Chapters and Cravings

There are days when life feels loud.

Not necessarily bad—just busy, demanding and a little overwhelming. The kind of days when my brain is juggling too many things at once and, by the time I finally get a moment to myself, I don’t want a book that feels like hard work. I don’t want literary experiments, endless uncertainty or an ending that leaves me staring at the wall wondering what on earth just happened.

On those days, I reach for romance.

I reach for familiar tropes, emotional journeys I can trust and characters whose lives I can disappear into for a few hours. There may be heartbreak, misunderstandings, danger or enough emotional damage to keep several therapists employed along the way—but underneath it all is that quiet promise that things will work out in the end.

And honestly?

I’m not sorry about it.

Romance isn’t a guilty pleasure for me. It’s comfort. It’s reassurance. It’s emotional safety wrapped inside a story where connection matters, vulnerability means something and hope always finds its way through—even if it takes several hundred pages to get there.

I’ve always been a reader.

Long before trope lists, spice ratings and carefully organised reading trackers, there were simply stories. I grew up inside the pages of Jacqueline Wilson books such as The Story of Tracy Beaker, The Suitcase Kid and The Lottie Project. They introduced me to complicated families, big emotions and children trying to find their place in a world that didn’t always feel simple.

I didn’t have the language to explain why those stories affected me so much at the time. I only knew that I cared deeply about the characters and wanted to know that, somehow, they would be okay. Looking back, I think that emotional pull was the beginning of what I still search for in books now.

Then came The Girls series—friendships, crushes and those first gentle brushes with romance. Nothing particularly dramatic and definitely nothing spicy. It was simply about feelings, relationships and the excitement of caring about someone in a new way.

And then… Twilight happened.

The longing. The devotion. The intensity of first love. The dramatic staring. The deeply questionable life choices made in the name of romance.

It was escapism in its purest form, and I was hooked.

Not long afterwards, I raided my mum’s bookshelf and found The Gilded Cage by Josephine Cox. It wasn’t a spicy romance or the sort of book I would necessarily discover through Bookstagram now. It was a story of relationships tested by hardship, love that had to endure and characters whose emotional lives genuinely mattered.

That book quietly confirmed something in me: these were the stories I wanted to keep reading. I wanted books that made me feel invested in people, their relationships and whether they could find their way back to one another.

Fast-forward to 2012.

I was heavily pregnant with my eldest, exhausted and very much over the whole being-pregnant experience when Fifty Shades of Grey appeared.

Yes. That one.

I picked it up partly because everyone seemed to be talking about it and partly because I thought, “Maybe this will help induce labour.”

Spoiler: it did not.

What it did do, however, was open a completely new door in my reading life.

Until then, my experience of romance had been much softer. Fifty Shades introduced me to a different side of the genre—one that was more open about desire, power dynamics and complicated relationships. It certainly wasn’t perfect, but it showed me that romance could be far broader, bolder and more varied than I had realised.

From there, I discovered Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series. It had some of the same appeal, but with deeper emotion, stronger character development and more heart beneath the heat. The romance genre was evolving for me, and my reading tastes were evolving right alongside it.

Then, in 2023, I stumbled into Bookstagram—and honestly? That changed everything.

Suddenly, there were tropes, indie authors, audiobooks, recommendations and entire communities built around loving romance books. I discovered just how many different corners of the genre existed: contemporary romance, dark romance, romantasy, reverse harem, mafia romance, age gaps, cowboys, morally grey men and enough fictional red flags to decorate a small country.

Books I might never have found on my own were suddenly everywhere. My love of romance was no longer something I quietly kept to myself; it became something I could talk about, track, review and share with other readers who understood exactly why a fictional man could ruin your standards for several business days.

And here we are.

One of the biggest criticisms romance receives is that it’s predictable.

And yes—that’s partly the point.

A romance novel is expected to end with the couple together, whether that means a happily ever after or a happy-for-now ending. Knowing that doesn’t spoil the experience for me because the destination is only one part of the story. What matters is how the characters get there.

Who falls first? Who fights it the longest? What stands between them? How do they learn to trust one another? What happens when everything falls apart, and what are they willing to do to put it back together?

Predictability in romance doesn’t automatically mean lazy writing. At its best, it means trust. I trust the author to take me through tension, yearning, heartbreak and emotional chaos, then bring me safely back again.

