As a self-professed bibliophile, my life revolved around the little moments I could steal away to read. In elementary school, I figured out how fast I could appropriately finish my multiplication test to dive right back into “Anne of Green Gables.” I perfected the art of sneaking “Julie and the Wolves” by Jean Craighead George into loud Italian restaurants to read it under the table. Most often, though, I knew exactly when at night I could sit on the cold bathroom tile and read “Mockingjay” by Suzanne Collins with the moonlight filtering through the half-cracked window. On my frequent library runs, I’d give half of my stack of books to my brother and I’d carry the remaining seven, made up of mysteries, fairytale retellings and, of course, the latest Percy Jackson installment.
The edges of my teal library card were peeling, plastic film turning up at the corners from overuse. Those 14 digits were sacred — I memorized them before either of my parent’s phone numbers. In fifth grade, when my family rented a vacation house in Northport, I begged my dad for a borrower’s card. Even during my first family vacation, spending a week without a prepared slate of books to rip through seemed like a fate worse than death.
Never mind that my Vera Bradley duffle bag was weighed down by six of my current reads. I needed to roam the dusty, one-and-a-half-room town library in between the hours of swimming in Lake Michigan and walking to Barb’s Bakery for a white paper bag crammed with sticky cinnamon twists. Though it was technically the family’s library card, I took the liberty of signing it with just my first name in my closest approximation to cursive, a little heart connected to the “e” at the end of “Charlotte.”
I would read everything — except for romance.
With all the books I read (and reread), I was certain that I was a “good” reader. And I thought being a good reader meant reading “good” books. As my reading level grew from middle grade to young adult, one thing stayed constant — romance books were not “good” books. They were cop-outs, I thought. They were just stories about relationships and people talking and crying (a lot) and maybe kissing. Other books had so much more for me to learn besides how to best deal with breakups. Literary fiction, historical novels and mysteries had a degree of intellectual stimulation — complex conflict exploration not centered around someone not returning your texts.
Whether it was how the romance display was stuffed near the back of the local library or how my more bookish friends scoffed at the very being of the genre, I quickly internalized — even in elementary school — that romance wasn’t a respectable genre. “Love is gross,” they’d say in line as we waited for our turn in the ongoing Four square game at recess, and I’d nod in agreement. Why waste time with something so boring when you could just travel with Jack and Annie to experience King Arthur’s reign in Mary Pope Osborne’s “The Magic Treehouse”?
I carried this romance-book aversion throughout the years. Whether it was losing the Snapstreak with the cute boy from my eighth-grade Catechism group or the surprise girlfriend of the guy in the environmental club my sophomore year of college, I grew (even) more disillusioned with the genre. As my friends and even siblings found fulfilling, heartwarming romantic relationships, I was left in a Sisyphean cycle of downloading and deleting dating apps. I had never even so much as held hands — I didn’t need the constant reminders from books professing the joys of deep, emotional connections.
My jaded perspective wasn’t the only thing preventing me from giving this genre a chance. The societal stigma around romance novels was stifling, and I encountered it everywhere. From the fellow English majors in my Shakespeare class to the online mockery of the “Colleen Hoover” cults, I felt an inordinate pressure to continue being a “good” reader, to read “good” books about real, serious topics. There had to be a reason these kinds of books didn’t warrant serious literary analysis — why there were only six classes in the LSA course guide that mentioned “romance” in a non-Romance language context somewhere in their descriptions.
I tried as long as I could to avoid Emily Henry, the newly dubbed “queen of romcom.” I tried to scroll past all videos on my TikTok feed that mentioned her, to avoid the handwritten note cards singing her praises on display shelves in Barnes & Noble. I felt a little bad that all my distaste for a genre I’d never even tried was inflicted upon this poor woman. But when one of my best friend’s eyes lit up after I asked for her opinion on “Book Lovers,” though it stood for everything I disliked with the genre, I begrudgingly agreed to try it.
