We listen to you, we really do. And we’ve noticed that you, along with several of our reviewers, aren’t all that happy with most – not all, but most – of the historical romance that’s been published in the past year or so. Using our Power Search feature, we looked at all the Historical Romance reviews we’ve written in 2019. We’ve given out 19 As, 47 Bs, 21 Cs, 13 Ds, and 2 Fs.
Getting Cs, Ds, and Fs were several authors we’ve reviewed positively in the past: Victoria Alexander, Lorraine Heath, Madeline Hunter, Anne Gracie, Marguerite Kaye, and Laura Lee Guhrke to name a few. Several of the DIKs are debut books are are by lesser-known authors.
So, is there a problem with historical romance right now? And, if so, what is it?
I think most of the problems I’ve seen in historical romances could be dealt with by good enough writing or twists on the basic premise/tropes. Unfortunately, this doesn’t usually happen. Perhaps there are enough readers who don’t care about historical accuracy, like their heroines to have modern mindsets, and so on.
Right now I am slogging through a historical romance by an author who is new to me but not new to HR, and if I hadn’t requested this book for review, I would have stopped reading it a long time ago. With this book, I feel like the author is going for the usual tropes. The hero is hot, rich, titled and bored with life, so he carouses and gambles and so on, while the heroine is determined she will never marry, but it’s okay if he ruins her (the possibility of pregnancy never crosses anyone’s mind) and it’s just stultifying so far because there is nothing. new. here. at. all. Not the characters, not the p[ot, not the style. I need *something* fresh, otherwise reading the story will be like chewing a piece of gum for the tenth time.
Agree 100% on this. Regardless of whether readers care about historical accuracy or not, bad writing and unimaginative plots are bad and unimaginative – and HR seems to have more of that floating about than ever.
Exactly what I was about to post. HR doesn’t have a quality problem, it has a research and editing problem.
I have to disagree there, Lisa. It has a problem with the quality of research and editing as well as problems with the quality of writing, storytelling, plotting and too many authors trying to shoe-horn in issues that, as Annelie says, further down the thread, may play well to a comtemporary audience, but which don’t fit in stories set in the 19th century because our modern PC attitude just didn’t exist. So yes, it’s a quality problem, IMO, and a serious one.
Eh, I’ll maintain that all of these issues nest into one another. Better editors make better writers. Better editors make for more original plots. Research begets plots that fit into an era.
Oh, I’m not arguing that it’s a wide-reaching problem, but it’s a problem of quality across the board from research to plots to writing.
I agree with Marian, much of the writing is just dull. There seems to be a distinct lack of imagination in plots, characters, tropes in general. I’ve been feeling this for a couple of years.
But, I think it goes deeper than that. I think that with the advent of the #MeToo movement, your typical rake isn’t as charming as he might once have been. Perhaps writers are struggling to come up with alpha males who aren’t manwhores, who don’t insist on the heroine’s sexual capitulation, who like and respect women, and who want an actual relationship. Just as bodice rippers largely fell out of favor because of the way they treated female characters, I think something similar might be happening now. Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me this new awareness is contributing in a very real way to stories that were once generally meant to be escapist fare.
I think that’s true. AND I think a good author should be able to resolve that tension.
Agreed.
One difficulty I have with the generic rake in historical romance is that he’s not given much if any reason for his choice of lifestyle. In Mary Jo Putney’s The Rake, there was a good reason the hero was an alcoholic, and I sympathized with him.
But in the HR I’m reading now, the hero drinks, gambles and has indiscriminate sex because he’s bored. Am I supposed to like him for this? The heroine had better be prepared to entertain him 24/7, because if he’s bored in the future, he might turn to the booze and the women again.
Sometimes I feel authors just pin the rake label on the hero and hope that’s enough to make him interesting. It’s not. Develop him beyond this, show why he’s a dissolute scoundrel (and why he stops being one) and think about how to make him even a little bit different from the million other hot, rich, titled rakes out there.
A big fat YES to that. (But you knew I was going to say that!)
