On Getting Away with Cliché

Tweet

After a small hiatus from the genre, I started reading romance novels again in December, and I have some new thoughts.

The reason for my burnout: the constraints of the genre had palled. Instead of soothing through familiarity, they scraped across my nerves because of their sameness. I found myself skimming over scenes of first meetings, scenes of realization, scenes of sexual intimacy–skimming in novels by authors whose work I love, whose prose is skilled and creative. Everything...