Jae

Sapphic Slow-burn romances

f/f romance

Sapphic book mistaken identity

Mistaken identity in a sapphic book (Sapphic Reading Challenge #41)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books with a mistaken identity theme.

A character is mistaken for someone else for at least a part of the book. Usually, it’s misunderstanding (or at least it starts out that way), rather than one character intentionally lying or disguising herself. The misunderstanding can be cleared up quickly or the other character can play along and start pretending to be someone she isn’t, but the situation didn’t start out as an intentional disguise.

body-positive book

Sapphic body-positive books (Sapphic Reading Challenge #32)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge category features body-positive books that celebrate women of all sizes and shapes, e.g., a plus-sized protagonist.

The romance novel industry has a reputation for abiding by Hollywood’s standard of beauty. It’s rare to find plus-size characters in f/f romance novels (or any romance, for that matter). Most of the main characters are portrayed as slim, with perfectly sized breasts, and if they are a bit chubby, their goal in the story is probably to lose weight.

So let’s break with that tradition and search out diversity when it comes to how the main characters look. 

By the way, body positivity includes not just fat or plus-sized characters; it also refers to characters who are skinny or flat-chested such as Eliza from Wrong Number, Right Woman or who otherwise deviate from society’s beauty standards.

I hope that going forward, there’ll be more body positivity in romance novels and that women of all shapes and sizes will find themselves represented in a positive way.

sapphic friends-to-lovers romance novel

Sapphic friends-to-lovers romance novels (Sapphic Reading Challenge #31)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge post features sapphic friends-to-lovers romance novels.

For some reason, there are not a lot of true friends-to-lovers romances out there, which is weird, because so many same-sex couples start out as friends (85%, according to a study I recently read!).

Important definition: In a friends-to-lovers romance, the two main characters are already friends (sometimes best friends or childhood friends) at the beginning of the book. If they are strangers who meet at the beginning of the book, then become friends before becoming lovers, it’s not a friends-to-lovers romance in the narrower sense of the word.