We’ve touched on possible reasons in a few recent discussions on reviews and blog posts, and I looked them up in anticipation of this question!
Dabney said this (on my reivew of Caroline Linden’s When the Marquess Was Mine
I feel as if many historical romance authors are actually writing LESS interesting characters because they are trying to write characters with a very similar set of virtues. I feel as if every lead increasingly has to be working for social justice, committed to sexual equality, suspicious of wealth/privilege, and/or interested in overturning social norms. I’m behind all those values in theory but I feel as though there’s a flattening of personas that’s accompanying this trend.
And a comment by “Anonymous” in the same thread said:
It’s particularly frustrating because I think it’s totally possible to write books about historical progressives that are also good books and good romances (and I’d love to read them)… but there’s too much calculation and head in these, not enough heart. The authors aren’t really feeling it, and it shows. (Also, trying to do this without violating romance norms works against them, I suspect, particularly with the heroines..)
On the current trend for feminist heroines who have to make the hero give up something for her in order to triumph, Chrisreader said:
it’s like the flip side of the “old school” romances where the women were subjugated by the men. It’s not romantic to me when one partner, no matter the gender, has to turn into a martyr for the relationship to work.
And elaines, on a recent TheAsk – mentions the number of heroines who are 21st century #metoo girls dressed up in corsets
I’m not quoting those because I don’ t have answers myself, I’m doing it because they’ve all given voice to the thoughts I’ve been having about what’s always been my favourite genre. Wallpaper historicals (with contemporary characters in period dress) are nothing new, but it seems to me now that pretty much every HR has to have a mystery plot tagged on, or as is happening more and more frequently now, a heroine who runs an orphanage/home for abused women/home for “loose women” or is a would be scientist/doctor/someother profession barred to women at the time. I don’t and have never disputed the existence of women doing any of those things (in fact, there’s an exhibition on in London right now dedicated to 18th century female entrepeneurs) – it’s that they’re becoming as ubiquitous as the ducal hero and are rarely – if ever – shown doing something that bears out the things the reader is told she is good at.
I also suggest that part of the problem is the pressure I suspect many authors are under to put out more than one book a year. Historical romance isn’t like a contemporary or fantasy romance; they require more research and, even more importantly, the acquisition of a certain mindset which is able to understand and accept the social mores of the time being written about; that detailed understanding is what, IMO, enables the best HR authors to bend the rules subtly so as to allow their protagonists to spend time together at periods in history when it wasn’t at all the done thing for young men and women to be alone together. And sometimes, that takes more time to achieve than the time allowed an author being asked to put out two or three books a year. (I realise that this isn’t limited to HR; I’m just saying it has more of an effect because of the necessity for more detailed research than in some other genres.)
I’ll stop there and hope there will be lots more thoughts on this. Thanks for asking a question which has been bugging me for the last two years!!
One reason I’m tired of the “heroine runs a shelter” trope is because, when I see this coming, the following will apply :
– the heroine will have a modern-day approach towards sex work or domestic abuse
– the heroine will never make mistakes or harmful assumptions when helping ex-prostitutes or battered wives
– the wives will not second-guess themselves or try to get back together with their husbands, and likewise the ex-prostitutes are fine with their new circumstances. Sometimes the ex-prostitutes give the heroine tips on dressing in a sexy way and attracting a man, like a group of sorority sisters getting together for a makeover
– everyone whom the heroine saves is completely devoted and loyal to her
The problem isn’t the heroine running an orphanage or shelter, it’s when this is portrayed in a flat, generic and completely predictable way.
I’m also tired of historical heroines who talk about equal rights for women but who happily go along with whatever double standards the heroes have. Talk about anachronistic faux feminism.
Yep, seen that one many times.
(and this tees me off because I’m so, so tired of sex worker characters being treated as a prop in HR. Give me sex worker heroines who aren’t ashamed of their pasts! Give me dimensional sex workers rolling their eyes at the heroine! )
Out of curiosity, do you, Caz, or anyone else, know if historical romances are profitable right now given what seems to be some widespread ire from readers? I know that I don’t purchase very many anymore. I’m wondering if they are taking a hit now based on all the criticism posted here.
