Happily Ever After Is the Point

Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall host the Radio 831 podcast, where they talk about romance novels with the energy of sportscasters calling a Game 7. The genre pulled both of them back to reading after long breaks. In college, Sanj read 52 books in 52 weeks, landed on Beach Read, and devoured close to 500 romances in four months. She’s since taught a course on it at McNally Jackson and is training to be a psychologist. Tyler returned to reading during the pandemic with The Idea of You and Spoiler Alert; her own romance novel arrives in April 2027. Together, they chat about the genre’s cultural importance, the role of ACOTAR, which books are must-reads, and what makes spicy scenes work 🔥.

What is it about these books that got you both back into reading?
Tyler: There's a lot made about the predictability of genre fiction generally, but specifically with romance, you're going to have a formula, and they're going to end up with a happily ever after. There was something about that, especially during the pandemic, that I found very cozy and reassuring. Having boundaries like that gives authors a lot of room to surprise readers, defy expectations, and put new twists on expected tropes or familiar storylines. It was nice to read about people falling in love. 

Sanj: I grew up with a mom who loved period pieces, so I grew up watching the 2005 Pride and Prejudice and the like. I also grew up on Bollywood movies, which are super romance-heavy. So some of the earliest stories in my life were love stories, and I would never not love them. 

On another level, I'm also a therapist, and I spend a lot of time thinking about people's intimate lives. The specificity, the attention to intimacy feels connected to something deeply real about the world, in a way that I find very satisfying.

Is the happily ever after something that should be challenged? It seems so quaint!
Sanj: People can feel that way about it. But it comes back to what Tyler was saying: all forms of genre fiction have constraints of different kinds. You can't have a murder mystery without a murder. You can't have a sci-fi element without a sci-fi element. The fact that the constraint exists doesn't mean it isn't a vast, expansive experience, with different books for different readers. 

There have been a lot of think pieces about what it means to challenge the happily ever after, and I find that often they don't come from people who read in the genre. I think it would be really challenging to present something that is ostensibly a romance novel that doesn't care for the happily ever after. And I will say that "happy" is a complicated experience for people. "Ever after" is a complicated experience for people. It can mean really different things depending on the book. But you feel it when you feel it. 

Tyler: Normal People comes up in conversation a lot as being Sally Rooney's take on a romance novel, and it's not. It is a love story. Heart the Lover too — but that doesn't make them romance novels. It makes them love stories. There’s a distinction.

Romantasy has become one of the biggest forces in romance, and Sarah J. Maas is at the center of it. How do you think about the A Court of Thorns and Roses (ACOTAR) series in the context of the genre as a whole?
Tyler: Romantasy has obviously become such a huge driver of the romance category within the past several years, largely in part to ACOTAR and the success that series saw on TikTok. Of course, the combination of romance and fantasy has a much longer history — one of my favorites that I think fits in the genre is 2001's Kushiel's Dart — but the portmanteau "romantasy" is definitely a more recent trend. 

I think the popularity of ACOTAR and romantasy as a whole has cleared a path for readers to be more open about combining romance with other genres; for example, paranormal romances are starting to move further into the mainstream, and I think it's because people are down with non-human creatures finding love.

There used to be a time when one might have felt like they needed to hide what they were reading on an airplane. It seems like that moment has passed. What changed in the culture?
Sanj: I do think TikTok was a part of it. Romance readership has been enormous for so long. There are authors like Janet Dailey and Nora Roberts who sold more copies of their books than the Bible in the years when they were publishing. But the internet connectivity of knowing who else is reading the thing that you're reading didn't exist. A broader culture that is romance-skeptical was able to trick people into thinking that they were the only people in the world who liked this…maybe. 

If you've listened to the Fated Mates podcast, they've talked about how people used to write reviews of romance novels in the back of library books, so they could communicate to other people borrowing from libraries that this story is really good, or that they would recommend it. There has been some connectivity between romance readers and writers for a long time. But I think the scale and exposure has changed because of TikTok.

Tyler: I think that's accurate. I also wonder how much the Fifty Shades of Grey phenomenon had to do with that, or the Twilight to romance novel pipeline…

What makes for a successful book-to-screen adaptation?
Tyler: We have a lot of thoughts on that. For me, the platonic ideal of a romance adaptation in the last several years is Heated Rivalry, because it respects the source material for what it is. It's not an adaptation of a romance novel trying to hide that it's a romance novel, or delay that it's a romance novel. It has respect for the world and the creators of the book, but it also makes it better for screen, because they're obviously two completely different formats that require two different approaches. I'm less interested in adaptations that are trying to be by-the-book faithful, and more in how we are faithful to the spirit of the novel while making it a compelling show or movie. 

If you had to put together a canon for this genre, what books would you put in it? First, a starter pack for someone new, and then must-reads once you’re in it. 
Sanj: I think it's useful to start with The Love Hypothesis. It'll give you a frame for the contemporary, and many people in the world will be able to discuss it with you, which is one of the really beautiful things about the romance community. You want to be able to talk to other people about a book. 

I would also recommend starting with a Sherry Thomas historical, like The Luckiest Lady in London or Private Arrangements, because I think people who read historical understand the genre better. 

