10 January 23 - 29, 2025 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents “That’s just what the girlies want,” Mol- dovan says. Romance’s reigning tropes are enemies to lovers, friends to lovers, forced proximity, fake relationship, second chance and forbid- den love. The emotion-provoking reads span a spectrum of subgenres. “It’s about the journey,” says Instagram personality Stephanie Lopez. “You know that 99.99% of the time, you’re gonna get a happy ending.” Lit and the City is both a closed book club and Lopez’s handle for her book-fo- cused Instagram account, or “Booksta- gram.” The in-demand book club reads monthly novels while exploring Dallas’ aes- thetically pleasing coffee shops, bars and restaurants. Lopez says romance’s guaran- teed outcome is comforting. It’s the idyllic happy ending many Dallas romantics long for. Aside from one outlying FestishFinder survey, Dallas ranks as one of the worst cities for dating. So, Dallas women are turning to books for their dating kicks. “When we first started building the con- cept of Blush, that’s the thing that surprised people most,” Wooten says. “Any time we were explaining who our target audience was, they just assumed older women.” It’s not just your mother reading clinch novels with Fabio on the cover. Blush targets women ranging from their early 20s to mid- 30s. “That’s part of a stigma that’s kind of stuck with romance, is that it was written for an older generation of women, and it’s been evolving behind the scenes for so many years now that it’s become a lot more inclu- sive of a genre,” Wooten says. “It’s not just the bodice rippers.” Romance is uplifted by a predominately female audience spanning from Gens Z to X. Social media’s influence is credited as the driving force behind a younger readership. Like women, romance books cannot be boxed neatly. The range of subgenres, niches and steaminess is expansive. There’s even a literary sector devoted to MAGA romance, unrelated to Dallas’ book clubs and book- shops. Sports romances, mafia romances and STEM romances have highlighted women’s many interests. Romance novels empower them to embrace their sexual prowess, sports fandom, intellect, identity and emotions. “The thing that I fight the most is that they try and take that multifacetedness away and boil it [romance books] down to it’s ei- ther smut or it’s just for girls,” Wooten says. Blush has been able to fill the shelves with romance books ranging from contem- porary to “romantasy.” At The Plot Twist, the shelves are a gradient of covers. Con- ner’s favorites, the contemporary romances, are bright, bubbly and pink. They greet shoppers closer to the door. As you walk the shelves, the cover colors darken. Dark ro- mances and fantasies meet you at the end. “Even though it may not be the next To Kill a Mockingbird or Handmaid’s Tale, there are very real, very important things that are discussed in romance books that hit readers in a way that they don’t in those literary fic- tion pieces because you’re getting it from a perspective of somebody, or in a story that you wouldn’t expect it in,” Claire says. Main Character Energy D allas’ brightest romance trailblazers once hid in plain sight. The relatabil- ity offered by romance books busted their shells. “Sometimes we’re very self-conscious and we don’t want to say something to of- fend somebody else, or don’t want to say anything and feel a rejection, and being able to blossom in this community was the safest space for me to do that in,” Middleton says. Middleton is a self-proclaimed introvert. She struggles with social anxiety but has come to terms with the idea that perhaps she was simply in the wrong space. “When you’re passionate about some- thing that you have no outlet to discuss it and talk about it with somebody, and you’re just kind of trapped, and sometimes almost lose the moment, and you lose the memory of why you love that book,” Middleton says. “When I could talk about the books that I love, I can remember how they made me feel, and I can express that to other peo- ple.” At The Plot Twist, she’s a beaming face lighting up at the mention of a trope-busting heroine. Storylines centered on inner love resonate with her the most. “Readers sometimes are recluses,” Lopez says. Bookstagrammers have chiseled at those walls through event curation. “We made it to where if you’re a reader and consider yourself a reader, you should come and meet these people, because there are other people like you,” Lopez says. In 2023, Lopez hosted a reader mixer that attracted around 35 attendees. The 2024 mixer had 20. By that point, Dallas readers were confidently meeting each other and creating communities from their shared love of romantic prose. Blush and The Plot Twist are transforming into com- munity incubators. “We’re seeing the first pieces of what Los Angeles and New York have seen with [bookstore] The Ripped Bodice,” says Claire. “Blush is becoming that staple, and The Plot Twist is going to become one of those staples of the romance community.” Reflection I n 2016, Los Angeles’ The Ripped Bod- ice disrupted the book publishing in- dustry. For many readers, this was the first time they saw themselves reflected on the shelves. “Not only did I feel accepted as a ro- mance reader, but I felt accepted as a Black, queer, chronically ill woman,” Caldwell says of her first experience at the pioneering ro- mance bookstore. “I felt the same way about Blush.” Caldwell reacquainted herself with ro- mance through novelist Jasmine Guillory, whose main characters are African-Ameri- can professionals. “For the first time in a long time, I had read a story about a young woman, a young Black woman, who was trying to fall in love and going through things dat- ing that me and all my friends were going through, but also was dealing with stuff and hurt in a different capacity like job, family, friends — and I loved it,” Caldwell says. “It got me reading romance again, voraciously.” For Lopez, being one of the faces of the Dallas romance boom came with responsi- bility. “There’s a lot more authors that you can read, other than Colleen Hoover, Tessa Bai- ley, even Katherine Center, Abby Jimenez and all that and they’re not being marketed,” says Lopez, whose now-defunct virtual book club called Wine Down centered on Hispanic and Latin romance authors like Priscilla Oliveras, Jocelyne Soto and Alana Quintana Albertson. “Diversity is so important,” Caldwell says. “You’re getting something fresh, and it keeps the genre alive. You’re getting to read different things.” Lopez and Caldwell praise Whose Books in Oak Cliff for its advocacy for diverse voices. The bookstore has nine book clubs, including the romance book club “Oak Cliff is for Lovers.” Readers are pushing publishers into new, inclusive territories, Caldwell says. Within the romance community, acceptance is cru- cial. “We don’t yuck people’s yum,” Lewis says. The catchy phrase is a steadfast rule she and Moldovan read by. In 2023, Claire read 115 romance novels while writing her debut romance novel Go Find Less. She found pieces of herself in the pages. “Reading queer stories really confirmed for me my identity in part as part of the com- munity,” the pansexual author says. Her debut is a therapy-exercise-turned- novel that has Claire’s life experiences wo- ven into it. The book features a widowed, sober lingerie designer with a cancer-diag- nosed male romance interest. Claire’s second book releases Feb. 7. Four Letter Words highlights disability through its sober female main character, who is also a sexual assault survivor, and a multicultural male main character. It’s a romance speak- ing to the realization that you can’t shut down or shut out everyone, because eventu- ally somebody is going to break down those walls, Claire says. Her third book will tell of a polyamorous male-male-female relationship. “Reading those stories and being a part of the [reading] community that told me it was safe to be who I was,” Claire says. “That’s something that I will always tell people. If they’re interested in being a part of this community, whether that’s on Instagram or on Tiktok or whatever platform, you will find your community and your niche. It’s a matter of being yourself and letting those people come to you.” Kathy Tran The Plot Twist in Denton opened Jan. 18. Heels Over Head from p9
