Hate-reading two romance bestsellers

First up… I’m not going to name names.

When I read a book that makes me want to hurl my Kindle at the wall, I never leave a negative review. I just don’t leave a review at all. I’m more like: Hated it, let’s all move on with our lives and never speak of this again. Plus, I’m in the middle of querying agents myself and whoa boy do I believe in review karma.

With that caveat out of the way, I’ve just read, back-to-back, two huge-selling New Adult romance novels because this is the genre I’m writing in, and all that was running through my mind the whole time was: You have got to be f***ing kidding me!

Both New York Times bestsellers (whatever that means these days), the authors displayed a 13-year-old-journaling-their-crush-on-Justin-Bieber levels of talent, with one unable to even dredge up the classic romance phrase: ‘He cupped my face’. Instead writing: ‘He put his hands on either side of my face.’

Well, that was sexy. Underwear changes at the ready, ladies.

Where is your editor? Where is your thesaurus? Where is your basic knowledge of hands on faces within a romantic setting?

The general consensus is that you should read as much as you can within the genre you wish to write, both in order to check out the competition and also to see what’s popular. After all, with every submission to a literary agency you have to mention alongside which other books yours would sit.

But what if the other books, rather than inspire you, make you just… so… MAD. Then what?

Unfortunately (Sooooo unfortunately), I am not one of those DNF (Did Not Finish) readers so prevalent on Reddit and Twitter because I’m always hoping that with each turn of the page it will somehow get better.

As that famous romance reader Albert Einstein once said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results”.

I think he also read ** **** **** ** and ********* ********.