On the sandy shore of the Northport Harbor this past July, I steeled myself for a mind-numbing, emotional snooze-fest and opened to the first page. I spent nearly three hours lying on the sand, flipping through the pages as the local sailing school sloughed their boats out into the lake. Against my wildest, deeply-held expectations, I was enjoying this book.
I followed the main characters around, observing the cheesy rain scenes and candlelit dinners that were tempered by fights between the protagonist and her sister about their road trip. I watched the protagonist’s struggle to unlearn poor childhood tendencies and followed them all as they battled grief, made mistakes and, yes, occasionally kissed.
As I shifted my towel under my arm, walking back up the sun-warmed street to our rental house, I was thoroughly confused by the end-of-book “reading high” I was experiencing. I was almost dizzy from the story I just read — it was a romance book, and I enjoyed it. I even had a small sunburn on my chest from my awkward reading angle on the beach, a permanent reminder etched right over my heart.
It wasn’t the most thought-provoking piece of literature I’d ever read. It didn’t fundamentally change my perspective on grief, familial relationships or vulnerability, as other books had. I didn’t “learn” anything of value for a classroom. But viscerally experiencing and focusing on the untold minutiae of the human condition through blossoming romantic endeavors was nearly as fun as solving small-town murder mysteries or watching characters outsmart magic curses.
This went against just about every bookworm bone in my body. I wasn’t supposed to “like” the romance genre, let alone want to preorder the author’s next book. I thought they were supposed to be stupid little books, with stupid stories about stupid mistakes made by stupid characters made even stupider by love.
But I didn’t find “Book Lovers” stupid — I found it to be quite the opposite. I had the chance to step into the protagonist’s shoes for a second and experience, yes, her love story, but her bigger narrative arc and the challenge of whether she should pursue her dream job. Of allowing herself to be vulnerable with her emotions, both romantic and otherwise. Of realizing how much she loved her sister.
I was, I realized, learning, just as I had with my magical, historical and detective books. Though I wasn’t sleuthing out who murdered the town’s heiress or absorbing a new codex of information for a fantasy world, I was figuring out what sorts of qualities I had in common with the main character.
Though romance books are certainly not the only book you can read to learn about yourself, as I devoured the rest of Henry’s discography, I became enamored with their feelings-first focus. There was a certain charm in following the tangled threads of the characters’ emotional journeys — their self-discovery, joy, laughter and heartache — that I just hadn’t felt in my other books. I would emerge from reading a romance book and feel intangibly lighter — a little fuzzy around the edges — as if the physical words and “lessons” the characters and relationships learned about feelings were softly being pressed upon my heart.
You do not have to log hundreds of sappy love stories on your Goodreads profile. Your heart doesn’t have to race in tandem with the characters as they race across a crowded airport or a dewy meadow. You do not have to like romance books. But you may find something of value in them if you take the leap and pick up their pink, cartoon-ish covers. After experiencing the dizzying, triumphant conclusion of Emily Henry’s romcom, there is so much we can learn about ourselves, and walking that path of self-discovery via those cartoony covers may just be one of the best opportunities to do that.
As I balanced my Emily Henry collection on the top of my bookshelf — one hardcover, three paperbacks — I took a moment to consider the haphazard stack of mystery, historical nonfiction and fantasy books next to it. If fifth-grade me could see my piles of paperbacks, she would be horrified. But I’d tell her to keep an open mind, to realize they’re not “just” romance books. They’re about human connection, the exploration of love in all its forms — shattering norms, fighting against fate and sometimes just surviving. I slid my copy of “The Idiot” by Eli Batuman right next to “Book Lovers.”
For Christmas this year, I received a Barnes & Noble gift card from my parents. After perusing the carousels of mysteries, debut young adult authors and books tangentially related to journalism, a purple cartoon-ish cover caught my eye. From the bright, artistic cover to the jilted ex-fiances faking a relationship for their friends’ wedding in the synopsis, Emily Henry’s newest book “Funny Story” seemed like everything my younger self would have hated.
I gladly paid the extra $5 to have the hardcover signed by her.
Statement Columnist Charlotte Parent can be reached at cmparent@umich.edu.