Romance Novels for Feminists' BEST OF 2013

NOVELLAS

After posting a rant earlier this year about how publishers and authors are increasingly using the novella as a medium for marketing rather than a format with its own specific aesthetic conventions, I found myself eating my words after reading not just one, but three compelling short romances in 2013:

Laura Florand, Snow-Kissed

Florand has a true gift for penning romances with all the characteristics of gourmet chocolate: rich (emotionally), sweet but subtle, all often underlaid with a surprisingly strong bite of the unexpected. I thoroughly enjoyed all three of the full-length Paris-set romances she published this past year. But my top pick would have to be her novella, Snow-Kissed, which tells of an estranged wife and husband who struggle through their anger, passion, and grief in the wake of a series of devastating miscarriages to somehow find the courage to risk themselves one more time for love.

Ruthie Knox Making It Last

Like Snow-Kissed, Making It Last features a married couple whose relationship is foundering. Not on the shoals of tragedy, but rather on the far more common rocks of everyday life's demands—children, work, lack of time for each other, lack of time for themselves. Tony hopes that gifting his wife with a solo vacation will bring back the Amber with whom he fell in love, but soon recognizes that it's only together, not apart, that the two can confront the frustrations and guilt that have led them to drift apart.

Mary Ann Rivers, Snowfall

Rivers' debut novella, The Story Guy, was the recipient of much attention early this year. But I enjoyed her Christmas story, Snowfall, the middle offering in the Heating up the Holidays collection, even more. The story of a scientist struggling to adjust to a life-changing medical diagnosis while simultaneously trying to choose between the steamy phone-sex guy who allows her to forget about her physical problems or the quirky physical therapist who urges her to confront them head-on features the same luscious prose and emotionally-charged romance of The Story Guy. Disability here is not portrayed at one remove, but as front and center as a complex woman works to negotiate her own changing identity and its implications for her romantic life.

CONTEMPORARY

Alexis Hall, Glitterland

Another auspicious debut characterized by razor-sharp language and deeply-imagined characterization, Glitterland relates the story of Ash Winters, former Wunderkind whose potential flamed out in college due to the onset of bipolar disorder. Ash's sexual encounter with working-class Darian sends him fleeing into the night, but Darian's persistence, hope, and good heart gradually inspire Ash to move beyond the confines of his own apartment and the limits he's allowed his illness to place upon his life. A gritty portrayal of mental illness, leavened by a sweet m/m romance.

Tamara Morgan, Confidence Tricks

Romance and robbery combine to humorous and adventurous effect in this tale of a con-woman set on revenge, and the rather inept wealthy family involved in their own series of stings with which she becomes involved. Witty banter, clever heists, hot sex scenes, and two protagonists who grow into their better selves through interacting with each other make for a far deeper read than your typical heist romance.

Molly O'Keefe, Wild Child

The first entry in O'Keefe's new Boys of Bishop initially seems to give us the typical bad girl/good guy romance. But O'Keefe's complex characterization shows how the "bad" and "nice" labels are not only limits that others place upon us, but facades behind which we can hide our more vulnerable selves. How town mayor/nice boy Jackson Davies and former child reality-TV-star Monica Appleby use their own self-images to protect themselves, and how each forces the other to stop hiding, makes for yet another satisfying read by one of today's best contemporary romance authors.

EROTIC ROMANCE

Anne Calhoun, Uncommon Passion

I had a hard time choosing between Calhoun's Unforgiven and Uncommon Passion, but ultimately the latter won out for its far from conventional take on the virgin heroine story. Having recently renounced her fundamentalist religious upbringing, twenty-five-year-old Rachel is eager to explore her own sexuality, and takes the first step by bidding on, and winning, the hottest guy in a bachelor auction. The sexism of the tropes of the typical virgin heroine romance gets blown sky-high in this story of a woman both not afraid to explore her sexuality but also not willing to ignore the emotions that so often form part and parcel of the sex package.

Cara McKenna, Unbound

In a romance field dominated by alpha male protagonists, McKenna proves herself once again one of the best in the field by crafting a sexually-submissive male as romantic lead, and making him far more interesting and appealing than the majority of more "masculine" romance heroes. Scotsman Rob Rush, living the life of a hermit to avoid both the temptation of alcohol and the shame of his rope fetish, meets his match in American Merry Murray, celebrating her hard-earned slimmed-down body with a solo hiking trip in the Highlands. Can a hot vacation tryst turn into something more lasting?

Heloise Belleau and Solace Ames, The Dom Project

A good dom can be so hard to find... University archivist Robin Lessing is known to her readers as "The Picky Submissive," penning humorous blog posts about her up until now disappointing quest to find a partner who will actually listen to her submissive preferences, rather than simply tell her how good submitting to him will be. After discovering long-time best friend John Sun is into the kink, too, Robin enters into a one-month contract, during which John will help her explore her own submissive likes and dislikes—all without sex, of course, so their friendship won't be ruined. This BDSM take on the marriage of convenience plot has the added appeal of an Asian hero, well-aware of how stereotypes about male Asian sexuality play into his own stereotype-busting preferences.