I’m afraid I don’t have any figures at all – being on the other side of the pond, the romance market is very different over here (skewed to Chick Lit and Women’s Fiction). But if anyone – authors, publishers – reading this with relevant information would care to email me anonymously I’d be happy to share it here.
Well, if you look at most historical romance authors–here’s Sarah MacLean, for example–her newer books are significantly less popular than her older titles. I see that for many authors.
You’re incorrect. MacLean’s most recent book was higher on the USA Today bestseller list than any other she’s published.
I understand that. I was simply referring to Amazon stars which are a terrible metric but the only one I have.
Do you meant the same Amazon where her most recent book is rated 4.5 stars?
I was looking at number of reviews plus stars, not just stars. But, as I’ve said, it’s a dumb metric to use and I worded it poorly. MacLean is justifiably a best-selling author–she is in fact praised several times in this thread. I don’t mean to imply she’s not a success–she is and I personally love that. (The day she took on the NYT is still one of my favorites ever in Romancelandia.) Her books usually are well-reviewed here as well.
More recent books do tend to have less reviews. I’m glad you admit it’s a ridiculous metric. Now can we talk about how this entire thread is ridiculous? Historical romance doesn’t have a quality issue. AAR has a racism issue.
I’ve been reading Ibram X. Kendi lately and thinking a lot about racism and what it is. I can see ways in which AAR has been racist and ways in which we have not. Certainly, in what we review and highlight, we are working to bring books by diverse authors to our readership in a deliberate way. I’m sure we can do better and we will continue to work to do so.
Today is a good day to start. You can begin by addressing the barely veiled white supremacy in most of these comments. BIPOC people have always existed. LGBTQIAP+ people have always existed. Non-Christians have always existed (and for longer than Christians). Disabled people have always existed. Sometimes people are more than one of those things. Sometimes they were wealthy. Sometimes they were aristocrats or even queens of England. And they definitely all had love stories. The historical rules of society people are waving around in this thread wouldn’t exist of people weren’t already doing the things they prescribed against. Women, BIPOC, LGBTQIAP+ people, disabled people, non-Christian people have been resisting and fighting are throughout history and to erase that is what is historically inaccurate.
You are, as is all who comment here, entitled to express yourself although we typically do not publish personal attacks in the comments. As anyone who has followed me for the past ten years knows, I am deeply committed to the First Amendment. The [email protected] column is a place where readers and AAR staff discuss something of interest to them and, as we can see in this thread, the opinions expressed are varied and decidedly non-monolithic. As Publisher, I’m highly disinclined to police the opinions of our readers especially given we asked them to express them.
Tired: do you realize that most of the discussion on this entry is about white heroines behaving anachronistically in the average Dare/McLean and not poc, queer, disabled or non-Christian heroines and heroes existing in the aristocracy or romance in general? Or did you come to this argument because of bad faith readings of the post in a Twitter discussion?
There’s still a fair amount of discussion in the comments about it being unrealistic to have marginalised people in a historical romance novel without having those characters be completely miserable, even though marginalised people have fallen in love and carved out fulfilling lives for themselves despite external oppression since the beginning of time. Tired is more than justified in responding to that.
I’ve seen praise for people who write diversely on the post. KJ Charles and Courtney Milan, in spite of the bashing Milan receives downstream of this comment, also had some positive notices for their work and for writing diversely in this thread. Several commenters mentioned they enjoy diverse romance. The commentary combines a lot of opinions from a lot of people and while it’s fair to single out some of the commentary as racist, the majority of the conversation centers around crusading white dogooder heroines that populate the top of the USA Today romance top ten almost eight to one judging from my tracking of the conversation.
Tired insists that “AAR has a racism problem” while ignoring the diversity of its positive reviews for POC authors and characters, and ignoring its top ten lists focused on diverse romance that have boosted marginalized voices. I’ve found multiple authors who write diversely through them whom I never would have known existed.
