How to use tags instead of our Special Title Listings
We haven’t updated our Special Title Listings since 2016, but that doesn’t mean we’re not committed to making AAR the best place to find the kinds of stories you want. It’s more searchable and more up-to-date to put this function into our new tags. Many of the tags correspond to the old Special Title Listings categories. Sometimes it’s a tidy exact match; sometimes there are multiple tags for one former Special Title Listing, and sometimes, well, there isn’t a tag that matches up. We’re all volunteers and we can’t get to everything!
If you liked the old STLs, here is a list of tags most likely to help you find the romance novel you’re looking for. The best way to search for these is to go to our new Power Search 2.0 and just type the tag into the search bar! You can also scroll down on the left where you see list of tags and check the tag you want, but that list is only some of our most common tags and may not contain what you’re specifically looking for.
- Comparable tag: Cross-class romance (cross-class lovers)
- Addiction
- No direct tag match; you may find what you’re looking for under road romance, dystopian romance,
- No comparison
- Alternate Reality is a genre option
- Dogs, horses
- No comparable tag; included under PoC tag
- Amnesia
- Angels, Demons, Gods and Goddesses
- Arranged marriage
- No comparable tag
- Enemies to lovers
- No comparable tag
- Individual major cities have tags. We try not to tag this unless the setting is significantly developed in the story. See, for instance, New York City, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Vancouver, Toronto, Shanghai, Edinburgh, Paris, Boston, Venice
- No direct tag, but many feminist heroines will be included under activist heroines or suffrage.
- Cabin romance, road romance
- No comparable tag
- Non-Christmas holidays can be found as Holiday Romance, or under some of them as we get enough, ex. Hanukkah, Valentine’s Day, Halloween, New Year’s Eve
- No comparable tag
- Cons and frauds, thief, thief hero, thief heroine
Courtesans, Mistresses & Prostitutes
- Mistress, sex worker
- Lawyer, law enforcement, FBI
- Cross-dressing, mistaken identity
- Disability, chronic illness, mental illness; certain individual tags ex diabetes, wheelchair, epilepsy, depression, anxiety, deaf, blind, and chronic pain
Experienced Heroines & Femmes Fatales
- No comparable tag
- Fairy Tale (general); individual tales as tropes: Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, Robin Hood trope
- funny
- clergy
- Friends to lovers, childhood friends to lovers
- Environmentalism, National Parks
- No current tag
- kidnapping
- No comparable tag
- No comparable tag
- No comparable tag
- Criminal record (for both innocent and guilty people convicted of a crime)
- Interracial romance. We don’t specifically have a tag for inter-religious romance. You can find Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, LDS, Amish, and Sikh protagonists at those tags, but the story may not be inter-ethnic.
- Specific occupation tags ex. Rock star, rock star hero, actor/actress, reality tv, film/tv making
- Mild d/s, BDSM, menage. You can also sort by heat level to get “hot” or “burning” romances.
- Marriage of convenience
- Age gap, Older heroine (in an m/f romance, the heroine is older than the hero)
- Childhood friends, childhood sweethearts, second chance romance
Nerds & Absent-Minded Professors
- Genius, teacher
- Older couple (for both protagonists ~over 40). Older heroine means that the heroine is older than the hero; she may or may not be over 40.
- No comparable tag. Try “N/A ,“Kisses”, or “Subtle” in our heat ratings.
- Opposites attract, enemies to lovers
- Widow, widower
- Pirates, viking.
- Plus-size heroine
- No tag for narrators, but we do have epistolary
- No comparable tag (it would be too full!).
- Second chance romance
- royalty
- Scotland, Ireland. For Scotland during the Risings you may also try Jacobite. Edinburgh has its own tag.
- No comparable tag
- No comparable tag
- Unusual Setting. In lieu of just lumping settings into “special,” I’ve tried to tag them by their actual location. Try typing a place you are interested in into the tag bar (Australia, Japan, Caribbean, Philippines, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Italy, Vietnam, etc) and see if it comes up.
- Spy, private investigator, barbarian, knight, Navy SEAL
- Sports romance, athlete, athlete hero, athlete heroine. Olympian, Olympian heroine. You can also find individual sports, including hockey romance, rugby, basketball, baseball, football, soccer, ice skaters
- Try the genre tags, “Romantic suspense” or “Mystery.”
- Teacher (currently includes university professors but could later be revised), governess
- Time travel romance; this is also a genre tag.
- No comparable tag, try grief or PTSD
- No comparable tag, try grief or PTSD
- Troubled relationship (for couples starting the story in a long-term relationship with or without marriage), troubled marriage (specifically for married couples). The key is that in both cases the conflict is about fixing a relationship instead of courting. You may also find stories of interest in second-chance romance.
- twins
- tearjerker
- No comparable tag
- Unusual occupation
- No comparable tag
- Virgin hero
- Try specific conflicts such as English Civil War, Jacobite, Napoleonic Wars, American Revolution, War of 1812, Crimean War, American Civil War, World War I, World War II, Vietnam War
- See the genre tag Young Adult
~ Caroline Russomanno
Caroline’s work on tags has been such a gift to AAR and its readers.
Thanks, Dabney. It’s a lot of work and it means a lot to have it appreciated. I think it’s worth it to maximize this database, which is truly unique not just in romance but maybe in genre fiction?
I agree and love that the new search feature returns results with more than just a title. I used to use the listings but it was a second step to look up each book’s review to make sure it was something I really wanted to try to find and read. Kudos to everyone working on tags and the new search feature!
Thank you! Caroline has done so much work with the tags. It’s all her!