AAR readers have long loved historical romance, a trend that appears to still be true. You chose historical romance (44 votes) as your favorite genre in romance by almost twice as many votes as the next winner: Contemporary romance (26 votes). Fantasy (14 votes) came in next, followed by romantic suspense, historical mysteries, and other, each of which garnered 7 votes each.
What is it that you so love about historical romance? And do books written in another time call to you in this very stressful year?
It seems that most readers of historical romance enjoy novels that contain rich detail, character development and world building. I drifted away from historical romance because the genre became boring and repetitive — most of the historical romances are set in England with a titled hero. I’d like a bit variety in both setting and types of heroes/heroines. If it has to be set in England, perhaps stories with people who are not super wealthy and/or part of the nobility. Or stories that are set in other parts of the world and/or other time periods.
There are few authors who take the time to do the research needed to create a rich and interesting historical setting.
Yes! There is so much interesting history to explore all over the world in such different periods of time and yet historical romances mainly focus on such a small little slice of it. It’s so weird. And I really want to see more working class heroines and heroes.
If you haven’t read Stella Riley, I recommend her as an author who gets the rich details, and character development right, plus her novels are set in the 1700’s instead of Regency period. She has the Rockcliffe series that center around the romance a little more, and another series (Cavaliers and Roundheads) and stand-alones that feature a strong central romance, but also delve into the history of the time (English Civil War, Restoration period). My favorite stand alone books are The Marigold Chain and A Splendid Defiance. Added bonus if you enjoy audiobooks–the narrator, Alex Wyndham is superb.
I answered contemporary to this, not because I like contemporaries better than HRs but because I’ve found myself reading them more than historicals. It’s simply been easier to find the kind of contemporaries I want to read than historicals. But really, if a book catches my interest and I’m still interested after looking into reviews (if there are any), I’ll read it regardless of the sub genre. I’m open to pretty much anything.
As for why I like HR, before I started to read romance novels, one of the genres I enjoyed was historical fiction, so it felt natural to try historical romance just as it felt natural to try scifi romance since I’d long loved science fiction. I’ve also been really into mythology since I was a teenager and it’s been lovely reading a romance webcomic based in Greek mythology at Webtoon called Lore Olympus. It wasn’t that long ago that I didn’t even know there is such a thing as webcomics! I’ve read a few romance novels too based on different mythologies. It’s all really fascinating.
And, because I don’t know how to put this into words after just reading the perceptive comment of Chrisreader’s in the review of Regency Christmas Gifts by Carla Kelly without just repeating what they said, I’ll just quote Chrisreader (I hope this is alright. If not let me know and I won’t do it again.) :
It is indeed true that those are usually not the characteristics at the top of the list that come to people’s mind when they hear the word sexy, but A. Yes, they truly do make for wonderful, deeply touching characters and B. Personally, I find those attributes all sorts of sexy. And perhaps I just haven’t known where or how to look, but I’ve found it easier to find characters with those qualities in historicals than other sub genres.
Thank you for the lovely shout out annik. I think we enjoy the same kind of heroes!
I also read a lot of Historical Fiction which naturally led into historical romance. Philippa Carr (aka Victoria Holt) and her series of daughters starting in Henry VIII’s reign and continuing for centuries was really influential for me.
One author I really love is Judith Merkle Riley- her book The Oracle Glass is one of my all time favorites. It’s definitely romantic but there isn’t anything explicit so it’s not “romance”. It also has a wonderful hero and heroine and a fantastic story.
I’m very greedy and want the amazing story AND all the juicy romance scenes too.
Most of the historical fiction I’ve read has either been written by Finnish authors or been translated to Finnish from other languages. There are only about 5.4 million people who speak this language so only a limited selection of books actually gets translated, which means that for a long time I was constrained by what the publishers had deemed marketable enough to be worth the monetary investment that getting a book translated always is. Unfortunately, nothing has been translated from Phillippa Carr or Judith Merkle Riley (or Victoria Holt for that matter!), but I’ve now been reading historical fiction for a good while in English too, so I can choose from a much, much bigger selection of books. (I had to read easier genres for a long time first before I felt comfortable reading historical fiction in English as it is not an easy genre for me to read even in my own language, though certainly worth the trouble.)
