Romances featuring diabetic characters – a post for World Diabetes Awareness Day, 14th November 2021
November 14 is World Diabetes Awareness Day, a holiday which means a lot to me because there are a number of diabetics in my family. Managing diabetes is a difficult, lifelong task exacerbated in many parts of the world by high cost of insulin and lack of access to health care.
Although diabetes used to be classified as “juvenile” and “adult-onset,” now it’s known as Type 1 and Type 2, both of which can occur at any age. It’s good to know signs and symptoms of diabetes, especially because they are easy to confuse with viral illness:
Diabetic protagonists are unusual in romance novels. I have added a tag for it (this tag only represents a diabetic main character; there are additional novels where the h/h is a caregiver for a child or parent with diabetes), but I don’t have many, and only a couple rise out of the B range.
Our reviewers recommended two different novels with diabetic main characters in our AAR Loves: Representation of Diabetes and Chronic Illness column.
Defender by Catherine Mann
Musician and Type 1 diabetic Chloe Nelson joined a USO tour to honor the soldier whose kidney Chloe received. She was not expecting a mysterious explosion on the ship taking her to perform in Turkey, nor a rescue by Captain Jimmy Gage. This romantic suspense novel is heavier on suspense than on romance, but Jimmy and Chloe are a great couple who refuse to let their mental and physical illnesses prevent them from trying to make a difference.
Will and Patrick Wake Up Married by Leta Blake and Alice Griffiths:
This is actually a seven-part serial that details the relationship between the handsome, ridiculously sweet Will – who, despite being the son of a mob boss, runs a charitable foundation – and Patrick, a brilliant neurosurgeon, who meets Will when he’s in the middle of a massive bender after his long-term boyfriend dumps him.
It’s a funny, sexy romp of a story that isn’t without its deeper, darker moments and the two leads are terrific together. Will is a type 1 diabetic, so the fact he’s an alcoholic is even more dangerous for him than it would be for most other people, and his diabetes features throughout the story as he has to test his blood and inject insulin regularly, watch what he eats and make sure he takes care of himself – which he doesn’t always do a very good job of. The romance is really well done as the couple goes from wanting to get divorced as soon as possible (there are Reasons they can’t do it straight away) to becoming friends and then more. Because this was originally written as a serial, it’s possible to read a chunk at a time, but good luck with rationing it, because it’s really hard not to want to jump in to the next instalment right after finishing the current one!
It’s a funny, sexy romp of a story that isn’t without its deeper, darker moments and the two leads are terrific together. Will is a type 1 diabetic, so the fact he’s an alcoholic is even more dangerous for him than it would be for most other people, and his diabetes features throughout the story as he has to test his blood and inject insulin regularly, watch what he eats and make sure he takes care of himself – which he doesn’t always do a very good job of. The romance is really well done as the couple goes from wanting to get divorced as soon as possible (there are Reasons they can’t do it straight away) to becoming friends and then more. Because this was originally written as a serial, it’s possible to read a chunk at a time, but good luck with rationing it, because it’s really hard not to want to jump in to the next instalment right after finishing the current one!Additionally, our database has two B-or-higher diabetic stories:
Semi-Scripted by Amanda Heger
Marisol Gutierrez travels to the U.S. to pitch a nonprofit at a grant conference. Evan Abramson is a struggling actor who meets her on a Price Is Right-esque game show and helps her go viral. Marisol is diabetic, and our reviewer noted, “the process of checking her insulin is both central to who she is and a complete afterthought, in the way it would be for anyone who lives with diabetes.”
The Good Sister by Sally Hepworth (Note: this is a thriller, not a romance)
The Good Sister is about one of those symbiotic sibling relationships that is eerie and unhealthy to everyone but those who are participating in it. Cheery Fern and controlled, sorrowful Rose are a single, breathing unit sometimes – they have been bound together since childhood by their mother’s apparent abuse, and by a secret that may or may not have branded Fern a murderer if it got out.
One disappointment? While I was searching our database for keywords “diabetes” or “diabetic,” I kept coming across sentences like this:
“Mostly the book is a diabetic’s nightmare.”
“I found myself rolling my eyes, grumbling about how unbelievable the story was, and looking for a place to lie down when I went into a diabetic coma.”
“the ending… should come complete with a warning for diabetics”
“The final chapter was so sickeningly sweet that I nearly fell into a diabetic coma.”
“It is all so loving and supportive and homey – I was afraid I’d have diabetes before the whole thing was over.”
Let’s not, okay? It’s neither kind nor medically accurate.
Here are a few other romances featuring protagonists with diabetes – although we haven’t reviewed them, so I can’t speak to their quality!
Do you know of any other romances starring diabetic protagonists? What about good books which may be outside the romance genre? Do you or a loved one have diabetes?
