s check-in during my shift, and I would shake my head every time I scanned in another Harlequin bodice-ripper—figuratively, not literally, because that would have been too much head shaking. They were extremely popular, getting comparable traction to the detective novels & legal dramas. Those old paperbacks were well-worn and much-loved, with technically-still-clothed beautiful men and women on their covers. Given how close the books were to falling apart back then, I wonder whether any of those books have survived the intervening decades.

Romance novels did not appeal to me. I was still in middle school, and I did not have the imaginative empathy necessary to wonder (much less understand) why people might like them. This, despite the fact that I’m pretty sure younger-Henry had already discovered internet porn.

I had lots of judgments. I never explicitly stated my judgments to the readers, but they were probably obvious to anyone paying much attention. Most readers returning romance novels wouldn’t have seen this, because they didn’t drop off their returns face-to-face. They preferred the anonymity of the off-hours book return. Given the alternative I offered, I get it.

These days, my relationship with romance novels is more like how I feel about country songs. I still don’t enjoy most of them, but I do read a few. Some I even really like. Obviously I didn’t dip my toe into the romance-waters just because other people like the genre—if that were enough, I would have devoured these books long ago. As I mentioned above, romance is popular. It sells.

So what changed?

It wasn’t one particular book. Or at least, I can’t point to one. Maybe if I went back through my reading logs, I would be able to identify where or when the tide began to turn.

That would be difficult though! What arbitrary distinction would I make, to more easily sort “romance” from “not romance”? Do I draw the line at romantic feelings? That would catch Ivanhoe. Do I draw the line at sex? Does it matter whether the sex is implied or explicit, or how explicit it is?

The truth is that those elements of romance were already present in many of the sci-fi and fantasy novels that I enjoyed most. I didn’t have any trouble with those romantic elements, even when they were threadbare or archaic or strange. Or, well… I usually didn’t feel like the romance or sexy-times detracted from the genre fiction I had signed up for.

Some examples: many of Heinlein’s books were pretty horny, and Heinlein and Harry Harrison (I’m thinking of the Stainless Steel Rat books) and Piers Anthony had some odd ideas about how to write romance or female characters. On a darker not-so-romantic note, there were Stephen R Donaldson’s Chronicles of Thomas Covenant or Gap Series (both include rape). Other times authors just really wanted to get kinky with domination/submission and sadomasochism (Terry Goodkind, Jaqueline Carey). In any case, I usually just read the horny or romantic or weird chapter and moved on. Sometimes the chapter was titillating, sometimes it was just tolerable, and usually I wanted more of whatever else the story was giving me.

I had to put down Lord Foul’s Bane when I first started it though. I was not ready for that in fifth grade.

Every so often, I rather liked the way the characters related to each other. I didn’t think of myself as liking “romance” in those situations, because obviously I was reading sci-fi or fantasy or whatever other genre the book ostensibly was. I am not surprised by either my instinctive rejection of the idea that I was reading romance or my enjoyment of some of those romantic plot threads.

Understanding my enjoyment feels easy: I’m human. Stories of romance and of love and loss and the messy and complicated emotions and experiences (including lust) that go along with all those are very human. We humans have a pretty good track record of being social animals, craving relationships with each other, and having lots of feels about those relationships. Some folks aren’t interested in romance, or in sex, or they like one but could do without the other. I happen to like both. But the bell curve of humanity encompasses many things, and I’m pretty sure that on average we like deep emotional relationships. I certainly do.

I suspect my aversion to reading anything labelled ‘romance’ came from a wider array of factors. For one, younger-Henry was much less in touch with his own emotional experiences, and less willing to engage with anything that was ‘girly.’ I’m pretty sure that was self-protective and due to enculturation. I mean, I was ridiculed in second grade for crying at a sad scene in a movie—becoming less in touch with my feelings was pretty helpful, socially speaking. I was also made fun of for being friends with a girl (which somehow made me ‘girly’), and I still feel bad about not spending as much time with her afterwards. Sorry Ellington.

Connected to that, I was taught (implicitly) from a young age that romance stories were to be looked down upon. The rationale for that was complicated, but I think it still boiled down to gender. I was a young boy, and romance novels (just like any other ‘girly’ book) were written by and for women. That was tied to a general devaluing of emotion and the feminine, or at least a prioritization of reason and the masculine.

Worse, romance novels were known to be horny, and were therefore (socially) deemed barely better than pornography. Even when the vast majority of their content was about emotional experiences and relationships, with just a droplet of eroticism smeared throughout, that drop of sexy ink indelibly stained the book’s literary water. This would need several other posts to explore, but I’m guessing the fact that these books were meant largely for women’s perspectives, and women’s sexual and emotional desires, made them somehow worse. You know, gendered expectations of purity and all that.

