Falling in Love with Romance Novels

By Isabella Ying

With Valentine’s Day right around the corner, love is in the air. For many, love is also in the pages.

Many Lovett students, in particular, seemed to find this love in the sensational Twilight series, which, for those unfamiliar, chronicles the intense, forbidden romance between teenager Bella Swan and vampire Edward Cullen. While I myself have never understood the Twilight hype (dating back to 2005, when the first book was published), survey takers passionately professed their adoration for the series’, paranormal–fantasy–small-town–slow-burn romance.

Well, that is certainly a mouthful. In layman’s terms, Twilight’s love story occurs over a lengthy period of time in a small town, riddled with supernatural elements. For example, Edward is a vampire, with skin that sparkles in the sunlight: “this is the skin of a killer, Bella!”

For those not fans of Twilight, popular picks also included Jane Austen’s widely celebrated Pride and Prejudice (no vampires in that one, but for the many fans of historical fiction), among more contemporary blockbusters, notably by Emily Henry (Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation) and Jenny Han (who wrote The Summer I Turned Pretty and To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before).

How, of course, can we talk about romance novels without talking about fictional romantic interests? According to our survey, Lovett students seem to be widely infatuated with the idealized males of BookTok—the internet’s, primarily TikTok’s, book community. Given how popular Twilight is among Lovett students, I was surprised to find that none of these students’ book boyfriends was Edward Cullen (thankfully!).

Instead, Lovett readers seem to revere the characters from our childhood from the worlds of Harry Potter and Percy Jackson. I was especially pleased to find my personal favorite, Luke Castellan, among the names submitted. If you haven’t already, you should do yourself a favor and watch the Disney+ TV adaptation of Rick Riordan’s series to admire Charlie Bushnell’s performance as Luke.

However, above all, a clear winner arose: Wes Bennett of the novel Better Than the Movies by Lynn Painter. Unfortunately, I am ashamed to admit that I am unfamiliar with the works of Lynn Painter, so I decided to reach out to a friend who is well-versed in her oeuvre.

When I urgently texted her, “Why do people love Wes Bennett so much?” She immediately, and quite passionately, claimed that “BECAUSE HE’S THE BEST BOOK BF,” because “HE CARES ABOUT HER,” Liz Buxbaum, Better Than the Movies’s female lead, “SO MUCH.”

My friend also gave me a quick rundown of their relationship, commonly called “LizWes.” The ‘trope’ of Better Than the Movies would be described by BookTok as ‘enemies-to-lovers’ and ‘fake dating.’ My friend informed me that Wes “TRIES TO HELP HER GET WITH HER CRUSH.” As the story progresses, “THEY FALL IN LOVE AND SHE REALIZES HE’S WAY BETTER THAN HER CRUSH.”

To clarify, my friend did indeed inform me of all of this through text messages in all-caps, likely because she firmly believes that Better Than the Movies is the “best YA romance book ever. Lynn Painter is THE teen romance novelist.” (Ironically, that text arrived in lowercase.)

After learning of Lovett’s passion for Wes Bennett and Twilight, I went on a mission to find someone who shared my disdain for Stephenie Meyers’s young adult series, and found Ms. Gilmore, the front office’s resident chick-lit connoisseur.

Just kidding—Mr. Newman recommended that I talk to her because she seems to have all the information regarding romance novels. After speaking to her for half an hour, I can confirm that this is true.

It began with a library card. About four years ago, Ms. Gilmore acquired a Fulton County Public Library card and never looked back. She also downloaded the app Libby and began to listen to audiobooks and read on her Kindle (in my opinion, one of the greatest inventions since the wheel). After that, it was “can’t stop, won’t stop. Now, I’m either always reading something or listening to something.”

In high school, conversely, Ms. Gilmore, then an advisee of Mr. Newman, had very different reading habits. “Anything that a Lovett teacher asked me to read, I ‘Sparknoted’ it,” she claimed. Perhaps all of her reading has given her the ability to create a new verb, ‘to Sparknote,’ meaning to read summaries, analyses, or explanations of literature rather than the original text.

Ms. Gilmore grew up alongside Harry Potter, and therefore was a huge fan when she was young. They were eleven at the same time, so “I was like, ‘Where is my letter?’” She would read each time a new one came out, or perhaps pick up a beach read while on vacation, but that was about it.

In college, she picked up Twilight and read all of them, but after revisiting them many years later, she finds this “humiliating and I’m ashamed to even admit that.” Bluntly, “they are garbage.”

Ms. Gilmore eventually found romance novels after having her daughter prematurely. They served as light, fluffy escapes, breaths of fresh air amid life’s intricacies. After eight very happy years with her husband, Ms. Gilmore seeks romance novels to experience “new love and new romance.” It’s “always really cute and exciting.”

