Five romance novels you won't feel embarrassed about

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

Gone are the days when in social conversation you had to pretend that you don't read anything more poppy than Sartre. Now people are turning pink, but still they openly read “50 Shades” in the subway, and if you are still shy, then we have found five love stories that are not at all ashamed to read and discuss. The secret is this: they are all more than just romance novels.

The Seven Sisters by Lucinda Riley

The first novel in the cycle about the Desplacy sisters, which has already conquered many countries with its originality and magic.

Lucinda Riley is a former Irish actress who suddenly discovered her talent for writing sensual and captivating romance novels. Since then, several decades have passed and 15 million cumulative circulations.

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A cinematic story about six orphans from around the world raised by one eccentric billionaire. He, as usual, gave the babies the names of the stars, gave a delightful childhood in a castle on a private island in Switzerland, and then mysteriously died, leavinggirls hints about their origin. And the sisters go one by one to find out about their past.

What is good

A completely extraordinary concept. The six sisters are named after stars in the constellation Pleiades, and their story is somehow connected to the legend of the Pleiades - magic! Each book tells the story of one of the sisters, taking readers on a journey following the Desplecy girls to distant corners of the world, from Brazil to France. Amazing love stories unfold there, both in the past and in the present.

Cazalet Family Chronicle: Exodus by Elizabeth Jane Howard

This is the fourth book about a vast British middle-class family. The saga covers 10 years from 1937 to 1947, and there are three generations that love and suffer, so there are a lot of love stories.

Elizabeth Jane Howard is a passionate and talented writer, model, journalist and screenwriter who worked for the BBC during the war years, gave birth to a daughter under an air raid, inspired her stepson Martin Amis to write.

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A novel about how the war affected the lives of the British, in particular women, according to Howard. A leisurely, detailed, addictive cycle with a bias towards some kind of emancipation. The Chronicle of the Casalet Family begins as the more folksy Downton Abbey, and then the children begin to grow rapidly, the husbands go to war, and the women existentially and very vitally languish. By Exodus, teenagers experience painful first loves, and their parents, who are already countless, are still as hot as inyouth.

What is good

This is not so much a love story as a great biography of the fate of different women (and men), written by a very smart person. There is a mass of very different love here: misalliance, wrong, happy and unhappy, with betrayal, blackmail and angelic patience. Such a catalog of morals of the correct aristocratic Britons in a troubled era. And yes, all of this is also a multi-part romance of growing up.

"A century before we meet" by Lisa Jewell

Lisa Jewell is a master at writing poignant novels about women of difficult fate. Wrote the first novel about the intricacies of the relations of the company of neighbors on a bet, and then everything is in a fog - popularity, awards and the status of one of the main authors of popular literature in modern Britain.

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A two-part story about amazing women in their own way: a grandmother and a granddaughter. One lived in the jazz era, moved in bohemian circles and fell in love with the wrong guys, and the other lives in the 90s, is looking for the mysterious recipient of a solid piece of the inheritance of the first. And yes, he also falls in love with the wrong guys. Stories intertwine, musicians from all eras languidly squeeze their instruments, feelings flare up in the hearts of girls of the 20s and 90s.

What is good

Atmospheric novel, which tells not just about how grandmother and granddaughter are greedy for charismatic representatives of bohemia, but also about a small intra-family detective story, which adds purposefulness and a certain mystery to the plot. Apart from, in fact,love story, there is a place to roam for fans of family dramas and those who miss the roaring 20th Fitzgerald fans.

The Decent Woman by Teresa Ann Fowler

Teresa Ann Fowler is mostly known for her fiction about the party girl and muse of Francis Scott Fitzgerald (Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald). Now she has taken on suffragette Alva Erskine Smith.

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Carefully and successfully stylized as a 19th-century novel, but modern reality peeps through it, adding a pleasant revival. Corsets, marriage as the only ticket to life, bridesmaids' and grooms' bridesmaids' balls and the rapidly getting richer Vanderbilts. And Alva, a young rebel who transforms from dowry on the verge of impoverishment to late 19th-century New York high society queen.

What is good

Actually, Alvoy. A real historical figure, one of the important figures of the suffragette movement and the manager of millions of Vanderbilts. She built legendary mansions in Manhattan, decided to divorce her millionaire out of self-respect (setting an important precedent for women), and was not at all afraid to love honestly and sincerely. Her fate and amazing integrity captures more powerfully than a romantic line.

"Where My Love Lives" by Charles Martin

Charles Martin - Winner of Best Christian Author, Professional Writertear-squeezing novels about dying, falling into a coma, disappearing into the mountains and desperately in love heroes.

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Farmhouse, with rusty pickups and love in the haystacks. And with action. There is a personal drama of heroes who still cannot have a baby after the girl comes out of a coma. And there are the dirty deeds of the gangsters of the American hinterland of the 1990s. Drama, hysterical sacrificial love and harsh visiting brothers will unite here, so there will be serious fights between love.

What is good

Martin knows how to concentrate on the experiences of the characters so thoroughly that several pages of the inner world and a love story in a row are the norm. It is hot to describe the unity of bodies - this is not his, but the souls - this is definitely Martin. It is even somehow difficult to believe that so much love, devotion and nobility is placed in ordinary people. The degree of drama in him always goes off scale, and here it is justified by the rather dangerous situation in which the heroes find themselves.