the ask@AAR: If we were to create a list of THE 100 Romances Every Romance Reader Should Read, what would you put on it?
Later this year, AAR will ask readers to choose their 100 Top Romances as we’ve done many times over the decades. What does that mean? Are these the best romances ever written? Readers’ personal favorites? A representation of all the genre has to offer? Romances everyone should read?
A series of comments by Jenna got me thinking I’d like to also compile a list of the 100 romances everyone–or at least romance readers–should read before they die. These are the books, to me, that defined and shaped the genre as well as those which tell its history. They should be stellar reads–the sort of books one recommends to others. And if the stories they tell no longer hew to our definition of what’s acceptable to write or value, they must be romance novels you can articulate why they should be on such a list. (Rosemary Rogers’ Sweet Savage Love would be one such book.)
My list is just […]
Thank you to all–the thousands of you–who voted in the AAR Top 100 Romances poll. This is a reader determined poll and we are thrilled so many participated. (All totaled, we had well over 5000 votes!)
We had over 5000 votes in the past three rounds of the AAR Top 100 Romances Poll. From those, we have our list of our readers’ favorite one hundred romances. We’ll share it soon. That list will not have any rankings. We do, however, want to give our readers the chance to pick their top ten. So, we have one last survey for you!
We had well over 3,000 votes in the first two rounds of this poll – wow! We knew you all were passionate about romance, but wow! We’ve now taken the top 150 books from both rounds and presented them here. 
Below you’ll find the top 250 books from all the write-ins from Round One. Choose AS MANY of these as you’d like.