Where’s the Spark

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about chemistry. Not the laboratory and test-tube kind but the romantic kind. Specifically I’ve been wondering why some romances have it while others just don’t.

I read a lot of romances and though contemporaries are by far my favorite both to read and write, I read everything, all subgenres, gay and straight, and I have my favorite comfort reads in all those subgenres.

Lately, however, I seem to have entered a reading slump. Not in the number of books I’ve been buying and reading, but in the number of books that have really hit the mark for me as a reader. The books in which I found chemistry.

I rarely buy a book based on a review. Most of my purchases are made either because a friend whose opinion I trust recommends a book or author to me, or because the blurb sounds good. With the last handful of titles, the ones I’ve found so lacking, it’s been the blurb that drew me in.

A couple of the books were romantic suspense, all were contemporaries. The couples were all m/m and the plots varied from complex, skipping back and forth in time and place, to rather straightforward and simplistic, boy meets boy and sex ensues then leads to love. All good, right?

Wrong. Despite the exciting settings, interesting plot twists and hot guys, none of these stories did it for me on an emotional level. It didn’t matter whether the sex happened quickly or took several chapters of build-up to get to. Whether the end was the true HEA or a HFN. It didn’t matter how many times the authors tried to tell me how compelling the men found each other. I couldn’t feel it. And if I can’t feel the attraction in my heart, if I don’t get that little tickle low in my belly when the couple comes together, the story is a bust imo.

Now I would never publicly diss another author’s work, so I won’t mention the titles of the books that so disappointed me. But neither will I probably buy any other work from these writers.

It’s the emotion that does it for me. I want to feel what the pov character feels when he looks in his lover’s eyes. Don’t just tell me about it. Make my heart race along with his. Make my pulse jump along with his. Let me feel the butterflies low in my belly. That’s why I read romance.

How about you? What do you look for in a romance? What is it that really lights your fire? And if you have any books or authors to recommend I’d love to hear them.

Written by Kimberly Gardner

As early as the seventh grade, Kimberly remembers slashing her favorite rockstars and reading romance. So it’s not surprising that her two passions, romance and putting pretty boys with other pretty boys, should come together in her writing. Moliere said, “Writing is like prostitution. First you do it for love, then for a few close friends, then for money.” Kimberly is delighted to finally be doing it for money.
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