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 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. 

Book starts with the first day of a new job (Sapphic Reading Challenge #29)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features sapphic books that start with the first day of a new job.

For the book to count for this category, pick a novel in which the main character starts a new job in the first three chapters.

Age gap romance (Sapphic Reading Challenge #21)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features age gap romance novels–meaning there’s a significant age gap between the two main characters. People’s definitions of what constitutes a “significant age gap” vary, but for the purpose of this reading challenge, one main character needs to be at least 8 years older than the other.

Nerdy or geeky character (Sapphic Reading Challenge #20)

This week’s Sapphic Reading Challenge features books with a main character who’s a geek or a nerd, meaning they are very enthusiastic about some kind of non-mainstream activity or specialized subject, e.g., a video games, science, technology, comic books, cosplay, collections.

Books about polyamorous relationships (Book Unicorn post #5)

It’s time for another Book Unicorn post! This one features books that include a sapphic character who’s in a polyamorous relationship. The protagonist is in intimate, consensual relationships with more than one person.   15 sapphic books that feature a polyamorous relationship I put together a list of 15 sapphic poly romance novels. I hope […]