Any Trope but You

by Victoria Lavine

How can she write romance novels if she believes love is Satan’s pyramid scheme?

I learned the hard way that in this bleak swipe-left world, romance novels give hope to the hopeless. They make you believe that a sensitive, multilingual, insanely jacked doctor named Hunter is just waiting in the wings of your life, ready to laugh with you about all the toads you dated while cuddling after your nightly synchronized orgasms.

I’ve grown accustomed to it the way anyone becomes used to something unbearable. By sheer necessity.

“So you were knocked on your ass. So what? Do you think Taylor Swift gave up after her recording company screwed her over? No. She started rerecording her own albums and emerged as a new woman. A better woman. And when people still tried to dim her shine? Do you think she threw in the towel? No. She slapped the world back with her Eras Tour.”