I should add that I think there’s a sad lack of realization in the industry and without it that women’s lives were incredibly different and diverse throughout history in general and yes – as a brown person I’m exhausted by the idea that all moc and woc in historical romance must be downtrodden, but paper activism with no research placed behind it continues to be unhelpful.
That is lovely to say. Thank you. The staff here is enthusiastic about diverse romance and romance in general. It’s nice to be given credit for that.
I don’t think anyone here is saying they are against diverse protagonists and side characters in historical romance. The big beef seems to be when authors appear to be working from a checklist rather than telling compelling stories with believable characters. Of course, in fairness to writers- who are frequently dumped on from every angle- publishers often mold/coerce a creator’s original vision into something it’s not. (See my previous comments on this thread for greater details.) It honestly wouldn’t surprise me if a lot of these types of “checklist characters” come from the editors and marketing department rather than the authors themselves. Based on some of the publishing horror stories I have read, I can easily imagine someone at a publishing house telling an author, “You know what’s *in* right now? Black left-handed lesbians who hail from the East Indies. If you want your book published, find a way to work one or two of those into your story.” Obviously, this is a fictional example of what *might* happen. But if it’s as true as I suspect, it’s very disheartening. Because that kind of box ticking reduces characters to their skin colors, sexual orientations, or whatever, instead of presenting them as fully rounded people whose presence feels natural and essential to the story.
TiredToo: As Jessie said, there are enough examples of people calling HEAs for marginalized characters just in this thread for me to be justified in my comments, but this issue is not limited to this thread. For example, there was a review of an HR on this site that said the book was unrealistic because an interracial couple couldn’t have a HEA in the nineteenth century and rated the book poorly because of that. There is the ONGOING issue with the whiteness if the top 100 romances. Also, the idea that marginalized characters are a “trend,” as was stated in just this mini subthread, is inherently racist.
Also, if my comments seemed unrelated to that specific stream, they actually were. None of my other comments directly addressing racist comments were approved, and I was only able to post these comments in an already approved thread, so I took the opportunity.
Tired: You only have one comment that wasn’t approved. Here’s what it says:
“Well said? They are saying they are okay with ignoring the suffering of other humans so that it doesn’t disturb their holiday, possibly financially contributing to the system oppressing those people. That is disgusting.”
There is no other comment of yours that hasn’t been posted. Please, if you’re going to trash us (and yes, I’ve been on Twitter) at least be honest.
After that, I used another name, and after that I gave up. Because like I said, I’m tired. I’m tapping out of this because I feel like we’re just going to go in circles. I want to challenge all of you to set aside your defensiveness and really examine what some people are saying here.
Please tell me the other names and I’ll look at them. I’m not interested in tapping into some censorship story that isn’t true.
Tied, I remember that review. and I didn’t agree with it. But the rest of your comment shows that the information you’re citing comes a survey by a woman whose research methods were poorly applied. I read her Twitter when she was gathering the information that was eventually used and to say the results were badly sourced is an understatement.
That review is one in the hundreds of reviews posted to this website, some of which have been very critical of racist thought in romance and the colonialism put on display in certain historicals. AAR isn’t a groupthink experiment, and one bad review doesn’t take away the positives the site has brought to the romance discourse.
The top ten was voted by AAR’s readers and it was conducted a year ago. To suggest the site hasn’t changed in all of that time shows a lack of critical thought. Would you have prefer that Dabney lied about the results last year or that the website run the opinions of its reviewers in the hope that they would be diverse? AAR can’t force its readers to vote at a higher volume for books with protagonists who are nonwhite, non-christian, non-ablebodied and non-straight, as much as I wish they might.
Good for you for throwing yourself on an opportunity like a good ally ought to, but I don’t like being spoken over by anyone. Even someone with good intentions.
For me, I suppose, the real problem with so much HR – and I mainly read it – is historical inaccuracy, the aforementioned #MeToo characters, silly misuse of titles (why write about the aristocracy FFS!) and inane and over-worked plots.
