Jae

Sapphic Slow-burn romances

wlw 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.

Girl-next-door character

Girl-next-door character (Sapphic Reading Challenge #39)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books with a girl-next-door character.

“Girl next door” doesn’t mean that the main characters need to actually be neighbors and live door-to-door. It means that one of the main characters is the “girl next door” type—sweet, kind, and unpretentious. She’s generally well-liked by everyone, and she’s often described as pretty or cute, but usually, she’s not movie-star stunning.

road trip sapphic books

Book with a road trip (Sapphic Reading Challenge #36)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge category features books in which the main characters take a road trip together.

They don’t necessarily have to take a car; any vehicle, including a plane, a boat, or a horse-drawn wagon, will do as long as they travel from one place to another and it’s more than just their daily commute.

character works in the food industry

Sapphic character works in the food industry (Sapphic Reading Challenge #34)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge category features characters who work in the food industry. The protagonist could be a chef, a baker, a pastry chef, a waitress, or a caterer, or maybe they own a restaurant, a bakery, an ice cream shop, or some other yummy place.

People working with beverages count too for this category, so the main character could also work as a barista, a bartender, a winemaker, etc.

Most of the books on the list below are foodie romances that might cause some serious food cravings and are best enjoyed with a snack of your choice!

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.