Perpetually Happy Endings

I’ve been reading romance novels since I was in the eighth grade. My romance book pimp was my friend Tanya who had this awesome bookshelf of teenage romance books that she graciously let me borrow. When I was in high school I worked at a public library. That job was GREAT. I was shelving books in the romance section of the library when the head librarian came and commented, “I don’t understand why people read romance novels, they always end up the same.”

I’m sad to say that I didn’t stick up for the romance genre by saying something stellar. I was a teenager, I had nothing stellar sitting on my tongue. Instead I just nodded my head and smiled. 

But today I have the answer that I should have given her all those years ago. “That’s what makes romance novels so utterly wonderfully special. You always know that they are going to end up happy.” Sure we don’t read beyond the story and find that three years later the whirlwind romance leads to a devastating divorce. Romance readers don’t think about anything beyond that ending otherwise it destroys the magic, yeah I said magic, of the genre.

Life can be so up and down and seems to be one thing after another with no ending in sight, and honestly who’s really looking forward to the ending of their life? But romance books ALWAYS end on a happy note and that’s why we enjoy reading them so much.