Also, I am sick to the back teeth of series that should have stopped after the first instalment and authors who think they have to preach at me to ensure I get the picture: Old Times Bad: Need Modern Morals. No, No, No, No!! My mistake? Reading Georgette Heyer first. Big Mistake. The standards were set for me with my first encounter with her which was, as I have said here before, was after I’d exhausted Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte. A university professor of English recommended GH to me – enough said.
Editors: Ou art thou? Grow up, get a dictionary, a copy of “Titles and Forms of Address” (available on Amazon), a map of Britain (so you get the length of coach journeys correct) and any one-volume history of Europe. There are plenty of easy-to-read books on food, interior décor, dress, social mores and so forth. I have read so many for pleasure and I am speaking of books that are entertaining, fun reads that help you get the picture!
I think I had better dismount my hobby horse now. There are some really good writers of HR out there but you need dedication to find them and must wade through the dross to get there. I must compile a list and then maybe I will post here again about them.
I look forward to your list!
Oh. no, please do remain on the hobby horse – I’m in agreement with everything you’ve said so far and would definitely be interested to know more!
Historical inaccuracy: yes!!
Drives me into various states of grrrrrrr….
A reason I like reading those alternate realities of Meljean Brooks (what happened to her??), Bec McMaster and others:
If you do not want historical reality, take a sideways step and write that. Then you can have inclusive, or not, feminist, or not, and and… that is fun, and clearly labelled, then you just WALK THE TALK!!!
That is a solution if you do not want to do the boring research, or if you secretly despise women who did not starve in a ditch but submitted or bought into, or actually supported subjugating attitudes, or if you hate the dirt and slow carriages of history, or or…..
grrrrr…..
ok, that is all I can say on historical accuracy. I hate the mis-labeling that it is to me.
It actually completely destroys my trust in the HR label, because these books are not HR.
So I do not try new to me authors anymore without research, and even with, not everybody has my extensive knowledge on attitudes (where has religion gone? everyone was religious then, and believed at least some bits of the “God-given” social order and prejudice..) and economical realities, so I might hate a setup for not being historical that others did not.
Which means that HR is in deep crisis for me, I read less of it, I avoid it actively and it leads authors who might be great to being DNR for me.
Example:
Day of the Duchess has a wonderful emotional intensity, great characters, angst and love and high drama written well – and I would actively go through the whole backlist and read anything by the author if it was not supposed to be HR. The simple fact is that the h would have been physically restrained from staging her dramatic opening scene and shunned for it. So, based on so many recs, I slogged through, overriding all my knowledge of those times, but I could not sustain the effort. I skimmed, I got irritated, I cherry picked only the relationship stuff. It was too much work, and left me hoping she will write contemps. Will not read the author again.
I have a few completely other comments, will post separately.
Meljean Brooks has a new fantasy romance coming out this December under the name Milla Vane and I’m unbelievably excited!
Ooh, that’s exciting news!
I’m so happy to hear this.
Good news!
I admit I liked that book (Day of the Duchess) even though the opening was completely implausible. Sometimes an author can create a story that’s compelling enough not to make me want to throw the book at the wall, and SM did that there. I have, however, not read anything of hers since – her new series is a big pile of nope for me.
For some reason, publishers have it in their heads that Dukes Sell. And therefore heroes in HR must be noblemen of some description, and they’re either fabulously wealthy or dreadfully in debt. “But,” they may argue, “if he’s okay financially, that would make for a boring book.” Er – NO IT WOULDN’T. What you NEED are authors – and there are some still around – who are able to find another way into their story, or find another way to spin the story, or vary the trope or whatever. HR about two people “just” falling in love is perfectly adequate and doesn’t need all the whistles and bells of mysteries, spies or ahistorical elements – witness Caroline Linden’s Love and Other Scandals, Mia Vincy’s A Wicked Kind of Husband, Lorraine Heath’s Waking Up With the Duke and most of Mary Balogh’s current output. The best authors are able to make that work – sadly the current crop of HR writers consists of 10% “best” and 90% “for god’s sake just stop!”
