Romance Writers Have Been Here All Along: Reflections on Red, White, and Royal Blue

When I was in high school, the band U2 released the album Joshua Tree. Suddenly, U2 was very, very popular!

And all the people who had been U2 fans all along were irritated.

I didn't get their irritation. After all, if U2 was so great, wasn't it better to have more appreciative fans!?

After all, popularity can encourage interest beyond the immediate trend. Harry Potter novels didn't negate interest in other fantasy novels, they encouraged and even furthered it. To capitalize on Harry Potter, publishers reissued works by authors like Eva Ibbotson.

However . . .

I can understand those fantasy fans who were somewhat annoyed not by Harry Potter's popularity but by the implication that nobody had written anything similar until the series came along: Diana Wynne Jones's Chrestomanci series comes to mind--

The world of politics--as perceived by outsiders or

mercenaries--is addressed in this book.

At which point, I feel compelled to point out that wishing that people appreciated other fantasy authors doesn't mean NOT appreciating Harry Potter. And as I have pointed out elsewhere about Disney, the choice is often not between competing fantasy writers but, rather, between boring, dry non-fictional lectures versus fictional worlds that the reader may otherwise never have encountered.  Even mice that sing are better than a world of DMV manuals.

Yet . . .

Still . . .

Despite my dislike of comparisons, I feel rather the same way about Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston as some readers feel about Harry Potter (and music lovers about U2). The former--a contemporary book about a young man in the White House falling in love with a British prince--like the latter,  is incredibly popular. It's as if decent romance writers haven't been creating and delivering M/M romances for years now!

*Mild Spoilers*

It doesn't help that I find the end of the aforementioned romance book rather ridiculous. There were a few teenage years when I thought it was soooo cool for passionate teens to tell off fuddy-duddy adults... let's just say I grew out of those years fairly quickly. Now, I find the trope rather tiresome. I prefer people to be honest about politics, jobs, and choice, i.e. the actual prices that people have to pay for what they want. (See I Hate the Grease Solution.)

So it bugs me when smart romance writers--who successfully balance politics and individual choice while not patronizing a wily monarch who knows exactly how social approval sways the world--are ignored.

But then I remind myself that fiction is all about having fun (whatever the boring, depressed literary types try to tell you), that people can read whatever they want, and that sometimes appreciation can spread beyond one novel to another.

In any case, here are books by M/M romance writers who tackle the reality of social, sometimes political, life. Happy endings, of course, since that it is what romance promises (and a good genre novel always delivers), but happy endings with a true measure of sacrifice (as opposed to happy endings with massive, uniform, collective social approval--yeah, like that ever really happens).  

• The Troll Whisperer by Sera Trevor (which deals with the politics of the online world and why you should never trust it)
• Valor on the Move by Keira Andrews (White House & security)
• Boy Shattered by Eli Easton (school shooting)
• Novels by BA Tortuga (mystery and class structures/perceptions in the American West)
• Eleventh Hour by Elin Gregory (spies in the early 20th century)
• A Minor Inconvenience by Sarah Granger (spies in the 19th century)
  
• Once Burned by L.A. Witt (military and immigration--fairly fascinating)
• Society of Gentlemen series by KJ Charles (class structures, radicalism, politics, and survival)
• The Little Library by Kim Fielding (academic politics plus neighborhood politics)

And many more!