The Oracle Glass by Judith Merkle Riley sounds absolutely amazing – just the kind of stuff that I like! Daughters of England looks fascinating too, but I must confess that I’m a bit daunted by the length of the series. Then again, if you’re enjoying it, it’ll probably only feel like a good thing that it doesn’t end too soon. Thank you so much for the recommendations!
Judith Merkle Riley is great. She was a very well respected history professor here in the US. I love her books, even though they fall under historical fiction rather than romance they all have a romantic element and they all end happily.
The Philippa Carr books are a mixed bag. There are some that don’t end happily at all. They also don’t really rely on each other necessarily. They see the stories of each woman’s daughter but you can jump in and and read one if a certain time period interests you more. You also don’t have to start at the first one.
I didn’t know you are from Finland (or Suomi as a Finnish friend taught me). Your English is even more impressive then because you are used to a slightly different alphabet as well.
That must be very frustrating when you can’t get the books you want to read (I know how I get). I’ve noticed personally that popular English language romances seem to be available the most in Spanish and German translations. At least from what I have seen on Amazon.
For years I was frustrated because the third book in a series Judith Merkle Riley wrote was only published in German! And she’s a native English speaker. It finally was released here in English years ago and I was so happy to get it.
Judith Merkle Riley is great. She was a very well respected history professor here in the US. I love her books, even though they fall under historical fiction rather than romance they all have a romantic element and they all end happily. Sounds wonderful! I reckon her books must be impressive in their historical accuracy/authenticity. I very much appreciate a romantic element in the historical fiction I read and a happy ending is also more than welcome especially now what with all this horribleness going on in the world. As long as I’ve been reading historical fiction, I’ve been particularly drawn to stories told from women’s point of view and/or where women are central characters. Seems like other Riley’s books are like that as well. Besides The Oracle Glass I’ve already started eyeing Margaret of Ashbury Trilogy. If only my bank balance didn’t look so sad… The Philippa Carr books are a mixed bag. Okay, that’s good to know. I’m going to have to go back to Goodreads and really dig into the descriptions of each book, so I can figure out which ones interest me the most and where I’d like to start. And thank you for stating that not all of them have happy endings. I don’t obviously require them in the books I read in general, but I’m the kind of person who prefers to be spoiled if that’s the case so I can prepare. I didn’t know you are from Finland (or Suomi as a Finnish friend taught me). Now that I think of it, I’m not sure I’d actually mentioned here at AAR that I’m Finnish before this. I did say that I’m from Northern Europe at some point, but I might not have specified it further. But yes, I’m from Finland or as we Finns say Suomi (kudos to you and your friend!). We do indeed have a bit different alphabet with our ä and ö letters. And while I know very little about linguistics, I believe Finnish is also morphologically very different from English. So it certainly wasn’t easy to learn English (and it’s not like I’m done learning), but my understanding is that generally it’s even harder for people who speak English to learn Finnish. That must be very frustrating when you can’t get the books you want to read (I know how I get). It is indeed frustrating. I mean, it is not such a big source of frustration to me now and hasn’t been for a while, thank goodness, but when I literally could only read fiction in Finnish it was absolutely maddening. I’ve noticed the same as you when it comes to popular romance novels – quite often there are Spanish and German translations available. At the online bookstore where I usually purchase my paperbacks there are sometimes also Swedish translations. But then, there are about twice as many Swedish speakers, around 18 times as many German speakers and something like 90 times as many Spanish speakers in the world as us Finnish speaking folks (and that’s only counting the native speakers), so there’s obviously a lot more purchasing power in those markets than in our puny one. Which makes the fact that it’s a very limited selection of romance novels (or any novels) that gets translated to Finnish understandable, but not any less frustrating. If you can’t sell like E. L. James or Nora Roberts the chances are your book won’t be translated to Finnish. And seriously, considering all the childrens books, classics, thrillers, fantasy, science fiction, topical general fiction and literary fiction etc. that does get translated at a steady if not the world’s fastest pace, romance is very much treated like a literary pariah here. The situation is a bit better as far as women’s fiction and chick lit go, but not much. It’s very disheartening. When, out of absolute nowhere, The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary got translated I felt like throwing a party. For the first time since I started reading romance books I could buy my grandmother (the only person I know in real life who likes romance novels) a book I’d both read and liked. And it doesn’t just concern translated romance novels, but also books written in Finnish. Historical romance by Finnish authors fares a bit better but contemporary romance – forget about it! And since we don’t have Amazon or any equivalent platform here (unlike Spain or Germany for example, I buy my books from amazon.com) it’s kind… Read more »
I have an ex aupair who is Finnish and who is a translator for films. Finnish is one of the most interesting languages on earth!
