Would someone please tell me what it is about romance novels? I mean, what is it about them that makes people actually want to read them?

My latest Castle fanfic is another light-hearted stab at the genre. There’s a lot of romance in the Castle group on fanfiction.net. Stuff like,

“Oh, Castle!”

“Beckett!”

“Oh, Castle, I…”

“I know. Oh, Beckett, I know.”

Researching the genre a bit, I purchased a popular Harlequin Blaze novel, Thrill Me by Leslie Kelly. I was pleasantly surprised by the opening chapter. In fact, I was hooked by the first three sentences:

Sophie Winchester was skilled at only two things. She could type 120 words per minute without a single error.

And she was damn good at committing murder.

Like I said, hooked.

It turns out Sophie only commits murder on paper. As Richard Castle says, a lot more lucrative, a lot less prison.

She lives in a town called Derryville, a nod to Stephen King’s fictional town of Derry, where Very Bad Things happen. And keep happening. Nice touch!

But all good things come to an end, and we get down to it. The romance part. At the sight of the new sheriff in town, Sophie finds herself weak and dizzy, unable to stand without his assistance, unable to take her hands off him after gripping his oh so manly shoulders for support.

You get the idea.

And people like this stuff? Admittedly, I don’t read a huge amount of romance, but this type of behaviour on the part of the female protagonist doesn’t seem unusual. What happened to the concern one hears about the lack of strong, female characters in movies and TV shows? Are romance authors trying to harken back to an earlier age, in which females waited for their Prince Charming to make them weak at the knees and fluttery in the eyes? If so, what age would that be? Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, I would point out, was published in the late 18th Century. I don’t see the women in that novel behaving like silly, limp dolls. Well, except for Lydia, of course.

How about a couple of strong characters with a complex relationship, buffeted by forces outside of their control, having to make life-changing decisions where no matter what they choose, someone gets hurt? Or is that sort of thing not considered a “romance” novel, but just a plain non-genre novel?

Ah well. In the end, it’s easy to poke fun at the romance genre, but at least its got people reading, and that’s always a good thing.