My Valentine’s Day Ode to Romance
It’s been two weeks since I announced that I was leaving my marketing job to spend the year writing a series of romance novels, so I can’t help but celebrate Valentine’s Day with a personal ode to love and romance.
Because let’s face it—romance isn’t exactly revered in America’s puritanical society:
Only 3 states fully mandate sex and HIV education that is medically accurate, culturally unbiased, and includes life skills on consent, healthy relationships, and violence prevention (California, New Jersey, Rhode Island).
A 2015 Nielsen study found that 80% of parents surveyed were concerned by sexual content in film, versus less than two-thirds (64%) by graphic violence.
The National Retail Federation reports that this year, 72% of Americans planned to watch the Super Bowl, but only 53% planned to celebrate Valentine’s Day.
Now I’m not saying that loving football or refusing to buy heart-shaped candy makes you a bad romantic partner, but anecdotally I’ve found that romance has never garnered the same level of respect as other cultural counterparts.
After all, how often have you called watching horror movies your “guilty pleasure?” You can buy just as much chocolate for Halloween, so why isn’t it considered a “Hallmark holiday?”
Is it because romance is stereotyped as being only desired by women? Sadly, the answer is yes, 100%, absolutely, of course, duh.
And if you refuse to believe that romance in media is anything other than fluffy drivel, then frankly I don’t know why you clicked on this blog post.
But if you came to learn more about my personal journey with the genre and what recent favorites I’d recommend in honor of V-Day, then you are in for a sugar-coated treat.
My Romance-Obsessed Origin Story
Before I jump in, I just want to caveat the following walk down memory lane with the acknowledgment that my upbringing was heavily conditioned by white, heteronormative love stories.
Everyone’s relationship with romance is personal, and I’m overjoyed by the increasing rise of under-represented voices in books and film. Love is love, and it should be celebrated in all its forms. We’ve come a long way since 1989, but since that’s when I was born, let’s start there.
That hair swoosh? Rachel from “Friends” could never! (Source: Soaps.com)
Childhood: Let’s Get Soapy
My earliest memories of falling in love with love were tuning into daytime soap operas with my mom. She’d get her nails done at her aesthetician's house, and TV shows like The Bold and the Beautiful would be on in the background.
I’d follow the on-again, off-again relationships of Brooke and Ridge and the whole cast of characters, which probably helped fuel my intense need for gossip and drama. Every time my mom took us to the supermarket she’d purchase the latest issue of Soap Opera Digest, and I would skim the pages just for a few salacious sentences to find out who “made love” that week.
Even the more age-appropriate sitcoms I adored as a kid—Boy Meets World, Growing Pains, Full House—primarily kept my attention with their sweet depictions of teenage love. Who didn’t think Cory and Topanga were #RelationshipGoals in the 90s?
“Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame…” (Source: WSJ)
Middle School: And You Have My Bow—Oh
To excuse my frankness and cut right to the chase, as soon as I read Jezebel’s recent article, “The Moment We Realized We Were Horny,” I immediately thought of my own sexual awakening in December 2001: I was 12 years old and I had just seen Legolas appear in The Fellowship of the Ring.
And if you’re thinking to yourself, “Well, that’s not so strange, Orlando Bloom was a total heartthrob back then.” Well, I said what I said. While I loved Pirates of the Caribbean, suffered through Elizabethtown, and slept through Kingdom of Heaven, it wasn’t the British actor that kickstarted my puberty. It was Legolas Greenleaf, Prince of the Woodland Realm, son of Thranduil, King of the Elves of Northern Mirkwood.
Before LOTR, I was a girl preoccupied with animal adventure tales, like The Call of the Wild and Island of the Blue Dolphins, but afterward I just couldn’t get enough of fantasy men with long hair and longer weapons (see also: Lucius Malfoy, Sephiroth, and Loki). Some things never change!
