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Some readers may scoff at picking up a romance novel, but the genre is one of the pillars of the book industry. Sales of romance titles rose 52 percent back in 2022, and according to Publishers Weekly, romance and romantasy novels by writers like Sarah J. Maas and Colleen Hoover are some of the bestselling novels of 2024. The plots may seem outlandish and the prose purple, but true love seems to win out.
If you’re a romance fan, see if you can figure out which of the phrases in the quiz below is a title to a bodice-ripper and which is the name of a nail polish.
Romance authors have a variety of methods to keep this billion-dollar genre humming along. Some dress in period clothing to better understand their historical protagonists; others insist that the men portrayed on book covers appear from the neck down so the reader can project their own preferred physical attributes to him. And yes, the more outlandish the title, the better. It’s how we got The Bull Rider’s Christmas Baby.
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