BrainGlutton,
I thought of you today when I read the following [taken from the blurb on the back of a book I’d just read] “Dorie boards-- and soon meets two hotties: pro baseball player Andy, and the ship’s hunky French Doctor.”
The book is The Trouble with Paradise by Jill Shalvis, and there’s a lot less in-book suspense than one might expect from that description over whether Andy or the Gorgeous Grumpy Doctor is the one Dorie’s going to end up with–despite Andy’s eagerness to flirt, and the Doctor’s general irritabilty.
Of course, given that elapsed time in the book is only on the order of 6 months, 3 weeks (and the six month part only comes in because of the Epilogue, and two of the 3 weeks occur before Dorie meets the hunks), one might not find serious love-triangle stuff suitable for a standard romance.
The book itself is not great literature, but is hardly a candidate for worst romance novel I’ve read.
Why do you say “never” written like that? I’ve read books like that. I’ve written books like that. I’m writing one like that right this moment, in fact.
There’s a lot more to the romance genre than what you’re seeing here (and many of the books mentioned are “old skool” bodice-rippers). The only thing a romance novel requires is people in a primary relationship (sometimes a couple, m/f, or m/m, sometimes a threesome, m/f/m, m/m/f, m/m/m) who are happy and have a good shot at remaining happy (with the understanding that bad stuff could happen)–that is, the “Happy for Now” ending is becoming more acceptable. Romance novels cover nearly every subgenre you can think of, with an increasing number of female leads who would chop off a dick before having sex against their will. Many romance novels have two A plots–that is the romance is an A-plot and whatever else is happening (depending on the subgenre) is also treated as an A-plot. There’s some erotic books and some sweet books. There’s blunt writing and purple prose. Sweeping generalizations aren’t accurate in the genre anymore.
Sure you can find some ridiculous tropes in the Harlequin lines (especially the Presents and the Blaze) but the romance genre is a big, big umbrella, and with the increasing number of epublishers and small publishers influencing the genre, the boundaries and rules are changing all the time.