First of all, I’m so jealous of your ex au pair’s language skills. You really have to know your stuff to be able to do translations. Secondly, it is so interesting to hear that! Even though I can only write and read and very badly speak English and thus can only compare those two languages, it is my understanding that Finnish is quite different from all the Germanic and the Romance languages for example. There is so much stuff that we Finnish speakers do in a pretty unusual way. As I said I don’t much understand linguistics, but there are things like when in English you say ’in the car’, we say ”autossa” with ’auto’ being the basic form. Or if you consider the word ’sheep’, for example, which in Finnish is ’lammas’, the plural forms are ’sheep’ in English (so not the most typical) and ’lampaat’ in Finnish, the genetives of the plural are ’sheep’s’ and ’lampaiden’. We don’t use prepositions or articles or apostrophes, we inflect words like crazy and not just nouns but adjectives, pronouns, numerals and verbs too. The whole language is based on stuff like that. All that considered plus the whole business with ä and ö letters, it does make a pretty peculiar language. To be honest, sometimes it throws even me that ’Enhän minä rääkkääkään’, for example, is actually standard language. (It translates roughly as ‘I’m not actually tormenting [anyone]’.)
Not that you needed some sort of weird, clumsy mini-lesson in Finnish language – I just find this stuff really fascinating and thus get easily carried away. :)
She was the most astonishingly proficient language person I’ve ever known. At 18, she spoke English as though she’d grown up in Ohio, Finnish, Swedish, Norwegian, German, and was learning Japanese.
I am in awe. Her talent for languages must have been immense, and she must’ve worked really hard too to have achieved all that at such a young age. I take my hat off to her for sure.
I love examples like this. I am even more impressed with your writing skills. I encounter a lot of people in my work whose second language is English and there is often a “tell” like syntax or sentence structure and I have never noticed that in your writing.
I think things like that are really interesting and I would always ask my friends from other countries like my friend from Finland or friends that grew up in Russia what books they read in school and what languages were required. I imagine that’s why I like to read so much, I think people and different experiences are fascinating.
That’s just so wonderful to hear – thank you for your kind words! For the sake of fairness, I must point out that I have a text editor / word processing program (I use the same type of program when writing in Finnish) which helps me with spelling and a bit with grammar as well – my spelling is atrocious – and I do need to use the dictionary pretty often too.
I whole-heartedly agree. One of my special interests has always been people. I have had a lot of problems with communication and just generally being able to understand people throughout my life, but I have always found people to be the most interesting thing there is (except for about the first 7 years of my life when the most important thing to me were dinosaurs). I was a child who preferred to play alone even in a group of children because I didn’t understand how to do things together, and I grew up into a teen and then an adult who was still mostly alone for the same reason (I rarely felt lonely though) but I was always interested in people, and I still am. I think that’s one of the main reasons why I ended up such an avid reader despite how hard reading is to me. It was a way for me to communicate with people without the communication problems. And to learn about people – all kinds of people all around the world.
That description of how the Finnish language works by modifying words rather than adding words looks a lot like my impression of how the Latin language works.
