the ask@AAR: Are you ready for romances set in the pandemic?
There’s been a slew of novels set in the pandemic on Netgalley recently and I for one am not here for them. I am so tired of lockdown and COVID and social isolation–the last thing I want to read for fun is something that highlights these things. Give me escapism baby!
I want a first kiss that isn’t predicated on a test, quarantine, and wondering what to do with the masks. I want lovers that can see all of each other with ease. I want hugs and dates.
I’m sure that a great writer could make this work but it just doesn’t call to me at all.
How about you? Are you ready for stories that feature the pandemic?
I think it depends on what country you set your story. New Zealand or Australia or South Korea or Singapore have been very good and they have normal lives, with very few deaths, so those countries can be good settings for a romance novel in these times. It’s more dificult to set one in countries with very high level of deaths, as happens with Spain. Nevertheless, I have read a very good romance novel set in these times, very well written, and I recommend it although it but it made me feel uncomfortable in some moments. I gave it three stars (a B for you, I guess) because of that. It’s written by one of my favourite authors, Marisa Sicilia. I see it has been translated to English: Paris Can Wait. You could give it a try.
Eh, why not?
How about a big, fat “NO?” Like many here have said, I don’t read romances or any other fiction for the sake of wallowing in current events. Actually, contemporary fiction in general is of little interest to me because I don’t want to read about things that are too topical. Why would I want to read about someone’s frustrations working in a cubicle when I could be reading about spies in the jungle, a historical epic set in Tang Dynasty China, or an interplanetary skirmish?
I read a lot (LOT) of 1920s pulp fiction and the 1919 flu pandemic is almost never mentioned, even in passing. An alien couldn’t miss that there had been a war, but could easily never know about the flu. I suspect we may see similar.
That’s fascinating. I wonder why. Was the flu an act of God and thus out of man’s control? Were people’s experiences of it so different–some were unscathed and others snuffed out–that there’s no universal sense of what it was like?
I had never heard of the Spanish flu until it featured in Downton Abbey. It was a shocking and tragic storyline and definitely served dramatic purposes, but it was in no way fun or romantic.
Isn’t that how Edward originally died in Twilight?
My level of interest is about as high as if it were a story about getting a colonoscapy. I don’t read romance novels, even contemporary novels, to experience the world I’m living in, I read them for an escape. For contemporary novels I want something that is either upbeat and empowering or a darker plot that is unlikely to happen to me with a clear bad guy/girl that is ultimately beaten. I don’t want to read about other people experiencing a problem that I am still experiencing, that we don’t have an assured victory.
I personally don’t like any references that date a contemporary book too much whether it’s naming a particular TV show the heroine is watching or what artist the hero is listening to. It instantly dates the book and then IMHO the writer has boxed themselves in.
If you’re writing a book set strictly during the pandemic how strict should the writer be? Do they have to look up the weather reports if they mention a snowfall the day before Christmas?
Also the pandemic is just too close, and frankly too tiring a subject for me. I’ve read so much real information about it daily I have zero interest in mixing it into my pleasure reading.
I don’t really know how I feel about it. I read what I like and if the story sounds like one I’d enjoy I don’t really care of it has a pandemic reference or not, as long as it makes sense in context. As far as non-contemporary books, such as historical romances, fantasy, sci-fi, etc., then I think it wouldn’t bother me. It makes for an interesting backdrop.
I do think contemporary romances set during the pandemic are going to be dated almost before they are published. I can’t see them having much staying power. But I could be wrong.
Agree if it became a sudden trend: Just thinking: It would be terrible if all series romances for the next year dealt with Corona!
But a few books doing it might be good.
“co-sign”
If the backdrop would be OK for you, there are good descriptions of the Black Death in Katherine by Anya Seton. Likewise Barbara Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror.
Alexis Harrington’s Home by Morning & Home by Nightfall are set during the Spanish flu epidemic. They take place in Oregon, and the heroine of the first book is a doctor. I’ve read and enjoyed several of her western historicals. I think I may even have these somewhere in my TBR.
