the ask@AAR: What are your favorite romances featuring interracial relationships?
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I’ve been happily struck by the number of interracial couples I see on the news and in advertising these days. There’s exuberant coverage of Kamala Harris’ marriage to Doug Emhoff, squeeing over Megan and Harry, or couples on TV driving with their families, couples planning pregnancies, and families heading home for the holidays just to name a few.
According a Gallup poll, approval of black–white intermarriage rose among whites from around 4% in 1958 to 45% in 1995 and 84% in 2013.The actual share of intermarried newlyweds rose from 3% in 1967 to 17% in 2015. There are now more interracial marriages than there are marriages between Democrats and Republicans!
I’m also seeing more and more romances with interracial couples on the covers.
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Has this been your experience? Are you seeing more interracial couples in romance? What love stories do you love that feature such pairs?
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I wanted to add a few more personal favorites that have not yet been mentioned.
Barbara Samuel (Barbara O’Neal) – THE SLEEPING NIGHT
Barbara Samuel (Barbara O’Neal) – A PIECE OF HEAVEN
Joshilyn Jackson – THE ALMOST SISTERS
Jessica Davis Stein – COYOTE DREAM
Courtney Milan’s Worth books! The new one The Devil Comes Courting has a biracial hero and a Chinese Heroine. By the way I just finished the book and loved it. The heroes brother was also featured in a previous book.
I’ve read a lot of books with interracial relationships this year: “Party of Two” by Jasmine Guillory, “If I Never Met You” by Mhairi McFarlane, “The Worst Best Man” by Mia Sosa, “Murder in Old Bombay” by Nev March (more of an historical mystery, but the hero is biracial and does have a romance), “The Boyfriend Project” by Farrah Rochon, “A Girl Like Her” by Talia Hibbert (where the heroine’s being on the autism spectrum is as much of an issue as race). Of these, the McFarlane was my favorite.
P.S. I remember the Carla Kelly book fondly. She writes such quiet but effective characters who feel very real. Her heroes are often categorized as beta, but they are strong and dedicated and true leaders, they just don’t go about stomping their feet and beating their chests to announce they alpha-ness.
Not a recommendation (skin colour/cultural heritage makes zero difference to me when it comes to deciding whether to read a romance) but a comment on the introduction to this thread:
Why the surprise about interracial marriages outnumbering political unions? Speaking from afar it seems to me that a staunch Democrat and a staunch Republican could barely have a civil conversation in the US at the moment, let alone contemplate a relationship!
It is surprising to me just because it’s flipped in my lifetime. When I was growing up, interracial relationships were looked at with distrust but many families I knew had moms who voted one way and dad’s the other. That’s no longer the case.
Definitely true, not only of interracial relationships but interethnic ones. I have an elderly friend who is still a bit burned by the fact the Dutch side of her family was blatantly obvious in favoring her older sister because she looked like them rather than the French side that my friend took after.
As for parents voting differently, also very true. Although I think part of the reason is that the left and right in America weren’t so different unless you believed in the fringe aspects of it. I.e. if one person was a hippie and the other a fundamentalist Christian, you probably wouldn’t see a union. Otherwise, things were a lot more moderate. But now, the Democrat and Republican platforms seem to have very little in common.
I wonder, Nan, if you would have felt this in the pre-internet, pre-social media days both of which do nothing more than stir the pot, add vicious, vituperative assumptions and spread hate and lies. I’ve been involved in one way or the other in politics in both the US and UK most of my life but can’t recall the depth of hatred and intolerance that we experience these days. Sometimes I think we are getting close to book-burning which I find abhorrent and so, so sad.
“I wonder, Nan, if you would have felt this…” Felt what? Sorry, I’m a little confused.
As for the rest of your comment, I agree with you 100%. While I personally think it’s great that interracial romances are having a heyday (the more story and character types, the better!), I want to see equal if not greater enthusiasm toward characters who embody diversity of thought. It seems like while more and more writers are embracing physical markers of diversity that would have been unheard of only a few years ago, those characters better hold a stringent value set deemed appropriate by social media mobs- or else. Like you said, I too worry about a movement toward book burning.
That’s a great point you make about physical diversity being OK in romance but the characters needing to espouse certain values. The outrage I’ve sometimes seen online about minor incidents in books, even when those incidents are historically accurate! I rarely come across romances in which characters with opposing viewpoints or beliefs on important issues are able to come together and change each other or accommodate each other’s differences. Maybe it’s because those books are harder to write well, or because authors are afraid of readers who can’t separate the personal sentiments of the author from those they put into their character’s mouths for artistic reasons….
Unfinished Business by Karyn Langhorne encompasses a White southern Republican Congressman (and a wounded military vet) who falls in love with a Black woman who is (presumably) a Democrat but nonetheless very involved in the issues one would expect. Never the twain shall meet? They do and it’s such a wonderful story that is honest and open and very well told. I finished it thinking about how there is good, bad and indifferent in all of us – no matter what our political identity might be. And generally more good than bad.
I enjoyed Hearts on Hold by Charish Reid and A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian. So far, I think those are the only explicitly interracial romances I’ve read, but I have two Harlequin HRs on my TBR list that fit the bill: A Marriage of Equals by Elizabeth Rolls (which my librarian just agreed to buy, yay!) and A Blues Singer to Redeem Him (coming out in September, getting super impatient for this one).
