AAR Loves… Fantasy Romance
I originally came to romance through fantasy novels with what AAR would now describe as “strong romantic elements.” (Ok, yes, and X-Files fanfiction. It’s a strong overlap).
Back before YA got its own major marketing classification, a lot of us teens who were good readers but cognitively still kids found that speculative fiction was a good landing pad between kids’ books and Literature For Adults. My pivotal book was Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight, which I read in sixth grade and which will be on my keeper shelf until I die. There was action! There was romance! There was psychic-bonded dragon sex!
There was no going back.
At the risk of dating myself, other of the “greatest hits” of this era in my life included:
The Blue Sword by Robin McKinley
Black Trillium by Andre Norton, […]
The list did turn up a few awesome and original careers, such as the […]
In Mary Balogh’s 1997 Trad. Regency The Last Waltz, Gerard Percy is living and working in Canada when he learned that he has unexpectedly inherited an earldom. He returns to host a Christmas party at his new estate, to which he invites his Canadian friends, brother and sister Andrew and Jeanette Campbell. 
As fall begins, I start thinking about end-of-year “Best of” lists. There are so many books released each year that I’m always worried that I’m missing out books I should have tried. AAR’s Power Search is my longtime favorite for checking out what’s been going on in a given year, and I often turn to it for guidance on what I should try to cram in before December.