YOUNG/NEW ADULT

Gayle Forman, Just One Day and Just One Year

It's not just that my daughter is going to be in her school's production of As You Like It this spring that I'm so taken with Forman's paired stories of two young people whose lives resonate with connections to Shakespeare's liminal play. American Allyson and Dutch Willem meet cute in London, then spend one life-changing day together in Paris, neither quite ready for the intensity of the feelings that the other evokes. In classic An Affair to Remember-fashion, a tragic accident separates the two. Each novel recounts the year which follows the separation, one from Allyson's POV, one from Willem's, during which both struggle to craft an adult identity while wondering about, and searching for, the other.

Tom Leveen, Manicpixiedreamgirl

Leveen's narrative, flashing between one day in the current life of junior Tyler Darcy, and the past three years of his romantic life, deftly portrays the gap between public performances of masculinity and privately held beliefs of teen boys, and the implications such a gap has for real-life adolescent girls. What's at stake when a boy turns a girl into his "manicpixiedreamgirl," the girl who embodies all his liberatory dreams and desires? Can a boy move beyond the objectification that the manicpixiedreamgirl entails, to see the actual girl behind the image he's constructed? Especially if that actual girl is far more troubled than the male dreamer has ever imagined?

Bill Koenigsberg, Openly Straight

After years of being out and proud of it, west coast highschooler Rafe transfers to an elite private school in the Northeast, where he decides not to tell anyone about his sexual preferences. Experiencing life as a straight guy has its benefits, no doubt. But how can Rafe tell his best friend that he's really in love with him and still maintain his cover? This wry, humorous, and thoughtful look at homophobia and identity politics in contemporary American culture has much to offer both teens struggling to come to terms with non-traditional aspects of their own identities, as well as the adults around them who take acceptance of such identities for granted.

Katie McGarry, Crash Into You

Young adult melodrama at its drama-i-est, with car crashes, paroled parents, gambling-addicted siblings, and debilitating mental illnesses galore. Yet at its heart lies the story of a couple coming to terms with their needs to control their own lives, and the equally important necessity of allowing those they love to make their own choices. The male desire to protect the woman one loves, so often constructed as a positive force in romance, is here shown to be really more about keeping control for oneself. Learning to accept a loved one's right to control her own life serves as a strong underlying feminist theme.

HISTORICAL

Cecilia Grant, A Woman Entangled

Two years in a row for Grant on RNFF's "Best of" list, this time for the third book in her Blackshear series. Once again calling into question traditional romance tropes, Grant portrays a woman bent on marrying for money and status, one who does not have to give up her material dreams in order to realize her romantic ones, or to be punished for having such desires in the first place.

Courtney Milan, The Heiress Effect

Another 2-time RNFF "Best of" author, with another historical romance that turns traditional romance tropes on their heads. The ridiculous dress and thoughtlessly insulting comments of "Feather Heiress" Jane Fairfield are driving political mover and shaker Lord Bradenton to distraction, so much so that he promises rising political star Oliver Marshall his support on a key vote if Oliver will help flush Jane Fairfield from polite society. Yet there's more to Jane, and to Oliver, than either Bradenton, or readers, suspect...

Sherry Thomas, The Luckiest Lady in London

A smart homage to Loretta' Chase's classic Lord of Scoundrels, with a hero who responds to the travesty of his parents' disastrous marriage not by turning into a rake, but instead by performing the role of the "perfect gentleman," a role that hides the far more complicated man that lies beneath. But when Felix Rivendell, Marquess of Wrenworth, encounters the one woman who seems to see his darker side, he cannot help but be transfixed, despite his promise to himself never to be a victim of love as was his father before him. How far should we tolerate the current bad behavior of those who experienced difficult childhoods? And how does gender play into the answer of such a question? These are only a few of the feminist questions Thomas asks readers to consider.

Anna Cowan, Untamed

A special RNFF shout-out to the flawed but innovative and ambitious gender-bending historical Untamed. It may not be the most accomplished book of 2013, but it did contain some of the strongest challenges to conventional gender roles of the year.






FANTASY, SCIENCE FICTION, and ROMANTIC SUSPENSE
I find myself at a distressing loss when asked to name the best of 2013 for any of these categories. In part because so many Fantasy and Sci Fi books are published as parts of series, and I'm unwilling to read book #22 before having read #1-21. In part because my years of teaching F & SF make me a particularly tough critic, especially when it comes to the world-building that plays such a vital role in the appeal of these genres. In part because I still find it rare for a romantic suspense novel to successfully reconcile generic conventions that rely on objectifying the female protagonist as object of danger with this blog's desires for female agency and autonomy. Have I overlooked any 2013 feminist gems in these categories?


Which 2013 romances struck you as both outstanding romances, and as worthy exemplars of feminist values? And what would you like to see more of, feminist-romance-wise, in 2014?