Oh! I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole and Forbidden by Beverly Jenkins. Okay, maybe Forbidden is cheating a bit as the hero is a mixed race man (black/white) who has been passing as white in order to become a successful business man and has to decide whether to blow his cover in order to court the black heroine.
“Are you seeing more interracial couples in romance?” I haven’t been a romance reader for as long as a lot of the commenters here, so I can’t really say whether there’s been a significant increase since I started. Maybe someone else can chime in on that.
However, I do think it’s interesting to note that interracial erotica is a huge niche market- particularly works classified as BWWM (black woman, white man). For whatever reason, black heroine plus Italian hero is particularly prominent. For this reason alone, I think Harlequin HR’s upcoming jazz age bootlegger story A Blues Singer to Redeem Him has a potentially large built-in audience already.
Perhaps a lesser known one is “Softly Falling” by Carla Kelly.
It’s one of her westerns and the biracial heroine’s mother was from Barbados while her father is a ne’er do well and an exile from a wealthy English family. The heroine is educated and supported by her uncle (who does so begrudgingly and is embarrassed of her ethnicity) so she is sent off to Wyoming on her own to find her absent and irresponsible father.
It’s a very gentle romance and a lot of it is about Lily and the hero surviving a particularly bad Wyoming winter.
I didn’t have a tag on that one! Thanks for the reminder. I really enjoyed that story – I was amazed at how effectively she made weather the villain.
Pas de Deux by Lynn Turner, a great spicy romance about a Misty Copeland-type ballet megastar and a demanding choreographer. And bonus, after our previous blog – it’s an indie!
Oh! Another charming interracial romance that’s also an indie – Sugar Pie Guy by Tabitha True! This is a cute story set in 1970s Cleveland.
The Hidden Blade/My Beautiful Enemy by Sherry Thomas.
Unfit to Print by KJ Charles.
Not really a romance, but does have romantic elements: My Best Friend’s Girl by Dorothy Koomson.
Lucy Parker’s HEADLINERS. Great book.
One thing I’ve noticed about interracial romances is that often you wouldn’t even know you’re reading an interracial romance if it weren’t for the cover model and/or references to skin tone and (for Black heroines) hair texture. I can think of romances by Katee Robert, J. Kenner, and Caitlin Crews (among others) with interracial couples where the fact that the MCs were of different races had absolutely no bearing on the storyline—which some might see as a sign of progress but which reminds me of cop shows from the 1970s where the supervisor was Black but only popped in for a scene or two to ask, say, Starsky & Hutch how the case was going—visibility but no viability, if that makes sense. I do think Talia Hibbert’s interracial romances do show that there are stresses beyond the usual ones when people of different races are dating and fall in love. Of her books, my favorite is UNDONE BY THE EX-CON where, in addition to falling in love with a white man (and an ex-con to boot), the biracial heroine has to confront the perfectionism demanded of her by her profession (ballet dancing) and by her white mother.
I’m actually loving this about the Will Trent books–you rarely know the color of someone’s skin.
Nalini Singh and Shelly Laurenston/G.A. Aiken have several books like that (although you wouldn’t know from the cover). I appreciate it that the characters can acknowledge how their ethnicity may have shaped their world views, but it is not the focus of their existence. It’s a fine line, but one I look for.
We have a tag for that! https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/interracial-romance/
Lisa Kleypas’ Mine till Midnight and Seduce Me at Sunrise feature Romany heroes, and are partially why i became aware of just how violently they’re hated in Europe even today. While stories about POC shouldn’t always be about raising awareness and racism, diverse stories like these novels are a big reason why i’m a better person now then five years ago.
I love Mine Till Midnight and Cam, I want to shake Kev from Seduce Me At Sunrise though even though I sympathize with his past traumas.
The one that springs immediately to mind is Annabeth Albert’s Squared Away; it’s a lovely, slow-burn romance about two guys dealing with a tragedy that drastically changes their lives while trying to keep a family together. All the books in the Out of Uniform series are pretty strong, but that is one of my favourites.
Rachel Grant’s Firestorm is a fantastic, heart-pounding romantic suspense novel from her Flashpoint series; Inferno, a novella from the same series is great as well.
KJ Charles’ Wanted: A Gentleman pairs a former slave – now a successful businessman – and a jobbing writer in a fantastic road-trip romance.
One of my favourite comfort rereads is A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian.
Hartley is, I think, my favourite of all Cat Sebastian’s MCs. He has been so damaged by the abuse he received as a youth and its consequences, but his relationship with Sam enables him to heal and regain hope and happiness.
Sam is a Black ex-boxer who runs a pub in 19th Century London and he is Hartley’s emotional rock.
Their warm and caring relationship is at the heart of this wonderful book, but there is also a cast of tremendous side characters.
Sandra Kitt, Mercedes Keyes and Karyn Langhorne on the top for me.
I will also mention Pepper Pace, Crystal Hubbard and Giselle Carmichael.
Unfinished Business by Karyn Langhorne is on my keeper shelf. It’s one of my all-time favourite contemporary romances.