There’s a poll up at Dear Author asking readers to vote on which decade they consider to be the Golden Era of Romance. So far, the 1990s are ahead, with the 2000s coming in second. I still haven’t voted as I’m still debating which decade to pick.
When I started reading romance in the early 90s, I read Mills & Boon exclusively. These were the only romance books available in Ireland which subscribed to the American definition of the genre. There were plenty of authors of women’s fiction or romantic fiction but they tended more towards sagas and blockbusters: Barbara Taylor Bradford and Jilly Cooper, for example. I discovered American romance authors when I was about 15 years old in a speciality bookstore in Dublin called Murder Ink. As the name suggests, they stocked mostly US editions of mysteries and thrillers, but they also had a couple of shelves devoted to romance. And so I discovered the wonders of Julie Garwood, Johanna Lindsey, Amanda Quick and Catherine Coulter, to name but a few. I have fond memories of romances published in the 1990s simply because they were my first exposure to a genre I’ve grown to love.
When I moved to Germany in 2000, I was desperate for English books. The limited selection available in the brick-and-mortar bookstores was ridiculously over-priced. Discovering the English Bookstore at Amazon Germany was a revelation to me, particularly the romance section. Suddenly, a whole new world opened up, and I could buy books which I’d seen featured on All About Romance but couldn’t find in Europe.
As the years have passed, I’ve read countless romance novels in various subgenres. I’m relieved to see the days of über alpha males and ‘forced seduction’ are over, but I miss the variety of settings featured in romances of earlier decades. Thanks to the internet, I’ve been fortunate enough to discover other readers with similar taste to mine and I now base my purchasing choices on their recommendations. This means fewer duds and more reading satisfaction. So for my personal reading experience, the 2000s reign supreme, even though some of the books which I’ve read were published in the 1990s.
If you voted, which decade did you pick and why?
{ 19 comments }
I like the 1990′s I have read many books I have re-read to pieces from Candlelight, national publisher of historical novels, to many contemporary novels and suspense but I think I would go for 2000 Since that is when I discovered (in Dutch) Diana Gabaldon, Anne Rice, Laurell K Hamilton, Katherine Neville and I just realize that most of the above authors are not released in the romance genre LOL
I think in 2000 the romance has taken a different road though, much changed and I expanded my horizon considerably, so I am leaning towards 2000 but the 1990 hold authors like Bertrice Small, Nora Roberts, Elizabeth Lowell, Susan Carroll, Nicolas Evans and Adam Strong.
This is such a difficult choice to make!
Great topic Sarah!
For me it’s the 2000s too. Not just because it’s when I started reading a lot of romance but I think the diversity with all the subgenres is greater now than it was in the 90s! And the development and evolvement of digital publishing (ebooks) is another reason for me.
I would pick the 1990′s. That is where I found out about Julie Garwood, Lisa Kleypas and a slew of other authors who started writing then and still do.
I also read the majority of the Zebra historicals then and found out about the Loveswept line.
I find I can’t vote–I would have to check my shelves for publication dates, count them, etc. I’ll just say that each decade has its strengths and weaknesses and leave it at that.
Me, official fence sitter
I don’t think there is any “right answer” on a poll like this because readers tend to view their reading pasts while wearing rose-colored glasses. We all remember the great books that were published within certain decades. We remember how mind-altering The Flame And The Flower was and we remember authors like Linda Howard and Nora Roberts breaking into the “mainstream.” What we don’t remember? All the crap we had to wade through to get to the few gems. And every decade had their fair share of crap. Just sayin’.
But if I were going to pick a decade, my knee-jerk response is the 1990s. Romance had firmly moved away from the Rape Her Until She Falls In Love With You trope and the contemporary romance really started to gain some traction in the single title format. And also, this can’t be discounted, publishers were still open to publishing westerns
@Leontine With a new one coming out soon, I need to catch up on the last couple of Gabaldon books.
@Pearl That’s an interesting point you make regarding the diversity of subgenres. Hmm. I’m always bitching about the lack of variety of settings in historical romance but it is true that there are other subgenres to choose from in order to compensate.
@katiebabs I completely missed the Loveswept line. I’ve been impressed with the last few Zebra debut historicals I’ve read, though. They seem willing to take risks.
@azteclady I’m a fellow fence sitter on this topic. I can’t give a definitive answer.
@Wendy That is so true about forgetting the crap. People do tend to focus on their fave authors from whichever decade, dwelling on those who are no longer writing with particular nostalgia.
