Dammit, Supernatural Romance

To be clear: I am not a fan of the romance genre in general. It’s a genre that’s been targeted at me my whole life that I have never liked. I don’t mind it as part of the narrative where it isn’t the most important thing, but on its own, I find it irritating and predictable, often playing mostly on gender tropes that I’d rather would just die.

But I have a lot of supernatural romance on my Kobo. I downloaded a lot of free books once upon a time and they looked like they would have more supernatural than romance in it. Plus, I know romance is a bit of a weak point for me, so I wanted to see how other authors with more experience handled it. I figured reading them would be an educational experience and I would get something useful out of the experience, even if I knew it would end predictably.

I’ll give them this. I didn’t see any of these endings coming. Mostly because most of them made no goddamn sense.

So let’s go through what appears to be the rules of the genre, near as I can tell. I read three of these books so far all the way through1 and I’ve noticed a few trends that they all share. Please note, I didn’t read anything with a love triangle.

1. Straight female protagonist, probably in her 30s. Most have some sort of job that allows them to be independent.
2. She’s gotta be hot, but she probably doesn’t know it.
3. She also has no parents. She can have grandparents or parental figures, but her direct parents are dead.2
4. She’s married at the start3 to a guy who is an alcoholic. He’s probably also cheating on her. If he is, he’s gotten the other woman pregnant.
5. It is definitely his fault the relationship is failing/has failed. The main lady is absolutely,100% not at fault for the failed relationship.
6. The woman has no friends who could be potentially romantically threatening. All potential male friends are either gay or in relationships.
7. The love interest has some sort of female fetish type job, or at least one with a super sexy uniform.4
8. It’s set in a small town, or it feels like it must be a small town.
9. The love interest is completely perfect. At least, the book will really try to sell this guy as a completely perfect man, no matter his actions.5
10. When she hooks up with the love interest, she is still somehow married to the unrepentant douchebag she was with before.
11. Children are always important to the main lady in some way.
12. At about the 2/3 – 3/4 mark, she will have a heart to heart with the unrepentant douchebag ex and they will come to an agreement of some sort. And then he will die soon after. They will still be married.6
13. Even if the main lady ends up killing someone, it will absolutely not be her fault that it happened. It was probably even something out of her control.7
14. There should be minimal if any scenes in a hospital. If the main lady is hospitalized, she can definitely just walk out of there.
15. The reveal that leads into the climax will make me want to throw my book out a window.8

While I think I could definitely write one of these books at this point, I am not going to. This is not my genre. I’ve seen positive and glowing reviews for all of these books and I just can’t with this type of escapist fantasy. I understand why, but it’s just not my thing.

On the other hand, I still have more on my Kobo. And I have no plans to delete them.

1. And gave up on others [↩]
2. I think this is supposed to be the grown up Disney princess genre [↩]
3. Even if you don’t know it right away! [↩]
4. I got a doctor, a fireman, and a sheriff [↩]
5. Letting the protagonist off of crimes that she’s definitely guilty of, taking her to a romantic cabin in the woods instead of a hospital [↩]
6. This still technically happened in the one potential exception. [↩]
7. The sea murdered people for her! [↩]
8. A HOUSE THAT EATS LOVE [↩]