How interesting! To my great regret I don’t really know much about Latin, so I’m afraid there’s nothing worthwhile I can add, but I’d certainly love to know if you’re indeed right. Perhaps someone else here knows Latin? I’m sorry I can’t be of more – or any, really – use.
Annik thanks so much for responding to everything! I really think it’s exciting and kind of amazing that people from all over the world end up here at AAR. I love that someone may be on the other side of the globe reading the same thing and sharing their thoughts here. Even about the more “obscure” romances that aren’t a Nora Roberts or NYT bestseller but just a hidden gem. I love that influx fresh ideas.
I think many of us are drawn here because we may not know that many “real life” people reading romance, or if they do it’s a casual enjoyment and they may not want to dissect it the way I know I like to.
Regarding authors I mentioned Judith Merkle Riley is the one I would most recommend someone investing their money in. Phillipa Carr/Jean Plaidy is very old school and someone I would recommend getting from a library (if that is an option) or on sale.
You mentioned shopping from Amazon- are you able to get the discounts and deals as we do here? I know there used to be restrictions on some digital books by country. I live for the sales and deals on ebooks and check them here and online everyday.
Yes to everything you said! It is wonderful to have deep conversations about books with people and it is definitely one of the strengths of AAR that people from all over the world can join in and have done so too. It is something that always enriches the discussion, I’ve found.
I have never had a lot of friends and none of them have been into reading. Yet after I finish a book and stop to digest my own thoughts and feelings for a while, the first thought I usually have is: “I wonder what other people think about the book?” Until now, I’ve mostly just gone online and read other people’s thoughts (I mean, I’ve tried live group discussions but they don’t work for me) and that’s been wonderful, but it’s exciting on a whole new level to be able to participate too.
Thank you for the tips on how to proceed with the authors you mentioned as there are a lot of books and they are not exactly cheap. It was my thinking too to prioritize Judith Merkle Riley’s works. I will ask the local library about Phillipa Carr and Jean Plady, but I’m not holding my breath. I live in a small-ish town and while the library does have a small selection of books written in English they are mostly bigtime best sellers and world literature classics. They have not been enthusiastic about adding more variety to their selection in the past, but there’s always a chance some other library might have Plady and/or Carr books in their selection in which case my library could loan them from there. In any case, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
I check the sales and deals for ebooks daily too. Unfortunately, I can’t get all the discounts and deals. Of the books featured on AAR’s steals and deals I’d say about 60% are also discounted for the people in my region. I have no idea why that is or how it works as it seems totally random to me, but it certainly is annoying. That being said, I’m still super grateful for the discounts that I can get – I’d never be able to read as much as I do without them.
I remember reading some of Philippa Carr’s books many years ago – but I didn’t like them as much as her Jean Plaidy historical fiction or Victoria Holt gothics. (For anyone not aware, Eleanor Hibbert was the incredibly prolific author behind those three pseudonyms (and several others!) I maintain to this day that I learned more about British history from reading Jean Plaidy than I ever did at school!
Thank you for sharing this information! I checked Eleanor Hibbert’s Wikipedia page and holy wow, she really was prolific! That kind of creative power leaves me in awe. I also went to both Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt’s Goodreads pages, and while I’m going to have to take more time to properly familiarize myself with the works published under each pseudonym – there are some many books! – I’m especially intrigued by Jean Plaidy historicals. Many thanks for the recommendations – I am so excited!
I think I can say I more or less grew up reading Jean Plaidy! Back when I was at school in the 70s, there was no YA or Teen fction – you had kids books and adult books and that was it. I was lucky enough, at the age of 11 or 12, to have an English teacher who realised I was tearing through every book I was given and that I needed to move on from children’s books. She gave me a long (double sided foolscap!) list of books and authors to try. Plaidy, Holt and Carr were all on there (as were Anya Seton, Norah Lofts, Margaret Irwin and others) – and as I seem to remember there were more Plaidy titles in the local library that was where I started and have never looked back! Maybe some of her historical fiction is a bit dry for modern tastes, but I absolutely loved it and still have a load of the old paperbacks and hardcovers I bought with pocket money or received as presents,
When I was younger there were some teen books but apart from classics like The Witch Of Blackbird Pond (which I loved) and a few others they weren’t historical and they weren’t well written. they were just kind of junky modern teen romance books which were fun (I enjoyed them for what they were) but no substance.
