And by welcome to a new month, I mean welcome to a month now called Loveuary. As time marches ever forward, we consumed by pop culture seem to stretch a month’s most recognizable holiday further and further until it reaches the borders. In the case of Christmas, the November/December border is more porous every year. October is “spooky season” from day 1 to 31; only Easter is still too religious to be cool and remains locked into its weird schedule. But Valentine’s Day, that little gremlin of a holiday, has been plotting total February domination for some time. The Hallmark Channel wouldn’t have it any other way.
I have a lot of thoughts about the romance novel-ification of the world; I keep threatening to devote an even more significant portion of this Substack to talking about it. But I also want to be sensitive to the way this topic makes people feel. It’s a well-worn joke that you should steer clear of politics and religion when trying to have a chill chat with people; let’s be honest and throw love/dating/romance in there too. This stuff hits close to home. So my vow to you, in this month of vows, is to treat this topic with the seriousness I think it deserves. You can’t get away from all things pink and red this month, but you can take a measured and critical look at what’s underneath all those hearts and flowers.
With that in mind, my recommendations this month will all be romance novels. This week, let’s take on one of my favorite tropes: the marriage of convenience.
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata (Harper Collins): To give you a good idea of the range of this genre, I’ve chosen two polar opposite novels that use the same trope to explore the concept of marriage. Mariana Zapata is known as “the queen of slowburn romance.” She gives her characters hundreds of pages to grow, come to understand each other, fall in love, and get together. Her work reads as a hyper-focused exploration on the changing relationship between two people and often features characters who are in periods of mourning, transition, or grief. The novels are funny, sweet, and heartfelt and the “spice” as romance readers call it (we mean sex), feels very earned once it finally appears. Zapata’s novels are the opposite of what people would normally think of when calling to mind a stereotypical romance novel; there are indeed hunky heroes and spunky heroines and sex, but Zapata takes her time building a believable love story that will have you yearning for a happy ending you know is just a few (hundred) pages away.
In this novel, Vanessa has been the personal assistant to a professional football player for two years when his coldness finally convinces her she needs to quit and pursue her dream of starting her own graphic design business. Aiden never seems to appreciate the work she does or defend her when his agent makes snide comments about her, and the crush she’s had on the big guy just can’t withstand his disinterest. She quits, but a few weeks later he begs her to come back, and he has a proposal: fake marry him (he’s Canadian but plays for a team in Texas) so he can get citizenship and have more freedom to change teams, and he will pay off her student loans (they really know where to hit us). Understandably hesitant at first, she ultimately agrees to a five-year marriage, but the longer they spend together the more they become friends and the more the marriage starts to feel real. The novel explores the friendship, trust, and loyalty needed to make a strong marriage and it does so with humor and sweetness. Aiden and Vanessa both share a history of familial violence that has left them without a support system. They both have learned to rely only on themselves and not to let anyone else see their weaknesses. The novel lets them both grow into people who can instead accept the support of those who love them, and leads to a well-earned happy ending.
Unfortunately Yours by Tessa Bailey (Avon): At the other end of the spectrum from the “queen of slowburn romance” is “the Michelangelo of dirty talk,” as someone apparently once called her and now she puts on the back of every book: Tessa Bailey. I hesitated to put Bailey on here because I find her books to be quite hit or miss for me. She’s a much more stereotypical romance novelist in the sense of her books having a lot of sex in them; they’re indeed full of almost too-creative smut that when deployed lazily can overwhelm any plot or character development you may have been interested in. It’s hard to care about one character’s desire for acceptance and faithful love when there’s an EXTENDED scene of them getting CREATIVELY railed in an open FIELD by their college English professor (just sayin!). But she has talent and her books are always creatively set, which I appreciate. She has series set in small West Coast fishing towns, the wide world of professional sports (Fangirl Down, coming 2/13), British record labels, and in this case, the Napa winemaking community. At the end of the day, Bailey’s books may be much more smutty but they are fun and the best of them are just as interested in character growth and the building of strong, healthy relationships, as Zapata’s are.
To that end, I recommend Unfortunately Yours, which is the second in her Napa Valley series. The first, Secretly Yours has a straight up bonkers plot, so I would just go right for this one. It is about Natalie Vos, a former financier who comes from a family of famed Napa Valley winemakers. She is in Napa cooling her heels after making a huge mistake and costing her firm a big pot of money, which also cost her a fair-weather fiancé. She wants to start again and build her own firm but needs her trust fund to do that, which has a clause requiring her to be married. There’s one man that springs instantly to mind, as much as she might hate him, and that’s August Cates. An ex- Navy SEAL, August has been trying to run his dead friend’s winery in his honor, but knows nothing about making wine and hasn’t been making anything even remotely drinkable. He is head over heels for Natalie, even if he does keep screwing it up every time they talk. He needs money to run his winery and she needs a husband: a match made in romance novel heaven. Once they get married, however, it’s clear pretty fast that both of them have deep feelings. He is driven by honor and protectiveness; she’s driven by self-sufficiency and a history of neglect. There’s a lot of sex in this one, as I’ve mentioned, but it’s more plot-driven and character-driven then in some of her novels. The romance is fast, but the characters have been written well and it reads as genuine. There’s nothing like a fake relationship to create the emotional and societal safety net you need to get over your issues and develop real feelings, after all!