I don’t read romance purely for shock value. I read it for the stolen glances, the painfully slow build, the forced proximity and the moment when everything finally clicks into place. I read it for the grumpy character who becomes soft for one person, the seemingly unlovable character who discovers they’re worth choosing and the relationship that grows through all the messy bits in between.

Knowing there’s a happy ending doesn’t ruin any of that.

It allows me to relax enough to feel it fully.

Real life doesn’t always resolve itself neatly.

Conversations can go unfinished. Problems linger. People don’t always say what they mean, and even the things we desperately want to fix aren’t always within our control.

Romance offers something different: emotional closure.

The characters may struggle—and they usually do, because otherwise we wouldn’t have much of a book—but there’s a sense that love is worth fighting for. Communication matters. Vulnerability leads somewhere meaningful. The difficult conversations eventually happen, even if it takes a dramatic third-act breakup to force everyone into them.

That certainty creates a kind of emotional safety. I can read a book filled with heartbreak, danger or difficult subjects because I know hope is waiting on the other side. The journey may hurt, but the story won’t leave me stranded there.

When life feels uncertain, romance reminds me that connection is possible. It says people can grow, relationships can heal and loving someone doesn’t have to end in loss.

That isn’t naïve.

Sometimes, it’s exactly the reassurance I need.

Romance lets me step outside my own head for a while.

One day, I can disappear into a quiet small town filled with suspiciously attractive cowboys. The next, I’m inside a dangerous mafia world, a magical kingdom or a dramatic relationship involving several men and absolutely no sensible decision-making whatsoever.

The setting may change, but the emotional heart remains familiar.

Love shows up.

People grow.

Happy endings are allowed.

That kind of escapism doesn’t pull me away from reality in a harmful way. It gives my brain somewhere else to rest. For a little while, I can put down my own worries and carry someone else’s instead—safe in the knowledge that their story has already been written and an ending is waiting for me.

Then I close the book and return to real life feeling a little calmer, lighter or stronger.

Romance doesn’t merely distract me.

It steadies me.

One of the things I love most about romance is the sheer variety within it. Saying you read romance is a little like saying you enjoy food—it doesn’t begin to cover all the different flavours available.

Sometimes, I want something light, funny and fluffy. I want playful banter, ridiculous situations and a couple whose biggest problem could probably be solved by one honest conversation.

Sometimes, I want emotional devastation followed by healing. I want complicated characters, painful histories and the kind of love story that completely breaks my heart before carefully putting it back together.

Sometimes, I want spice.

Other times, I want closed-door sweetness, soft comfort and a gentle romance I can curl up with before bed.

Then there are the days when I want fantasy kingdoms, dangerous men, dramatic stakes and enough morally grey behaviour to make every sensible part of me whisper, “Absolutely not.” Meanwhile, the romance-reader part of my brain is already adding the next book to my list.

Romance adapts. It grows with me and meets me wherever I am—exhausted, reflective, hopeful, emotional or simply craving something familiar.

There really is a romance novel for every version of me.

Somewhere along the way, we were taught to justify our tastes.

Certain genres are treated as though they have more “literary worth” than others, while romance is regularly dismissed as silly, predictable or something readers should feel embarrassed about enjoying.

I’m done with that.

Reading doesn’t always have to be educational, challenging or impressive to someone else. It’s allowed to be fun. It’s allowed to provide comfort. It’s allowed to make you laugh, cry, swoon or kick your feet because two fictional people finally admitted what everyone else knew three hundred pages ago.

Romance brings me joy. It gives me somewhere safe to retreat when the world feels heavy and helps me feel connected during the moments when I need it most.

That’s not something to apologise for.

That’s something to celebrate.

If romance is your comfort genre too, you’re not shallow—you’re human. And if it isn’t? That’s okay as well. We all deserve to find the stories that give us what we need.

Romance has been with me through childhood, motherhood, exhaustion, rediscovery and joy.

My tastes may have changed along the way—from Jacqueline Wilson and Twilight to dark romance, romantasy, cowboys and increasingly questionable fictional men—but the reason I read has remained surprisingly consistent.

I want to feel something.

I want stories about connection, devotion, vulnerability and hope. I want characters who make mistakes but still find their way forward. I want the emotional safety of knowing that, after everything they’ve been through, love will be allowed to win.

Romance is familiar. It’s reassuring. It meets me in every season and gives me something steady to return to whenever life feels loud.

And that matters.

Romance isn’t my guilty pleasure.

It’s my comfort read—and I’m definitely not sorry.