It's Friday and thus perhaps time for another Book Blogger Hop post courtesy of Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer and today's topic is "how do you feel about the current state of romance novels?".
I'll probably piss off a few people for saying this, but I think the majority of them are poorly written. I'm not saying all of them are poorly written, but of those that I've read, the majority left me wishing for more. Some elements I didn't quite like was rushed writing and/or first draft vibes, cookie cutter characters without any depth, little character development, poorly written plots (with or without plot holes), and for that matter, the overuse of tropes and leaning in to heavily on said tropes.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not against tropes, but there's a difference in using perhaps one or two tropes and write them skillfully into the story, versus having tropes and vibes only, and nothing else to make the book well-written, such as beautifully written prose, a good story overall, or whatever else that could elevate the book.
While I'm normally against book burning, there's a quite a few books I'd sacrifice should the need arise to put it that way. Honestly, one of the very few romance novels I've read in recent years that made me as an English major happy, was The Consequences of Love by Sulaiman Addonia as the story was so heartbreaking as well as complex and beautifully written. There's of course also classics like Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen that's totally worth the read.
I don't have anything against romance novels, what I do have issues with is poorly written books overall regardless of genre, and while it's sometimes nice reading lighter books, don't cut back on the quality of the writing.
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