While I read a bit of stuff when younger there were only a couple of authors that were standouts, I pretty much only read it when there was nothing else to read. I found it got my feminist heckles up, ok it still does this often, but found it worse in the nineties and with the 80s books that I would find in oppies.
But in the 00s I discovered paranormal romances, and have been sucked in, and feel that there is more diversity now genre wise, stylistically, etc. I am also loving the accessibility and range of ebooks so that counted in my vote.
@Edie I’ve never read Kathleen Woodiwiss and some of the other ‘classic’ romance authors. From what I’ve heard, I don’t think I should. I’m still recovering from the horror of Whitefire by Fern Michaels. It features a rapist hero – urgh!
I picked the 2000s, too. I started reading romances in the 1990′s and I enjoyed them; but I think in this decade they’re really stepping up their game. The heroines are much more kick-ass and independent, and it *seems* like there’s a stronger emphasis on great characters and storytelling these days. But then I haven’t read many romances pre-1992, so maybe that’s just a mistaken impression on my part.
90s — hands down. Jane Feather, Patricia Gaffney, Mary Jo Putney, Laura Kinsale (historicals); Mira Stables, Joan Smith, Joan Wolf, Lynn Kerstan & Elizabeth Mansfield (Regencies – series). I don’t think anyone today is writing anything nearly as good as their stuff. (I’ll give Loretta Chase an honorable mention as the counter-argument.) (Alas, I can’t add Candace Camp for my side: she wrote her best stuff — “Rainbow Season” as Lisa Gregory and “Very Special Favor” by Kristin James — even earlier, but the 70s & 80s weren’t a choice!) Barbara Delinsky and Glenda Sanders in contemporaries (series). Jennifer Crusie and Susan Elizabeth Phillips count in both eras!
Now, I’ll admit I stopped reading romances in the 2000s, so I’m biased the other way. But in some ways I feel this reinforces my pick: I’ve been reading only Grade-A novels from the 2000s, and I’ve now read over 45 (still on that one-a-day kick) all very recently. So unless someone has been holding back on the Grade-A+ books from the 2000s, I think I’m still solidly in the 1990s camp on this one.
Sure there’s more explicit sex today, but I don’t see that as necessarily an improvement in the art. Basically, it’s just a new genre, just as there are orders of magnitude more paranormals now than in the 90s. And in the historicals, all this kick-ass attitude and liberation vis a vis sex is disconcertingly anachronistic.
Hey, just my opinion.
@heidenkind I’ve read no romances prior to 1990 (I think, and comparatively few from the 1990s. The ones I have read from the 90s are books which are acclaimed by readers far and wide and probably give a mistaken impression of the quality of all romances published then.
@Magdalen Gosh, I’ve read only a couple of the historical authors you mention. I’ve definitely read books by Laura Kinsale and Joan Wolf, but I don’t know the others. Jennifer Crusie and Susan Elizabeth Phillips I like.
One subgenre which has most definitely gone downhill in the 2000s is historical romance. Although there are a few good authors writing, there’s a distinct lack of variety in settings. I think the contemporary has come into its own this decade, and I enjoy some romantic suspense.
I’m a reader for whom less is usually more when it comes to sex in romance novels. I miss the build up of tension from the old days.
Still, I agree with the previous posters that when you read these books for the first time makes all the difference. I am not the person I was when I was reading books in the late 80s and early 90s; I know Patricia Gaffney stands the test of time because I’ve recently reread To Love & To Cherish. And I can vouch for several others, but all of them? Maybe some of them wouldn’t seem quite so wonderful to me today as they did 15 years ago.
Also, our tastes are developed in different ways. There are those people whose ideas of what a Regency romance should be have been shaped by Georgette Heyer, and those whose ideas where shaped by Julia Quinn. For the first group of people, today’s crop of Regencies read differently than they do for the second group of people.
Which is another way of saying, Different Strokes for Different Folks.
@Magdalen I still have some of the first romances I ever read, but more for nostalgia’s sake. I don’t know how well Julia Garwood’s medievals would hold up today, even though I loved them when I read them years ago.
My first exposure to Regency romance was Georgette Heyer, so I didn’t leap on the Julia Quinn bandwagon when her books became popular. That said, I enjoyed her latest very much. I prefer darker historicals to light and fluffy, but so few are published these days. Readers tend to gravitate towards paranormals and romantic suspense for their dark and gritty fix.
What do you mean by darker? What I admired about the historicals from the 90s is that they were thicker — and I don’t just mean number of pages. There was more writing going on, and while that can sometimes mean more boring, I recall those books as being brocade compared to today’s muslin.
