For my second romance novel, I picked up more of a novella. It was part of a series called A Touch of Taboo by Katee Robert. Each story has a hint of a taboo subject. I saw the fourth book of the series recommended in my latest search. It is called Seducing My Guardian and is about a young woman who lost her parents in a tragic car accident at the age of sixteen. On her twenty-fifth birthday, at which she gains full access to the trust her parents left her, she decides to seduce her guardian. She never lived with this guardian. He shipped her off to boarding school and managed her financial affairs.

This was a quick read and falls into a subgenre that I would call “steamy sex held together with just enough story”. Obviously, she succeeds in seducing her guardian. They spend the night exploring and acting out sexual fantasies. The sex is well-written with a bit of the woman wondering about the motivation and psychology behind what she is doing. I largely found the novella simplistic and disappointing.

The author could have explored the relationship side of the story a bit more. And that led me to realize something about myself. I am not really interested in erotic stories for just the steamy sex. Don’t get me wrong. I appreciate it. It’s just not enough. I want to know how they came to be together, how they might have a life together and deal with the challenges that life throws at two people sharing their bodies and their lives. That just wasn’t there in this book, and it left me wanting more.

A few years ago, I got curious about romance novels. I had never read one. I had seen a lot of them growing up in the 80s – paperback covers with shirtless men and long blond hair blowing in the wind. But this is a huge industry, and I wanted to know more about it. When I asked my girlfriend for a recommendation, she told me to read Outlander.

I had heard of this book but never thought of it as a romance novel. It was time-traveling historical fiction, right? Yes. But is was also a romance novel with steamy sex scenes. The quality of the writing was way beyond the reputation that I had heard of for romances. I read the series through book four before I decided to drop it, and I didn’t read any more romance.

Recently, I decided to dive back into romance, maybe something a little less literary and a bit more mainstream for romance novels. I logged onto the subreddit r/romancebooks and searched for books with strong female main characters (FMC) and steamy sex scenes. I never knew there were so many subgenres in romance! After some digging through recommendation, I landed on reading Last Light by Claire Kent.

Last Light takes place after an asteroid hits Europe causing the breakdown of civilization. The setting reminded me a lot of Stephen King’s The Stand but without the deadly virus. The narrator is a young woman leaving her home town to join others who left before her. Her love interest is an older man who was a mechanic in that same town. They end up traveling together for safety. Obviously, they fall in love.

The plot was well-written and engaging. I genuinely wanted to know what would happen next. The sex scenes were steamy and fit well in the course of the story. None of it felt out of place and a break simply for a sex scene. I thoroughly enjoyed this novel with one exception. At the end of nearly every chapter (or maybe every chapter, I didn’t go back and check), the author makes some sort of reference to “love at the end of the world”. It was cliche. It was absurd and redundant given the plot. And it was tiresome to read over and over again.

Despite that one annoyance, I enjoyed my first dip into the waters of more typical romance fare. And I did some more research to find other novels that I might enjoy. I must admit is takes some work. A lot of the stories that I found in my research just make me shake my head. They aren’t my thing and aren’t for me. But I have some new possibilities. If I make it to the end of any of them, I’ll share here.