I was lucky enough that even my school library had a number of Plaidy, Carr and even Phillis Whitney books to borrow when I was past children’s books but not ready for the really racy adult stuff. I learned all about British history from Henry VIII through the 19th century including wars, every monarch and rebellion and even the Luddite movement thanks to Philippa Carr. There may have been some drama mixed in but they were solidly grounded in history.
Oh, yes, Phyllis A. Whitney was on my list as well, and I liked the handful of her books I read, too.
I homeshooled my children though the 90’s until 2015 and used a literature based curriculum. The publishers of the curriculum really did their homework (pun intended). They had juvenile fiction and YA books set all over the world. Back when it wasn’t much talked about, we read books with POC as main characters or important secondary characters. Granted,itwas aminority of books,but they were there. One year we studied the Eastern Hemisphere, and read Asian and Indian mythology and history. The only really sparse spot in our studies was African history, although we studied some, especially ancient Egypt.
All this to say, we didn’t do it perfectly, but there were,and are, great JF and YA books out there that are packed with historical details and great stories. I actually learned history for the first time when I taught my kids and read dozens of great historical fiction books aloud to them. My oldest daughter majored in history in college,and she said it was because of all the great books we read.
BTW,if you enjoy listening to great lectures on history, literature and more, The Great Courses is a wonderful place to have a look. Highly recommended. We have a couple dozen of their courses. Many are available on Audible, but they run such good sales I save my credits for fiction books.
I do think there are a lot more, and a lot more diverse choices nowadays not to mention a huge availability as well.
When I was a kid my choices were limited to what you could buy that was in print AND what your local bookstores stocked plus what was available from local libraries. Before the days of bookstores offering to “order” books for you and inter-library loans I drove my parents crazy driving me to random bookstores trying to complete series and I had library cards from several towns to satisfy my book greed.
The only other place I remember seeing new books were through Scholastic books in school where you would bring the sheet home, get a check from your parent who would fill out the form, give it to your teacher then forget about it until the glorious day the box arrived! When the teacher handed you your stack of shiny new paperbacks (or you sat in gloom because you forgot to get your order back in time) it was a memorable school day!
In the 70’s and 80’s cultural diversity in reading and curriculum was not considered at all and only in history or geography class would you really explore any other countries or cultures.
I LOVED the Scholastic book sales as a kid! My parents always made me trim my list,though! LOL! I used the school library in elementary grades, but after that, my parents usually bought books and then passed them to me when they were done. They were both avid readers. Although I did read Victoria Holt and a few others from my high school library.
Where I live now I am blessed with a really fabulous library system. At the time, we had a branch right around the corner, and I checked out so many books when we were homeschooling because it was too expensive to buy all the books. Having a well stocked library was such a boon. Even now, I just went online to see what my library had in terms of audiobooks on my TBR list, especially since Audible Escape is ending soon. I was so excited that I’ve already found 11 audiobooks on my list, and I only searched for about 20 or so. Plus they have a bunch more in print or ebook form, like all of Maria Vane’s Last Wolf series.
That sounds lovely! Teachers can have such a huge impact on people’s and especially young people’s lives. And libraries are the best! I don’t know what I’d do without them. It is so interesting to hear what everyone was reading at a certain age, and then try to recall what I was reading back then. All the authors you mentioned are new to me. None of them have been translated to Finnish, and while I can read in English now this hasn’t always been the case. I know I have missed a lot, and while I obviously can’t go back in time and thus willl end up skipping stuff that I probably would have loved as teenager for example, I sure have a lot of catching up to do.
