Curious that you mention Emily Henry. I loved Book Lovers but would consider that romantic comedy not romance in the smutty sense.

I am loving this thread, OP! I tend to go for historical romance or erotica (voyeurism, orgies etc)

I like Mary Wine and particularly liked her “Highland Spitfire” which I read this year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sad to see so many people complain about poor writing - that has not been my experience at all, except maybe with the self-published stuff on Kindle Unlimited, and I wonder how much romance these PPs have actually read. The traditionally published authors are professional writers with professional editors. A weird number of them are former lawyers.

Try: Grace Burrowes, Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Kate Canterbary, Alisha Rai, Helen Hoang, Alyssa Cole, or Sarah MacLean.

Plenty of professional writers with professional editors have poor writing. Most books are trash.

NP here. Sarah MacLean is a friend. She is incredibly smart and a graduate of both Harvard and Smith. She can write anything, but through romance she has the ability to write a woman-centric story that is both hopeful and empowering.

Lisa Kleypas, graduate of Wellesley, writes beautifully.

Eloisa James. Graduate of Yale and Harvard, and a Shakespearean scholar, married to a Dante scholar.

And as mentioned upstream, many romance authors were lawyers. Julia Quinn was pre-med at Harvard before writing her first romance.

You might not like the genre in general, but don't stereotype based on your preferences in what you read.

Some of my absolute favs! Though…Julia Quinn writes some toxic men, IMO.

Historical romance is my Roman Empire.

Romance novels exist on a continuum. From the Rape Heroes of the 70s, gradually working their way forward with each generation of authors and readers who are raised to expect something different. An Emily Henry of today has very little in common with a Rosemary Rogers of decades ago. What romance novels do share is women standing up to men and becoming or (more currently) are equal to men. You never would have seen a beta man (actually I can think of one in the early 90s) in most anything before mid 2000s. And definitely no LGBTQ+ before a few years ago. Diverse, LGBTQ+ and beta are much more on point now.

As to Julia, as I'm sure you've seen, Shonda Rhimes has made the Bridgerton characters diverse and the men less toxic.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sad to see so many people complain about poor writing - that has not been my experience at all, except maybe with the self-published stuff on Kindle Unlimited, and I wonder how much romance these PPs have actually read. The traditionally published authors are professional writers with professional editors. A weird number of them are former lawyers.

Try: Grace Burrowes, Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Kate Canterbary, Alisha Rai, Helen Hoang, Alyssa Cole, or Sarah MacLean.

Plenty of professional writers with professional editors have poor writing. Most books are trash.

NP here. Sarah MacLean is a friend. She is incredibly smart and a graduate of both Harvard and Smith. She can write anything, but through romance she has the ability to write a woman-centric story that is both hopeful and empowering.

Lisa Kleypas, graduate of Wellesley, writes beautifully.

Eloisa James. Graduate of Yale and Harvard, and a Shakespearean scholar, married to a Dante scholar.

And as mentioned upstream, many romance authors were lawyers. Julia Quinn was pre-med at Harvard before writing her first romance.

You might not like the genre in general, but don't stereotype based on your preferences in what you read.

Some of my absolute favs! Though…Julia Quinn writes some toxic men, IMO.

Historical romance is my Roman Empire.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Surprised no one has mentioned Colleen Hoover. DH loves when he sees me reading her books.

It Ends With Us is the most famous but I loved Ugly Love and Verity.

I didnt find it ends with us all that smutty?

It's not and the only sex scenes are (spoiler alert) with her abuser.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sad to see so many people complain about poor writing - that has not been my experience at all, except maybe with the self-published stuff on Kindle Unlimited, and I wonder how much romance these PPs have actually read. The traditionally published authors are professional writers with professional editors. A weird number of them are former lawyers.

Try: Grace Burrowes, Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Kate Canterbary, Alisha Rai, Helen Hoang, Alyssa Cole, or Sarah MacLean.

Plenty of professional writers with professional editors have poor writing. Most books are trash.

NP here. Sarah MacLean is a friend. She is incredibly smart and a graduate of both Harvard and Smith. She can write anything, but through romance she has the ability to write a woman-centric story that is both hopeful and empowering.

Lisa Kleypas, graduate of Wellesley, writes beautifully.

Eloisa James. Graduate of Yale and Harvard, and a Shakespearean scholar, married to a Dante scholar.

And as mentioned upstream, many romance authors were lawyers. Julia Quinn was pre-med at Harvard before writing her first romance.

You might not like the genre in general, but don't stereotype based on your preferences in what you read.

Please tell Sarah MacLean I loved Bombshell!

I will.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sad to see so many people complain about poor writing - that has not been my experience at all, except maybe with the self-published stuff on Kindle Unlimited, and I wonder how much romance these PPs have actually read. The traditionally published authors are professional writers with professional editors. A weird number of them are former lawyers.

Try: Grace Burrowes, Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Kate Canterbary, Alisha Rai, Helen Hoang, Alyssa Cole, or Sarah MacLean.

Plenty of professional writers with professional editors have poor writing. Most books are trash.

NP here. Sarah MacLean is a friend. She is incredibly smart and a graduate of both Harvard and Smith. She can write anything, but through romance she has the ability to write a woman-centric story that is both hopeful and empowering.

Lisa Kleypas, graduate of Wellesley, writes beautifully.

Eloisa James. Graduate of Yale and Harvard, and a Shakespearean scholar, married to a Dante scholar.

And as mentioned upstream, many romance authors were lawyers. Julia Quinn was pre-med at Harvard before writing her first romance.

You might not like the genre in general, but don't stereotype based on your preferences in what you read.

Please tell Sarah MacLean I loved Bombshell!

The romance that is the latest phenomenon is Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros, which YTD has sold nearly 600K in physical copies, at least double that in E. It reads like YA to me, but still, I couldn't put it down.

Emily Henry is also huge.

Colleen Hoover is off the charts, making several publisher's numbers because she had published so many different places before she became a TikTok star. Plenty of backlist to keep her on the charts in several slots.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm sad to see so many people complain about poor writing - that has not been my experience at all, except maybe with the self-published stuff on Kindle Unlimited, and I wonder how much romance these PPs have actually read. The traditionally published authors are professional writers with professional editors. A weird number of them are former lawyers.

Try: Grace Burrowes, Courtney Milan, Tessa Dare, Kate Canterbary, Alisha Rai, Helen Hoang, Alyssa Cole, or Sarah MacLean.

Plenty of professional writers with professional editors have poor writing. Most books are trash.

NP here. Sarah MacLean is a friend. She is incredibly smart and a graduate of both Harvard and Smith. She can write anything, but through romance she has the ability to write a woman-centric story that is both hopeful and empowering.

Lisa Kleypas, graduate of Wellesley, writes beautifully.

Eloisa James. Graduate of Yale and Harvard, and a Shakespearean scholar, married to a Dante scholar.

And as mentioned upstream, many romance authors were lawyers. Julia Quinn was pre-med at Harvard before writing her first romance.

You might not like the genre in general, but don't stereotype based on your preferences in what you read.

I'm strictly monogamous, but I have been loving Reverse Harem books lately, where the female main character has multiple love interests. The guys don't date each other, but they all date her and often have sex with her at the same time.

C.M. Stunich on Kindle Unlimited is my favorite!

Anonymous wrote:Great thread OP! I’m looking books like the old short stories from Penthouse forum. You folks might be too young to remember those magazines. They use to sell them in the airport! Super smutty.

Women do not like to read penthouse type of smut. The explicit scenes are total fantasies but the women are usually empowered and the man is always dreamy, successful, loaded, hung and crazy about the woman. We don't want average Joes.