What did this mean for me?

Adventure novels were safe. Sci-fi was safe. Fantasy was safe. Reading those things still made me a nerd and a potential target for my peers, but it wasn’t as bad as if I’d been reading books for girls. I would definitely have been targeted even more than I already was if I were reading (or, gasp, enjoying) books for girls. If there was a bit of romance hidden in my other genre fiction, I could ignore it and enjoy it all at the same time.

Thus, my first step towards recognizing my enjoyment of romance was awareness.

For one, I finally acknowledged the fact that I liked the romantic relationships of some of the characters in the genre fiction I was reading. I also admitted that I enjoyed the sexy-times of some of those characters too, though the sexy-times were still happening in a sci-fi or fantasy or what-have-you context. I think I’d first recognized those facts in fifth grade while reading Dragonlance, though my enjoyment remained surreptitious for a long while. 

For those who don’t know, Dragonlance is a series of epic adventure stories (and a tabletop RPG campaign setting). It is mostly not-horny despite the scaly potential of that series title. The collected trilogies were the first 1k+ page books I read.

Even after acknowledging that I liked the romantic relationships in some books I read, I still held onto a general dislike for romance novels. I maintained that many of them were badly written and unsatisfying. Some glorified relationship dynamics that I hated, and I got frustrated just thinking about them. Yet others hit me right in the squirmy awkward feels. I used that general dislike to justify not trying more romance novels. I wouldn’t like them, so why bother?

Most of those thoughts and opinions haven’t changed, but a few things broadened my horizons. First, I read a lot of Lois McMaster Bujold—the Vorkosigan books, then others. Second, I tried writing romance and emotional connection in my own stories. Third, I had to read and discuss several romance genre or romance-adjacent books during my MFA program.

Lois McMaster Bujold rubbed my face in the fact that I liked sci-fi and fantasy with romance elements, and she did it while mainly adhering to the sci-fi and fantasy genre fiction conventions I’d expected. Then she rubbed my face in the fact that I liked romance fiction with other genre elements. I ultimately had to admit that the issues I had with romance novels were driven more by the specifics of an author, a set of tropes, or a particular story than by the genre as a whole. Once I acknowledged that, I felt far more willing to at least try books that featured lots of romance genre themes. It helped (still helps actually) to have other genre fiction themes present, which is part of why the rise of romantasy doesn’t surprise me at all.

Writing emotional connections, romantic or otherwise, was its own sort of revelation. Suddenly romance novels were interesting to me for how they created (or contrived) their characters’ entanglements. I didn’t suddenly think more romance novels were good, but I did have a greater appreciation for the ones that seemed to work. I also felt like I learned more about why I liked some romance novels but not others—T Kingfisher’s Paladin books have several excellent examples of characters who are actually good for each other, and it turns out that I really enjoy that.

Finally, the curriculum for my MFA included reading and discussing a number of romance or romance-adjacent books. I already knew much of what I craved from the genre fiction I loved, including but not limited to adventure, tension, conflict between people who weren’t on the same team (see again, Vicarious Squirmy Awfulness), and an emotionally satisfying climax bringing resolution to that tension. Talking with my classmates about my longstanding aversion to romance novels, and their own enjoyment or critiques of the romance genre, gave me a grounding and depth of understanding that helped a lot. They too (mostly) craved a romance genre formula like the one I already knew I loved: a certain set of initial emotional assumptions, conventions, and challenges, with a guaranteed emotionally satisfying relationship established, tested, and proven by the story’s resolution. Plus, being exposed to multiple romance novels and having more (good) ones recommended by my friends gave me a better starting point for learning more about what worked for me (or didn’t) in the genre.

Taking all that together, I couldn’t hold onto my grudge against romance novels. This was a gradual process, of course. But in much the same way that I really like some flavors of ice cream and am left aghast at others, sometimes even ostensibly the same flavor, I realized that the only way to find out which romance stories I liked was to try them.

I’m not here to tell you that you need to read romance novels. You don’t. You also don’t need to listen to country music, even though I do think you should try a few songs from Johnny Cash.

But I am asking you: are there any genres you categorically dislike? Can you articulate why? What makes them bad for you? Have you found any exceptions to your rule? Do you like any of that genre’s trappings when they’re incorporated into other stories?

Answering those questions might open you up to a few more good books, and that seems like a good thing to me.