Here’s another difference: You know how spies in the Napoleonic Wars are all the rage these days? Well, back in the early Jane Feather/Patricia Gaffney days (which may go all the way back to the late 80s), smuggling was the plot hook of its day.
Let me know if you are having trouble getting used copies of any of the authors I listed. I’ll happily send a care package to Switzerland!
@Magdalen The 90s romances I enjoyed could be classified as “sweeping historicals”, if that makes sense. The stories were complex and they were definitely longer than the average romance published today. (There was a discussion about today’s reduced word count in a recent post at Dear Author.)
When I referred to older historicals as darker, I was generalizing wildly, but I think I have a point. Most historical romances published nowadays are set in Regency or Victorian England. They feature rich, clean and well-bred heroes and heroines. The conflict is usually internal, unless a silly suspense plot is thrown in to add an element of danger. Old-style historicals featured settings in which external conflict was a given – vikings, medievals, pirates, westerns, etc. Between warfare, disease and primitive living conditions, they didn’t need to add superfluous suspense subplots to put the characters in trying situations. Obviously it is possible to put a Regency hero or heroine in genuine danger, but most modern authors stick with the light and fluffy variety.
Thanks so much for the offer! I think I might have a Jane Feather or two at my mother’s house. I must dig out my old book boxes the next time I’m in Ireland. There’s probably a treasure trove of potential re-reads, some of which might even stand the test of time.
Okay, so whose contemporaries are you reading from the 2000s that are so great? (That’s only half-meant as a challenge, btw.) The websites with graded reviews don’t go back all that far, and I’ve gotten the impression that some grades are given for the sex-component more than the romance component.
Best contemporary for me (series, so shorter, etc.) would be tough, but I really liked Glenda Sanders’ Island Nights. Very moving; I do love emotional porn!
@Magdalen One of my favourite books in 2009 is Practice Makes Perfect by Julie James. The hero and heroine are both lawyers competing for a partner slot at their firm. Julie James does a wonderful job at creating humour and tension. The sex is subtle, with a lot more implied than described.
I like Kristan Higgins. She writes fun contemporaries for HQN. They are by no means perfect, and some of the jokes fall flat, but her style is refreshingly original. Her books are also very subtle when it comes to sex.
I loved Lisa Kleypas’s Sugar Daddy and Blue-Eyed Devil. I wasn’t as keen on the third one, Smooth Talking Stranger. She’s now working on a new series of contemporaries set in Washington State.
I also enjoy Victoria Dahl and Erin McCarthy, although their books contain more sex than you might like in a contemporary.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips is still writing. Although I didn’t like her latest book (What I Did for Love), Match Me If You Can is one of her best and that was released in 2005.
The only one of those I haven’t read is the Julie James book — and under the circumstances, I’ll order it today!
My problem with Kristin Higgins is that there’s always a triangle, usually because the heroine is an idiot who is convinced that some good looking guy is perfect for her when he obviously isn’t and anyone with a handful of working synapses could see that. Sure it’s nice that a just-okay-looking heroine manages to be so appealing that two different guys are interested in her, but it seems as though three-quarters of the book is taken up with the WRONG GUY! What a waste, if what you want to read about (well, what I want to read about, at least) is the relationship between the hero & heroine. I get the impression that Ms. Higgins thinks that with the right guy, a romance is easy-peasy, so she has to keep them apart for as long as possible because once they’re together, the book ends!
(But otherwise, of course, she’s a funny writer and delightful to read.)
I have a Lisa Kleypas to read, but it might be a historical. I’ll check out her contemporaries.
I’ve read Victoria Dahl’s two Rockies romances; nice enough. I (myself) like a lot more emotional porn, but that’s just a personal preference. The sex is okay, but I do tend to skip over it.
And I read the first of Erin McCarthy’s NASCAR romances. It was cute. That’s both the good news and the bad news. Tellingly, I’ve not gotten her second one. (I guess the first one didn’t make my engine race. Sorry, couldn’t resist…)
My favorite SEP books are (again — sensing a trend here!) the emotional porn ones: Kiss an Angel and Dream a Little Dream in particular, and those were written in the 1990s. But sure, she’s still very good, and I also loved Match Me If You Can.
@Magdalen Lisa Kleypas has only recently begun to write contemporaries. Sugar Daddy probably falls more into the catefory of women’s fiction, but its sequel, Blue-Eyed Devil, is most definitely a contemporary romance.