Why The Romance Genre Has Risen in Popularity (w/ Christine Riccio, Natasha Polis)

• Welcome to #Millennial, the home of pretend adulting and real talk!
• We are joined this week by Christine Riccio and Natasha Polis from Those Forking Fangirls to discuss the significant uptick in interest (and sales) of literary romance and YA novels.
• Today's conversation was inspired by this NPR article:From meet-cutes to happy endings, romance readers feel the love as sales heat up. 
• Christine and Natasha help us dig in on the pipeline from Young Adult to Romance, how the genres somewhat overlap, and how the culture has shifted to make open enjoyment of the Romance genre more socially accepted.
• Might some of the shifts in cover art portrayals have made the genre more comfortable and accessible to readers? Are there any cases where the cute, cartoony covers fail to communicate the spicy, smutty passages between the covers?
• Fan Fiction seems to have played a major role in these developments, with more people participating in online fan spaces to create new content. There are even recent examples of very successful fan fic authors going on to become published, like Christina Lauren, EL James, Alice Clayton, and Ali Hazelwood.
• Is there any direct correlation between the rise in interest for romance novels as a genre and the uptick in romance-based reality TV shows? What sort of escapism do they provide?
• What recommendations do Christine and Natasha have for current romance readers, or those hoping to get started? "From Blood and Ash" by Jennifer L Aremntrout, "Spoiler Alert" by Olivia Dade, "A Court of Silver Flames" by Sarah J Maas, "Part of Your World" by Abby Jimenez, "Verity" by Colleen Hoover, "Anna & the French Kiss" by Stephanie Perkins, "The Soulmate Equation" by Christina Lauren, "The Hating Game" by Sally Thorne, "A Court of Thorns and Roses" by Sarah J. Maas. And of COURSE - "Twilight" by Stephenie Meyer. 
• This week's recommendations are all over the map: Andrew's shameless plug to use his Visible by Verizon referral code to get $20 off your first month, "Sons of the Forest" (Laura), 'Daisy Jones & The Six' on Prime Video (Pam), "Ninth House" (Christine), and "Sanditon" on Masterpiece airing 3/19/23 (Natasha).

And in this week's installment of After Dark, available on Patreon:

• Last week we revealed all the bad things we did as kids and teens, but this week we're revealing the much more scandalous escapades our parents thought we were into.
• Weed orgies, illicit drug use on a church playground, underage sex, and all sorts of really interesting things none of us were actually cool enough to be doing.

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