I don’t have strong feelings either way about Covid being in new contemporary releases. It would all depend on my mood, the author, and the execution of the story.
Follow-on comment because it seems I’m in a distinct minority! How long should writers wait before they publish about 2020-that-was? Should contemporary writers stop their fictional worlds at 2019, remove all temporal references, simply write alternate reality, or hold all 2020-set work until the consensus is ‘I could read that now’? As you can tell this is a burning question. I have WIP, not that anyone’s clamoring for it. :-)
I personally like a real-world anchor for a story. There are real things that happen and I want a book to reflect that. If a contemporary romance setting bears no resemblance to real life – no real music, or movies, or locations referenced – it might as well be fantasy. We demand a certain amount of historical realism in historical romances, after all.
Characters in the best contemporary romances have always had real-world challenges to face. I’d like to see how writers deal with it.
As you can see below, I agree!
I completely understand that people might not want to pick it up – I guess that is a risk an author always runs, there are many things I just do not pick up.
But I would, because just like you, I would be interested to see how an author does it.
I believe that well done romance using the challenge of getting people through this time will have staying power.
I’ve already read one. :-) ‘The C Word’ by Mindy Klasky. A clever M/F rom-com with a great opening. Saw the Black Moment coming a mile away, but no complaints.
Also have already read a book set in the world that wasn’t, ‘The Thomas Flair’ by E.J. Russell. M/M contemporary about two Olympic gymnasts who make it to the 2020 Tokyo Games that didn’t happen. All the sport stuff is great and doesn’t get in the way of the love story.
I think some time in the future we’ll be seeing romances that bring in COVID. Currently, we see that many romances involve the use of condoms, which I believe is an aftereffect of AIDS/HIV. We can wait and see – there are still books set before it was an issue to keep us going.
In a few years, maybe. But I need to see the real life happy ending (everything returning to normal) before I can enjoy a love story set in this reality.
I’ve read a couple that have mentioned the pandemic arriving at the very end of the book. And that’s all I care to read about.
I would not mind reading some light romances – series romance and relatively short light stories – set in the pandemic. I am quite curious how authors would make it work. A whole new set of challenges to any sexy times, and so to a substantial HEA there!
I have one example to offer, free at her website:
I liked Sophie Weston’s Christmas serial 2020:
https://libertabooks.com/stories/sophies-christmas-mystery-serial-episode-1/
She set it at Christmas 2020 in London and around it, and it was very well done, mostly a mystery story, with a light love story.
It really resonated with me, my experience and the thoughts you have to have right now, moving around, masks and distance and isolation and all that – and it worked as easy entertainment.
What I could not bear (yet?) would be dark and angsty stuff.
Contemporaries start to feel “unreal” to me, all these stories that pretend to be contemporary and yet are not – they are from a past, that feels more and more remote, living in the weird and heavy present.
Why would I want to escape into reality?
I’m employed by a hospital, so I’m always aware of the pandemic at work. I’d rather not have to think about it in my leisure time as well.
Like @Elaine S, the emergence of a new virus did not surprise me (David Quammen’s SPILLOVER, which I read years ago and highly recommend, is only one of many scientific books to emphatically assert that it was only a matter of time before the next pandemic), but I’m not really interested in reading romances that include covid-related elements. However, if an author is going to make references to specific recent events, then they shouldn’t ignore covid. For example, I have read at least three books in the past few months that made reference to the murder hornets, but with no reference to covid, quarantine, lock-down, masks, etc. It seemed very odd to read a reference to something associated so specifically with 2020 with no reference to the one enormous thing that defined the year. My advice to contemporary romance writers would be: set your books in a knowable, believable present, but don’t throw in too much specificity. That way, we can pretend the book is set in 2019.
I tend to think that very specific current references make a book seem facile. I read a book somewhere with an Olive Garden in it. That just seemed lazy to me.