In 2025, Ms. Gilmore experienced this escape 185 times in 185 different books. Of these books, she estimates that around 75% of them are romcoms, or chick-lit. For the other 25%, she likes to “pepper in” other genres. Last year, she discovered a new writer with 20 Atlanta-based thrillers, and also read Stanley Tucci’s memoir.

Perhaps Ms. Gilmore’s eventual collision with romance novels was a date with destiny. She finds that her own life is similar to the novels she reads. She and her husband had a meet-cute, a staple of contemporary romance novels. “The meet-cute was adorable,” she recalled with the help of Ms. Scott, who took time out of her duties in the front office to assist with the very important composition of this article. Afterward, Ms. Scott headed up north on a rescue mission for her parents, who were predicted to be snowed in by the storm.

“Our aunt set us up, but they put it under the guise of he’s new to town and needs to meet people,” Ms. Gilmore said. Obviously, she saw through this guise. But, she decided, “I’ll meet this guy. I’ll be a nice person.” However, it worked out. At the time, “I was not looking for love. I was like, I’m tired of kissing frogs. I’m okay if I have 87 cats and never get married.”

Then, she met her husband and decided, “just kidding. You’re so cute.” He is “so kind and he’s such a hard worker and he’s a wonderful partner to have.” Many years later, they are happily married with two kids, lots of humor, and mutual respect in their relationship. “Sims and I are a very easy romance,” she said.

So, perhaps, with her real life like a romance novel, chick-lit was her fate all along.

Like many readers, Ms. Gilmore has her favorite tropes. Among them are enemies-to-lovers and friends-to-lovers, but her favorite is the fake dating trope. She is also definitely a lover of relatability, appreciating when “both characters are interesting and likable.” She does not enjoy when “they give you a main male character or main female character that is so boring. It’s hard to cheer for them.”

As for students, they cited “relatable characters and storylines” and “lots of banter.” There were several fans of “slow burn” and “yearning.”

On the other hand, Ms. Gilmore also has book turnoffs: “I can’t stand miscommunication and I can’t stand third act breakups.” Essentially, the book will “build up to it, they’ll be happy for a minute, and then they break up over some sort of miscommunication, and then the book ends with them being together.” Ms. Gilmore finds these endings cliché and unoriginal. Do better, romance novelists!

And she’s not alone. Lovett readers have their own turnoffs, like “cheesy stories and trying to be too trendy/pop culture.” Other critiques: “cheesy language and predictable storylines,” “love triangles,” and, very specifically, “anti-feminist, ‘weak incapable woman’ x ‘strong saviour man’ thing.” And there were at least four Colleen Hoover haters.

When I asked Mr. Gilmore to pick her favorite book couple, she said, “Gosh, that’s so hard. That’s like asking me to pick a favorite child.” After much pondering and scrolling through her Goodreads, she settled on Sally and Noah from Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. The female main character writes on a Saturday Night Live-adjacent show. The premise “was her helping this guy write a book.” She loved how “their witty banter was so cute and it played out in a really nice way.”

And, luckily, “there was no third act breakup. It was actually really nice to watch them be happy with one another.”

Obviously, Ms. Gilmore has shown that reading so much has its payoffs. Unfortunately, there are downsides, too, if you look at them that way. Ms. Gilmore says that “the problem with consuming that many books is like you really don’t allow yourself time to sit with something. You’re just like, alright, what’s next?”

In addition, many of the books Ms. Gilmore reads have very similar covers. So every once in a while, she’ll accidentally pick up a young adult book. A few chapters in, she’ll think to herself, “it feels like kind of high school.” Then she’ll realize, “Oh, it’s because it is.”

This is a rare occurrence for Ms. Gilmore, as the app Goodreads helps curate her next read based on previous ones. “I spend a lot of time on the app Goodreads. I check a lot of their suggestions,” she said. This is just the beginning of her fully fleshed-out reading strategy.

After that, “I’ll open up their list that they’ve curated so I know what’s going to be popular.” She showed me her phone in person, so I got a live demonstration of the process. “Tessa Bailey, this is the first book that came up,” she said. “I’ve read a lot of her books. I really like them, so I’ll put that on my ‘To-read’ list.”

Of course, “because books are super expensive, I use the Libby app,” Ms. Gilmore recommends. “I go and I find the book that hasn’t been released yet, and I go ahead and put it on hold, so I’ll be one of the first people to get it.”

She admits that she’ll “judge a book by its cover sometimes,” but she also likes to read the blurb, the ratings, and the publisher.

To get into romance novels, Ms. Gilmore recommends the authors Emily Henry, Carly Fortune, and Ali Hazelwood. Up next for her is Nora Dahlia’s new novel, because she immensely enjoyed her first novel, Pick-Up. This new read will end her two-book streak of reading mysteries, returning her to her familiar world of romance.

At the end of the day, though, Ms. Gilmore has learned, “It’s never too late to start being a reader.” After a childhood of Harry Potter, Twilight, and Sparknotes, “reading has become a huge part of my life in my thirties. So it’s never too late to fall in love with a book.”

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