Romance in the Air, Part I

 

I never thought of myself as someone who read romance novels - but lately I have come to think that maybe I didn't appreciate the breadth of novels that fall under the romance umbrella.  I pictured the dime-story novels with Fabio on the cover.  But, thanks to my recent shortened attention span, and a few friends who are staunch defenders of the romance genre, I've spent the past year broadening my horizons a bit and learning that a little romance is good for the soul.

A year or so ago, I discovered local writer Jasmine Guillory as part of the Read Harder Challenge.  The category was a romance by a person of color.  And so, I stumbled upon her Wedding Date series.  I read the first three, and was happy to have two more from to read recently.  In Royal Holiday, Maddie is invited to England for Christmas to work as a stylist for a royal wedding.  She invites her mother to join her, and while she's busy working away, her mother meets the royal family's private secretary whose offer to take her on a private tour of the royal grounds turns into much much more.  In Party of Two, the action returns to Los Angeles where Olivia Monroe has recently relocated to start her own law firm.  Determined to focus on her professional life, she of course finds herself tangled up with California's attractive junior senator.  Unsure if she - or their romance - can withstand the media scrutiny, Olivia is forced to confront her past and acknowldge is really important to her.  Typical romance with opposites attracting and secrets threatening to break up the romance - you know they'll find their happy ending, but getting there is full of surprises and entertainment!

After reading Taylor Jenkins Reid's most recent novels Daisy Jones & The Six and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, I was eager to go back and read her earlier novels.  Daisy and Evelyn are very different from each other, and they are both a departure from the stories Reid starting out telling, which I would place in the romance category.  I went back and started with Forvever, Interrupted, about Elsie who gets married after a whirlwind several month romance, only to have her new husband die in an accident less than two weeks later.  Elsie is left to reexamine the meaning of her relationship, in the face of a grieving mother who wonders how important someone her son never mentioned could actually have been.  This book presents the interesting premise - given that so many relationships fizzle over time, how would you know if this would have been the love of your life, or if the person was simply taken before the relationship had the chance to get to that point.  And, even assuming the relationship would have fizzled, does that diminish the value of the relationship as experienced?  While I didn't find either Elsie or her mother-in-law particularly likeable, this book did raise many questions for me about the importance of moments and the value of time.  The next Reid novel I picked up, Maybe in Another Life, was a pretty well done version of Sliding Doors - which asks the question of what would happen if at a seemingly insignificant decision-making point in your life, you made a different choice.  When Hannah returns to her hometown after feeling like she's failed in both her personal and professional life, she runs into her high school ex-boyfriend.  He asks her to come home with her.  In one version, she goes.  In the other, she says no.  I wondered throughout the book if no matter which choice Hannah made if she would end up in the same place - how much of a role fate would play - or if perhaps she could end up having her happily ever after no matter which path she chose.  With chapters alternating between her choices, I found myself staying up late into the night to finish this one and find out where Hannah ended up.  And finally, I picked up One True Loves - yet another one that focused on the idea of your one true love.  Emma marries her high school sweetheart, but shortly after their wedding, he disappears and is presumed dead.  As the years drag on, Emma slowly finds herself able to reengage wth the world, and even to fall in love again.  But what happens when she discovers that her husband is still alive?  Which true love is for real?  This book raises a lot of questions about who we are when we fall in love, and how much life events can change us, and the nature of that love when we're no longer the person we used to be.