All the world loves a lover, especially if the lover is a character in a book or film. This romance with romancers is eternal; despite occasional tearjerkers with tragic breakups where lovers die or dump each other, love stories will always live happily ever after. The perfect meet cute, the witty bantering, the bedroom escapades… One can’t keep their hands off a good rom-com.
From West Side Story in 1961 to West Side Story in 2021, life has been one long musical. There was always a man and a woman, and we held our breath when their eyes met across a crowded room. Everywhere around us couples are about to fall in love, in the process of falling in love, or in the midst of declaring their love for each other. When we heard that Rishi Sunak and Akshata Murty had a quiet dinner date in Delhi on the sidelines of the G20 Summit, we went aaawww. We hated it when Diana and Charles broke up, when Brad and Jen broke up, and then Brad and Angelina broke up…
It may all have started with hetero pairs, but same-sex couples now own prime real estate in ishq wala love. Call Me By Your Name, Blue is the Warmest Colour, Ek Ladki Ko Dekha Toh Aisa Laga, even the latest Hindi film Gulmohar, have all been necessary to a new and equal world.
Netflix series Heartstoppers has brought tenderness back in a big way, the gay storyline so germane to the plot almost incidental very soon into the viewing. It is not just about Charlie (Joe Locke) and Nick (Kit Connor), but also about Elle and Tao, Tara and Darcy, and even Isaac, all of them loving in so many types of love.
So, of course, publishers romance this genre, wooing it for readership and revenue. Founder and partner of Jacaranda Literary Agency, Jayapriya Vasudevan, is actively looking for sharp, smart rom-coms. As Abhivyakti Singh, commissioning editor at Hachette India, says, ‘It’s a billion-dollar-a-year industry with an incredibly loyal readership.’
Jayapriya says: ‘I started looking at this genre because of our author Trisha Das. Trisha wrote a fabulous story, an homage to Georgette Heyer. And I was hooked. It’s clever plotting, sharp writing, great characters, and not one-dimensional stories.’
Durjoy Datta's 20th romance novel, World’s Worst Best Girlfriend, published by Penguin Random House, will be out soon. Ravinder Singh, author of I Too Had a Love Story, presents a popular romance series for HarperCollins India, which includes Bengaluru-based author Vani Mahesh’s Meet Me In The Middle. Vani, whose heroine Anu is a middle-class housewife redefining romance for herself, says, ‘Writing this book was sheer fun. It is about staying in love after falling in love.’
We may already know the ending - the hero and heroine will fall into each other's arms! - but that is also the abracadabra.
According to Abhivyakti, ‘Romance novels keep joy and unadulterated hope at the front and centre of storytelling. That’s what I love most about it. It’s a formula-driven territory. There’s an unsaid contract with readers. If it’s not a happily ever after (HEA) or happy for now (HFN), it’s just not romance. This sheer bullishness of the genre to stick with pleasure and good cheer as the norm and not coincidental outcomes is groundbreaking to me.’
Among Hachette’s new releases is The Way We Were about love lost and love found, written by Prajwal Hegde, a sports journalist based in Bengaluru. ‘It’s evocative and so fun! The one-liners are hilarious and will stay with you for long,’ says Abhivyakti, who also finds the Bridgerton series a fantastic read. ‘I think what they did with the second season on-screen was a stroke of genius. Romance is never just about the naughty parts. The yearning, the angst, the banter, the tropes, that third-act break-up, characters overcoming their anxieties and prejudices, and the well-earned intimacy really do it for readers and viewers. It’s hitting the right action beats at the right time. It’s all about timing.’
Nandita Bose, who writes romances because she loves to read them, and has set her novels Everglow, Shadow and Soul, Tread Softly in Bengali households, says, ‘Love is the most elusive material in the world. It’s a crazy wild ride bringing it to strangers over and over, if only within the 225 pages of a book.’
Erich Segal's slim novel Love Story took the seventies by storm and was translated into over 20 languages. Blind love for a love story is not a given though; some romances are hot, some are not.
Jayapriya, who loves Irish women’s fiction – ‘Current obsession is Beth O’Leary. I loved her book The Flatshare’ – also likes reading older women’s fiction by authors like Maeve Binchy.
Abhivyakti feels Sally Thorne’s The Hating Game got it right. ‘The banter is fantastic, and the book is one of the best enemies-to-lovers I have read. Then there is, of course, Ali Hazelwood, Christina Lauren, Jasmine Guillory, Anna Huang and Lucy Score, who have struck a chord with romance readers worldwide.’ In the wake of the pandemic, she feels, readers want to lean towards lighter, more hopeful storytelling. ‘This, alongside the BookTok boom, would explain the 52.4 percent rise in the sale of romance books between 2021 and 2022,’ adds Abhivyakti.
If there's chemistry between a romance and its reader, the sales figures are heart emojis. Which is why publishers and readers have been walking into the sunset hand in hand just like their protagonists.
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