Two years ago last week, I shifted my reading preferences to #RomanceBooks.
In that time, I started 498 books, finishing 473 (~95%). Most were audiobooks, for ~4200 hours.
I rated ~11% at 5/5⭐️.
~90% were queer, which, on average, I rated ~½⭐️ higher than straight romances. About half of those queer books were written by authors who explicitly identify as queer.
Vibes: no matter the winding path, most are centered on hope.
Empathy: most are about people trying to connect with each other.
Identity: growth and introspection are almost always core themes.
(But also: even the books with 🙄 moments, like when the characters pick fights just for the drama, as annoying as they are, also help to widen your tolerance when IRL peers do the same thing.)
When you start reading this book, you are immediately drawn in by the question of “What on earth happened between Sloan and Lucian that they hate each other so much”? The book doesn’t really tell you their history until quite later on, but it sprinkles in clues of it throughout to keep the reader really engaged and wondering what happened. I could NOT put this book down.