~ Caroline Russomanno
Has anyone read the Acton and Doyle series by Anne Cleeland? -One of secondary characters, Williams, who is in every book has diabetes. He is a young police detective on the rise in the Met, and he hides this and struggles. This is a great series, by the way.
Released November 9, A Match Made in Venice, Leonie Mack. Diabetes is not a huge plot issue, just part of the story, but woven in quite realistically.
And thanks for this very informative and enlightening thread.
I just read the Will and Patrick series last week and loved it!
I have a nephew who was almost 30 when he was diagnosed with “brittle diabetes.” Brittle diabetes is when your blood sugar swings wildly from high to low and is difficult to control even with medication. It’s almost always Type 1. He hadn’t been diagnosed with diabetes before, but he had some substance abuse problems in his early 20’s that may have made him more susceptible. He’s ended up in a coma and hospitalized twice in the past few years (he wasn’t being careful),and the second time he needed some rehab for speech,etc. This isn’t anything to play around with.Thankfully he got serious and now has an insulin pump and is much more careful. He’s doing well.
I don’t know of any books,but since it is a relatively common condition, whether type 1 or 2, that feels like an oversight. Anytime one is dealing with a chronic illness it can be difficult to feel attractive or to feel good about yourself. Representation matters. It doesn’t have to be a crisis plot point, just showing someone navigating it in their lives would be nice. Just make it feel approachable and “normal.”
Too many people over 50 especially ignore or aren’t aware of warning signs and don’t get tested. Please, if you think you might have some of the signs and/or symptoms shown above, or have a family history of diabetes. get checked. Thank you Caroline, for raising this really important health issue.
I’m surprised there’s no mention of gestational diabetes—women who are diagnosed during pregnancy often develop Type 2 later. My grandmother had diabetes as did my uncle (who became blind as a result). I’m “borderline” as they say in the U.S. (my A1C was 6.0 at my last check-up) and I’ve been taking Invokana (canaglifolzin) for a while. It’s helped me far more than Metformin did. I try to avoid sweets, limit carbs, and only eat carbs with a protein. It’s an uphill battle (food tastes so good—lol!) but I’d rather monitor my food intake than have to inject insulin.
As for books about diabetics, I can only think of ones with children who have diabetes. The first one that popped into my head was CD Reiss’s HARDBALL. The heroine is a teacher and notices one of her students is always sleepy. This leads to a diabetes diagnosis. I know I read another one recently where the divorced heroine kept worrying that her ex-husband wasn’t monitoring their diabetic son’s blood glucose as vigilantly as she did. I just can’t remember the name if the book right now.
It suddenly came to me: Zoe York’s WHEN THEY WEREN’T LOOKING. The heroine’s son is diagnosed during the course of the book.
It really is an uphill battle – I sympathise! Here, an Hba1c of 6.0 or below is “normal” (which is what my result was) and 6.1-6.4 is “pre-diabetic” (my last one, at the end of my diet was 6.2). Both my maternal grandmother and uncle had Type 2, so it’s in the family, which is another risk factor. I do think there’s a real lack of awareness of just how serious a condition it is – even by the medical profession, who – in my experience – seem to be taking a softly, softly approach nowadays. I don’t know if they don’t want to scare people or if they just don’t be the ones to tell them they need to lose weight! Even for people who are a normal weight, the problem appears to be that they’re carrying too much weight FOR THEM and a fairly mimimal loss could actually put their diabetes into remission. I’ve become the worst kind of evangelist, haven’t I? Like the chain-smoker who gives up and starts telling all their smoker friends they need to do the same! ;)
E ven the loss of 10 lbs mattered. Preach it. That and walking really helped.
Given that my sister had this THREE TIMES, you’d think I would have remembered! Thanks for the nudge.
As I said when we initially spoke about this one, Caroline, I’m diabetic and had no idea there was such a thing as an awareness day! So thank you for bringing to my – and others’ – attention. It’s a horrible disease that often seems to get “played down” but here in the UK, I believe it’s overtaken heart disease as the biggest killer, and whereas adult onset diabetes most commonly affected people in later life – my grandmother was diagnosed with it in her seventies – it’s now affecting people who are far younger, and is almost entirely related to weight and diet.