My reading log goes back to 1975, but I’ve only kept sub-genre info in it since 2000. In that subset of my log, my top 3 counts of romance entries are 1,551 contemporary, 1,326 historical, and 976 paranormal (a log entry can be either a book or a story included in a book). So far this year, I have 120 contemporary, 28 historical, and 39 paranormal romance entries. So, based on recent records I read more contemporary romances than any other sub-genre, though that includes category, new adult, young adult, romantic suspense, and other variations from simply love stories about adults. My romance reading started with Georgette Heyer and other traditional Regencies, but new books in that sub-genre are much rarer than when I started reading romances in the 1990s.
Interesting that erotica didn’t make a strong dent in the poll.
I didn’t get to actually take the poll because I got sidetracked by work but I probably would have voted ‘historical romance” because my first instinct was to think of my reading as a whole even though this year I’ve read a ton of fantasy, science fiction and whatever ‘Kresley Cole Immortals’ type books fall under.
I sometimes am not 100% sure of the classifications of what I am reading. Things that used to be Erotica years ago could be included in a “regular” romance novel lately. I know a lot of readers here do read Erotica but as it was an all or nothing poll maybe we still shy away from saying it’s at the top of our list?
“I sometimes am not 100% sure of the classifications of what I am reading.”
One thing I have noticed is a few romance publishers, like Carina Press, are more open to genre mixing and mashing than in the past. Personally, I like their approach and have enjoyed a number of Carina Press titles for this reason.
“Things that used to be Erotica years ago could be included in a “regular” romance novel lately.”
Oh, definitely! I think it’s amazing how things we would hardly blink at today were considered absolutely scandalous only a few years ago.
“I know a lot of readers here do read Erotica but as it was an all or nothing poll maybe we still shy away from saying it’s at the top of our list?”
Maybe there are some responders shying away from the question, but it’s probably just not a number one pick for the AAR crowd. Heck, I’m an erotica writer, and I picked HR as my top go-to romance reading choice!
Also, the poll asked about favorite subgenre in romance. And I think erotic romance is still a small niche of the market, especially now that most category titles today contain some sexual content. So, I’m guessing that the responders at AAR are getting enough steam in HR, CR, and the other categories (assuming that’s a consideration; some romance readers like things closed-door). Plus, erotic romance is still largely misunderstood and can have crossover with other subcategories such as historical or science fiction or what have you, making classification difficult.
Or maybe “erotica” didn’t appeal as a top choice because of its reputation for lacking romance or a story (not necessarily true, BTW). Who knows? Maybe someone else will chime in on this subject.
Finally, if the blog post on AAR about “The Good Bits” is any indication, I don’t get the impression that the AAR crowd leans heavily toward erotica in general. It’s more of a romance group with some members who occasionally enjoy erotica in addition to their romance reading. Exceptions, yes. But there were quite a few comments about the new female-centric erotica site just not doing it for them. So, there’s that to keep in mind too.
Ok, forgive me if this is redundant or off-topic, but I keep having this nagging idea about historical romance.
As I’ve written already on this comment thread, I want lush, lyrical, and subversive historical romance that is grounded in its historical setting. But when I’ve seen this discussed online or brought up in podcasts, it seems as if this sentiment has been misunderstood.
In my college history courses, my professors were constantly trying to teach us out of the impulse to play “paper dolls” with history. We all tend to talk about the past through our own lens and in doing so, we tell a historical story divorced from the record and primary sources.
For me, what’s great about historical romance is that it’s constantly playing “paper dolls” with history. That’s what I want! Jam those paper dolls together and make them kiss. But I also want authors to make those dolls recognizably historical. And that’s not a sneaky way of saying, I don’t want queer, nonwhite, non-Christian, or working class characters. Or, I don’t want feminist or progressive romance.
I want historical romance authors to do historical world-building. I also want historical romance that avoids objectifying, stereotyping, and/or excluding Black and brown people, non-Christian faiths, the poor and working class, and/or queer people. Personally, I think it’s entirely possible to do both, but I’m surprised by the conversations, both for and against “historical accuracy”, that conflate or confuse the two.