I also liked Day of the Duchess in spite of that scene (and in spite of the big closing scene, which seemed implausible both in the “they wouldn’t allow it” sense and in the “that sounds physically impossible” sense.) I am realizing that I give some authors more of a pass on plausibility – with SM, I have read enough of her work to know that she likes Big Public Scenes, which I generally do not care for, but I find other parts of her stories good enough to overlook the bits I dislike/find wholly unrealistic. Although I also haven’t liked her new series. Same with Tessa Dare – her dialogue makes me laugh, even if the stories bear very little resemblance to anything I consider realistic, and sometimes, I’m up for that.
That’s my main problem too. Combined with what Caz Owens wrote it’s the death of many HRs. I’m an historian and have worked many years with the original documents from 17th to 19th century. Modern PC was no theme then. Servants were servants, class was a very strict thing to observe.
Very, very few women were even consious of the fact that they were unfairly treated. They didn’t know otherwise, they didn’t want to become scientists and so on. That’s not to say that they had no influence at all. Marriages even then depended on the character of husband and wife. And I really don’t believe that so many women didn’t want to marry because… what all the modern heroines prefer.
I’m willing to excuse many things when the book truly is well written and is very funny as par example some Tessa Dare books are. But these are exceptions.
I’m not very good in expressing my thougts in English but I hope you could understand what I ment.
Thank you for saying this! (And you have expressed yourself very well :)) As an amateur historian and the mother of a daughter very interested in gender history and who is currently writing her university dissertation on womens’ roles in the early modern period, what you say really strikes a chord. The best authors can take those female characters and have them operate within the boundaries of their societies while still making them into engaging heroines – sadly, it seems that right now there’s a tendency to equate “interesting” with “strident”.
It’s interesting that fantasy historical romance is handling strong women far better IMHO.
It is. But then that’s probably because those women aren’t bound by the conventions women of the time were. As someone here says, the authors of such novels are free to create their own rules and problems which need addressing.
I think you’re confusing historical discourse with practice. In the 18th and 19th centuries there were a great number of middle class women who flouted gender conventions, which is why those conventions were brought up so much. Women started political movements and social groups, organised strikes, wrote books, became scientists who worked with men, chose not to marry, etc. In the mid to late Victorian Era there was actually a perceived “crisis of masculinity” because many men were concerned about the amount of women who were educated and independent. My main problem with HR is that it reflects how we think of the past more than it does the actual past, re: attitudes towards gender. Gender dynamics were obviously very different, but they were a lot more nuanced and interesting than I think most of the comments here recognize. You could look at all these women as exceptions, but that would be a whole lot of exceptions, and it would sound a lot like the no true Scotsman fallacy
What’s the no true Scotsman fallacy?
It’s like when you make a claim/generalization about a group, but when you’re faced with counterexamples that would undermine your claim, you say that those examples don’t really count as members of the group for that reason. So in this case it would be people claiming that normal women didn’t hold certain social beliefs in the past centuries, and then discounting all the women who did by saying that because they held those beliefs they don’t count as “normal women”.
Got it. Thanks.
Women in previous centuries certainly were conscious that they were mistreated. They did know otherwise, even if a cohesive movement to unify them often eluded them. Women wrote of their fears as well as their dreams of living in dignity, Women in previous centuries understood rape and sexual exploitation – women in all classes and of all races. Enslaved African American women wrote slave narratives depicting sexual exploitation from their white masters. Governesses in the 19th century recorded fears of living impoverished lives if they failed to appease upper class employers or having to succumb to sexual harassment. Married women knew the hardships on their bodies of bearing too many children. There is such rich history of what women knew and what women hoped to have instead, even as women often struggled to find the language to express emergent feminist ideas compared to what we would consider feminism today. Women’s literature is filled with tragic stories of suicide given the lack of options, and the women’s movements of the 19th century often resulted in brutality against women brave enough to take a public stance. I’m a women’s lit teacher and find it puzzling that working with original texts from previous centuries leads one to conclude that women were “not conscious” of their conditions. Of course, not all women sought structural changes, but to argue that only a very few were aware of the egregious abuses of patriarchy is not accurate.