#Chair forever (Source: DigitalSpy)
High School: My Romance Renaissance
The early aughts were a special time for romance: Beyoncé’s solo career was just taking off, Julia Stiles and Amanda Bynes were everyone’s favorite leading ladies, and James McAvoy had evolved from Mr. Tumnus to period drama dreamboat.
I watched Step Up on my first date and kickstarted my fascination with what I fondly refer to as “hot people shows”, like The O.C. and Gossip Girl. Call me shallow but to this day, if you recommend something to watch, my first question won’t be related to the pacing or the character development, but rather how much eye candy I can indulge in.
High school was also the period I crossed the Pacific in my romance consumption and became a huge fan of manga and anime. American distributors, like Viz Media, TOKYOPOP, and Funimation dominated the market, and I found a new passion for the shojo genre catered to young women—like Vampire Knight, which had taken Japan by storm a year before Twilight was published. Love triangles, reverse harems, gender benders—I inhaled it all.
Arashi makes love so sweet (Source: Wikipedia)
College: J-Pop Joy & Latin Love
By the time I entered college, I had expanded beyond anime to J-pop and K-pop—bands like Arashi and TVXQ rose to international fame in the late 2000s, and I was fortunate to have a roommate who majored in Japanese and kept me in the loop on all the hottest men hits.
I was also studying a sexy language at the time: Latin (hear me out). When I wasn’t maxing out my iPod storage with the top of the Oricon charts, I was translating thousands of lines of literature from horny ancient Romans. Need a last-minute poem for Valentine’s Day? Might I recommend Catullus 16? Nothing adds more spice to the bedroom than reciting, “Pedicabo ego vos et irrumabo,” trust me ;)
Tell that to Silicon Valley… (Source: Quotes.pub)
Adulthood: Nerding on Romance Novels
I finished grad school in 2012, and while I can’t pinpoint the first adult romance novel I ever read, I know that the books that sparked my passion were the Nerd series by Vicki Lewis Thompson. Instead of traditional alpha males, these stories featured heroes who were programmers, inventors, and even Bigfoot enthusiasts. And since the women who fell in love with them were models, actresses, and sex therapists, the dynamics were always fun, flirty, and full of surprises.
These were the stories I always wanted to read, and I’ve never experienced any romance novels like them since, so I soon took things into my own hands and started writing my own Silicon Valley romances. Fun fact: the heroine in Nerd Gone Wild was named Ally Jarrett, so it’s no surprise that these books seemed made just for me!
My 5 (Recent) Favorite Romance Novels
Alright, let’s fast forward a decade and bring us to the present day. If you’ve scrolled this far, you deserve to treat yourself to some amazing love stories, so here are my top five favorite contemporary romance novels in the last five years.
Freshest Voice: The Hating Game by Sally Thorne (2016)
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
One-sentence recommendation: Smart, snappy, and sexy as hell—move over, “Fifty Shades,” because this office romance has the elevator scene to remember.
Trope Twist: You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle (2020)
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
One-sentence recommendation: Enemies-to-lovers takes on a whole new meaning because these two are already married.
Sweet and Steamy: The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang (2018)
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
One-sentence recommendation: A neurodivergent heroine who’s shown the ropes by a male escort, and holy moly, give this guy a Masterclass because I would sign up for personal lessons, pronto.
Best Debut: One to Watch by Kate Stayman-London (2020)
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars
One-sentence recommendation: I made the mistake of reading this while revising my own novel with a reality show premise, and I almost hate how good it is.
Millennial Magic: My Not-So-Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella (2017)
My rating: 5 out of 5 stars
One-sentence recommendation: Kinsella’s at her finest in this laugh-out-loud romp that highlights what happens when you stop living for the likes and start embracing real life and real love.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Well, nearly 1,500 words later, there’s still so much I could say on the topic of romance, which is exactly why I started this blog in the first place. If you’re just as passionate about passion as I am, then make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss any of my articles and recommendations.
And however you celebrate—or don’t celebrate—Valentine’s Day, I wish you the kind of love worth writing about ❤️