Everything I Know About Love, I Learned from Romance Novels
“While this book could represent a celebration of all that romance can represent, that topic was covered in Beyond Heaving Bosoms in a much more authentic way. Everything I Know About Love, I Learned from Romance Novels feels more defensive, more exaggerated, more effusive—and therefore less credible than the former. While readers will enjoy having their reading choices and decisions mirrored and validated, in the end it feels much like circular self-congratulations.”
Sarah Wendell is better known as Smart Bitch Sarah, one of the two cofounders and fearless leaders of the popular blog, Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books. This is her second foray into nonfiction about romance novels after the fantastic Beyond Heaving Bosoms, published in 2009.
Everything I Know is an anecdotal study of the positive benefit reading romance novels can have on relationships, self-esteem, self-awareness, and love. With pull quotes from readers and writers, wit, humor, and the Smart Bitch trademark snark, the book addresses a number of issues from how romance novels help their readers know their own worth to good sex to spotting real-life heroes and heroines.
What the book lacks, however, is a clear focus and intended audience. If this book is written for those who are already reading romance novels, then it’s preaching to the converted. And, as one of the converted, I sometimes felt manhandled (woman-handled?) with the heavy-handed pandering that goes on in the book. The book didn’t enlighten me on anything I didn’t know, though it was fun to read what authors and other readers had to say on the topics.
For those it could enlighten, or at least introduce to ideas—non-romance readers—it’s unlikely they will read this book. And detractors of the genre (those who continue to suggest that romance is dangerous for the poor, weak, feminine mind) will find plenty of holes to pick at. The ideas pushed through the novel are anecdotal, and while the reader and writer comments provide the color in the argument, they cannot be taken as representative. Romance has a readership of 73 million—Does every one of those 73 million people know their own worth? Are they all in healthy relationships? Or are they single but aware of what they want? Perhaps they are just all having great sex.
Herein lies the problem with this book. Ms. Wendell offers no statistics or scientific research. Her evidence is anecdotal and self-selected—and therefore won’t convince those unwilling to be convinced. Those willing to be convinced already are. This is a funny, witty little tome, but it’s going to have a hard place finding a home.
What is most troubling, however, for this convinced reader, is why this book was written at all. It’s no secret that romance is denigrated, the dirty little secret of the literary world that no one wants to admit to and most would prefer to forget. Is it necessary for those who are out and proud to play in to that?
While this book could represent a celebration of all that romance can represent, that topic was covered in Beyond Heaving Bosoms in a much more authentic way. Everything I Know About Love, I Learned from Romance Novels feels more defensive, more exaggerated, more effusive—and therefore less credible than the former. While readers will enjoy having their reading choices and decisions mirrored and validated, in the end it feels much like circular self-congratulations.