Tyler: I don't feel qualified to create a canon; I feel like I'm discovering new things every day. One of the recurring segments we have is homework assignments, where one of us gives the other a book. I'm not very well read in historical; it just wasn't my genre of choice. But per what Sanj is saying, the more historicals I read, the more I fully understand: you can see the influence of these books on books that I've already read. 

In terms of starting, if I'm talking to someone who has never read the genre before, I always start them with Emily Henry. She’s a good bridge between women's fiction and romance. Try either Beach Read or People We Meet on Vacation: one is rivals to lovers and one is friends to lovers. Those just feel universal: you're going to find something that you like in them. 

Once you’ve read that, then I have a better sense of where to send you. Maybe you want them to be sexier. I'm not starting somebody with something that I know is going to be throwing them in the deep end if you're not used to reading a lot of sex scenes.

Sanj: Even though this is higher heat, I’ve started people on Talia Hibbert, her Brown Sisters trilogy. I taught a class for McNally Jackson on reading the romance novel, and I did a week for each subgenre. I think I assigned Cat Sebastian's The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, You, Again by Kate Goldbeck, Seven Days in June by Tia Williams, and Slave to Sensation by Nalini Singh. That's a solid starter pack. 

Is there a correct way to read romance: annotating, binging, or something else?
Tyler: I don't annotate anything that I read, unless...I'm struck by a passage and think, I must remember this passage…However you're going to enjoy reading it is how you should read it. 

Sanj: I think romance can also be such a personal and intimate genre for people that the relationship they have with the text can't be manufactured. The way they read it must come from a pure and open heart, if you will. I am an annotator. I scribble in my books. I love underlining things. I do a lot of motif mapping, because it helps me connect motifs across books. I'm also a graduate student, so this is how I read an academic journal, and that's how I read a book also. 

You talked about this on the pod a bit, but what makes for a good sex scene? It seems hard to write well. 
Tyler: It is hard, but it's funny, because I think some people assume it's very easy. Just put body A near body B. For me, the number one thing is: do I believe that this is the sex that these two characters would be having? Honestly, a lot of times you read sex scenes that feel like you have two people who behave a certain way toward each other, and then suddenly they're different people. It's a hard thing to articulate, but that's the biggest component for me. You can write the sexiest, hottest scene, you can fill in the blank with everything that you've seen go viral on TikTok, and it doesn't do anything for me if it doesn't make sense for the characters. 

We talk a lot on the podcast about how sex scenes are character work. It is arguably one of the most intimate, personal things you can do with another person or other people, so it's a question of what it means for these two people. It should be an extension of the connection that they're developing. That doesn't mean, obviously, that it has to be super emotional sex, because not everyone's having sex that way. But does it make sense? Does it follow the thread that I've been pulling at this whole time?

Sanj: A lot of what Tyler is saying is important to me: that sex maintains the internal logic of the novel. But there's also a specific thing where some people know how to write a sex scene that is genuinely pleasurable, and I'm not totally sure what the secret sauce is. There is something. By the time you've read as many romance novels as we have, you have read a lot of boring sex. People find that hard to believe when they first join the genre, because they're like, whoa, people are putting it all on the page. But actually it is so possible to write a totally nothing-burger sex scene. Sometimes a sex scene might even feel technically accomplished, with all the lines doing what they need to do, but the cumulative effect isn't there. It's this whole-is-greater-than-the-sum-of-its-parts thing that I don't always know how to name or identify in a text. I feel like writers have more insight into this, as people who are actively thinking about craft, but it's something that I find myself kind of puzzled by. Why is it that some really, really work?

And which books, for you, have the best sex scenes?
Tyler: Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon — that one is really good. We talked about Casey McQuiston's The Pairing for recently. Casey is very skilled at sex scenes.

Sanj: Really hot. Talia Hibbert, for sure.

Tyler: Yeah, we talked about one of Talia's sex scenes on the podcast. For me, it's like this: I've read however many hundreds of romance novels, and if I remember a scene and can tell you exactly the contours and the movements of it, that's a good sex scene. 

What else? I think Regina Black writes really good sex scenes.

Sanj: Yeah. She doesn't write a lot of them, but they're good.

You know who wrote an excellent sex scene recently? Kate Clayborn in The Paris Match.

I'm trying to think in historicals. Elizabeth Hoyt writes a really hot, truly freaky, hot sex scene in a historical, which is sometimes a little bit harder to come by. Historical is still a really hot and romantic genre, but the intensity is there for different reasons sometimes. Elizabeth Hoyt writes close to a dark romance in historical form, so there's an intensity to her sex scenes that I think is really interesting.

Anything you’d like to add before we sign off?
Sanj: I think the best way to start with romance is to pick up a romance novel. Don't get hung up on being a specific kind of romance reader or liking a specific kind of thing. Taste forms with time and experience and attention. So the most useful thing you can do is give it a shot, you know? 

Tyler: As somebody who also gets intimidated by getting into a new thing because there's so much of it, I agree with that. There's a romance novel that covers any and everything. Like Sanj said, pick one. If you really love baseball, there are baseball romances. If you like The Bachelor, there are romance novels written about reality TV dating contestants. There's something out there for everybody, and then you develop your taste as you read.

Tune in to Radio 831 wherever you listen to your podcasts. The show is a production with 831 Stories, to whom we are grateful for connecting us with these hosts.

You can connect with Tyler and Sanjana on Substack. Look for Voted Most Talkative and scratch paper, respectively.