Several years ago most folk would have considered a book about life in a pandemic to be SciFi, Fantasy or Dystopian and these are genres that I don’t read. My own non-fiction reading in the past made me aware that a global pandemic was likely. I’ve always had an interest in plagues (e.g. the Black Death, Ebola in Africa, even AIDS) as I do read things about the history of medicine. But as fiction to entertain me? Nope, don’t think so. The DH and I have been watching a range of TV from Netflix, Sky (with its plethora of international stations and offerings) and terrestrial TV like the BBC, etc. Some programmes have made reference to Covid – even the silly but beautiful-to-look-at remake of Magnum PI. But I don’t think that most of the watching public wants to see everyone masked and gloved up, sidling around each other performing social distancing, etc. Not entertainment for me and I don’t want to read about it either. My only regret is that I won’t be alive in 50-100 years to read the studies that will be written and the interpretations future scientists and historians will make of it all. Now, I must put my lippy on – a daily thing around the house as I can’t do it outside anymore!!
lippy?
Lipstick.
Red face!!!!! Well, lips actually, as I am at home sans mask!
I read and reviewed one late last year (L.A. Witt’s Until the World Stops) which I thought did a good job of capturing the events and emotions of the first part of the pandemic. So I suppose that means I’m not all that bothered about reading about it – but then I’ve been lucky; all my family is safe and well, and hubby and I have been able to afford to stay at home. Not being able to go out without thinking about it or not being able to go on holiday has been a pain, but those are small things and mere inconveniences compared to what some people are dealing with.
But stories that require close physical interactions (i.e romances) are are going to be very limited in the stories they can tell – unless the main couple is already living together or engaged in some kind of forced proximity – so on a purely logistical level, I can’t see it being a particularly successful trope. Maybe in a decade or so, books will refer to it (rather like books set in the 1920s mention Spanish ‘flu) so I don’t think it can be completely ignored, but while we’re still in the middle of it – and we are, even with vaccinations, we’re still going to be wearing masks and social distancing for some time – is maybe not the time to be flooding the market with pandemic-set romances!
Instances of forced proximity because of COVID was the trope I though might be used in romance novels–there were many stories about people being stuck in AirBnBs or with their families of origin again, or in other countries, for example. Marriage of convenience is pretty hard to pull off in contemporaries, but this would give some leeway.
Also, I think COVID forced some re-evaluation of life choices on people, which can be fertile ground for plots.
I’m not sure about romance novels, but I can tell you there are definitely some erotica titles that have been playing with the quarantine/forced proximity trope. But it’s not a huge or popular market considering there are fewer than 500 results on Amazon for “erotica quarantine.” Just clicking through the results in a rather perfunctory fashion, I see a lot of stories along the lines of the MC being stuck with a roommate- usually of the same sex. In other words, it appears as though some erotica authors are using quarantines as a setup for straight to gay stories, which comprise a popular niche in their own right.
I also see some other erotica set-ups like married couples rekindling their lost passion (second chance romance?) or separated couples engaging in sexy webcamming. However, like romance, I’m sure there’s a limited appeal for the quarantine niche/subgenre.
Oddly enough, I just discovered that “romance quarantine” brings up about 1,000 results under Kindle. Go figure.
Good point!
I’ve read one as well, a short story written really early on in the pandemic (it was published in April, and I read it in May). It’s from Harlequin’s Spanish line, HQÑ, so it’s in Spanish, and set in Spain, which at the time was still going through a really strict lockdown.
It’s called París Puede Esperar, by Marisa Sicilia. The main characters are a couple who have been married for quite a while, and the action moves back and forth showing us different times in their marriage, and them in lockdown in the present day.
I loved it. It was exactly what I needed, because the ending gave me the hope I needed at the time.
That’s a great point. I love the idea that a romance set in the pandemic could give us hope. It’s one I hadn’t given enough consideration to. Thanks!
I like that idea – and perhaps a story featuring a couple having problems who rediscover why they got married in the first place might work…
Nope, I cant see me ever being interested in a romance set in the pandemic.