What is your Romance Origin Story?

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A few months ago, I posted a Get to Know the Romance Reader episode on the podcast (tune in here to listen on Spotify) and I figured it might be fun to share parts of it in a blog. I started late in life reading romance and I feel like over the past 5 years I have been making up for lost time.  

What is your Romance Origin Story?

Growing up I was always a reader. I started with Baby Sitters Club but soon ended up switching to Sweet Valley High. I really love Jessica’s antics falling in and out of love. I also read teen love stories. However, I didn’t realize that there was a genre that exclusively wrote about HEA.

During college and grad school, I graduated from SVH to chick lit. Yes,Sophie Kinsella, Jane Green, Jennifer Weiner. I devoured these stories and loved that they had HEAs. 

Over the years living in NYC, I continue reading Women’s fiction and whatever was popular. For a while I read dystopian. I did read Fifty Shades yet I wasn’t intrigued enough to read romance.

On April 2016, I recorded this episode about Adult Reading and it was life changing. The guest shared about BookTube as a place to get book recommendations. I started to tune in and yes I read a lot of Fantasy but then one recommendation video on New Adult got me hooked on the genre. A lot of the books recommended were indies which I devoured in a day or two.  From there I started reading all things contemporary romance. 

I literally spent 2016 and 2017 reading a book or two per day. I was not podcasting or blogging. I was either buying the kindle book or borrowing a physical copy from my library. I was reading from my phone while taking work breaks.  It was a good year.

Based on Booktube, I discovered Bookstagram which I joined. I also learned about Netgalley and access to ARCs. In late 2017, I started this blog and podcast. A lot of my reading shifted from backlist titles to now advanced readers’ copy. 

A few things I have discovered over the past 5 years from reading romance:

• BookTube is my go to source for recommendations 

• My friends Amy, Kellisa and Sarah are my trusted source of recommendation on Instagram 

• If I need a historical romance recommendation, I would go to Addie

• I  love the challenge of discovering new to me authors and then diving back into their backlist 

• I read mostly contemporary, however summer 2021 will be all about historical romance. 

• I love borrowing books from the library. Yes I have multiple out of state library cards. 

How about you, what is your romance origin story?