I was diagnosed just over three years ago with Type 2 – in my early fifties – and have really struggled to control it; I did the obvious thing – cut out sweet things from my diet – but there are still lots and lots of things that I should have cut out or cut down on and didn’t (bread, for instance) and I wasn’t controlling the condition at all well. It was only earlier this year, after my levels had got pretty high and the doctor wanted to increase my medication again, that I decided I needed to do something drastic; at about that time I read this article in the Guardian – https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/may/15/how-to-cure-type-2-diabetes-without-medication – I’d heard about rapid weight loss being able to “reverse” diabetes, but was sceptical because I probably wasn’t ready, mentally, to consider it – but reading that article – and having it come on top of being told I wasn’t doing so well – finally sparked me into action. Eight months later, I’ve lost 3 and a half stone (that’s 49 pounds) and I just found out today that my blood sugar level is “normal” – as in the same as a non-diabetic person. That diet was tough, I won’t lie; I did it during the summer months when it’s easy to live on salads – but I’ve maintained the weight loss since I finished it in August and fingers crossed I will continue to do so – and I plan to continue with the weight loss, as well..
I spout all this in case there’s anyone out there in a similar situation to mine, who doesn’t think it can be done. It CAN – it’s possible to “reverse” Type 2 diabetes or put it into remission. It’s not easy, but it IS possible. The book mentioned in the article I’ve linked to is really helpful (and all profits go to a diabetes charity) and informative.
And all that brings me to one other point: It’s interesting – although perhaps not surprising – that the protagonists in all the books mentioned here have Type 1 diabetes – which is very different to Type 2, and is often something people are born with. With Type 2 linked so strongly to being overweight (there are people who aren’t overweight who have Type 2, but I believe there are far fewer of them – and that book explains why!) I suppose it’s not a surprise that Type 2 doesn’t seem to be featured in romance novels.
Caz, congratulations on improving your health so dramatically. I had not heard about this approach, and I will share it with a couple of friends who were recently diagnosed. I don’t think their doctors have suggested rapid weight loss, so your sharing this is very helpful. Thanks to you, Caroline and AAR for bringing more awareness to this disease.
Thank you! And yes, please do pass the information on – the book mentioned in the Guardian article – Your Simple Guide to Reversing Type 2 Diabetes by Prof. Roy Taylor is inexpensive and well worth reading.
I’ve always been a little appalled at the horrendous eating habits portrayed as funny or cute in many WF, chick lit and contemporary romances, especially comedies. I cringe every time the protagonist eats a dozen cookies or a pint of ice cream and then says something inane like, “Guess I need to run an extra couple of miles!” It doesn’t work that way. The average person burns 100 calories in a 1 mile run. That’s less than two of most cookies. Not to mention what it does to your blood sugar. I’ve been hypoglycemic my entire life, so I’ve always been careful about the amount of sugar I eat and what I eat it with. No pastries for breakfast or sugar on an empty stomach. I carry snacks everywhere so I don’t get a drop in blood sugar, and plan my days around where I’ll be at mealtimes. I actually follow general diabetic guidelines because regulating blood sugar correctly is the same for hypo- or hyperglycemia.
Good point about the awful eating habits – I now walk 4-5 km every day at a steady pace on my treadmill desk, and I burn around 250 calories. That’s not even a sandwich.
Walking every day has been what works for me, I try to avoid sugar, beer, bread, pasta, rice, and potatoes (I don’t cut them out entirely). But the walking has kept both my A1C around 6.1 and my cholesterol within reasonable levels. Type 2 diabetes runs in the family. The ones who adjusted their diet and exercise tend to do much better than the ones who rely solely on medications to control their diabetes.
As for books with diabetic characters, I only remember reading one where there was a diabetic secondary character. I cannot remember the book title or author since it I probably read it over 20 years ago. It was a regency, so there wasn’t much understanding of the disease at the time although doctors were beginning to develop treatments. The secondary character was a child with, I assume, Type 1 diabetes. The heroine used diet, exercise, and herbs to help her brother.
One thing I’m really thankful for is that I’m not much of a drinker – I might have half a dozen glasses of wine a year! At least it was one less thing to give up.
If diet and exercise helped, then it can’t have been Type 1. Type 1 means your pancreas doesn’t produce insulin at all, so sugar builds up in the bloodstream. Nothing will help but insulin.
Type 2, by contrast, means (in a clearly oversimplified way) that your body makes insulin, but doesn’t use it properly (or doesn’t make enough of it). Same result – sugar buildup – but different cause. This is why Type 2 can sometimes be alleviated by losing weight and changing your diet. You DO have insulin, you just need to shake up the way your body uses it, or how much of it your body needs.
You may be right, but back in the 1700s and early 1800s doctors didn’t really distinguish between the two types of diabetes. They prescribed a diet of sugar and meat, and sometimes fasting, as well as exercise. Insulin wasn’t around until the 1920s, so diabetes was often considered a fatal disease before the early 1900s.
https://www.adwdiabetes.com/articles/diabetes-history
As I said, I read this book well over 20 years ago. Details are hazy, but I remember the heroine was afraid for her brother’s life and married the hero in order to take care of her brother and her other siblings.