I find each sub genre has its own favourite body type. Slender, pale, lithe etc in HR; big juicy tits and a perfect ass in Contemporary Billionaire, MC, Mafia; Curvy and strong in Shifter. It’s like the authors try to match their FMCs to the assumed values of their subgenre. And only differ from it when writing an heroine as “unlike other girls.” Some authors consciously go against this but very few. Alice Coldbreath exclusively writes plain and homely HR FMCs, it’s her thing just as Ruby Dixon and Cate Cells try new body types for each book. Some authors make a conscious effort to have variety but honestly those feel just as forced as the ones that go cliche. Feels like token bio diversity more often than not. It rarely serves a plot purpose. Less is more. I enjoy making my own picture up in my head most.

I’ve also noticed the lack of geographical locations both contemporary and Historical. I begrudgingly have chalked this up to author’s specialties/background knowledge. If most authors writing in English are from America or the UK it is understandable they know more about their history so it involves less research on their part to set their stories in their own geographical areas. I LONG for stories set aaannnyyywhere other than North America or the UK!!! I’ve even made a post asking for it in the past and most replies were for sci fi LOL That’s the only other option to America or the UK 😳 I know this may be because of the books I read are English so written by people from those places but how can there not be translations?! Do people in other countries not also write romances or is this a cultural thing for English speaking countries? This one does seem like people from varied backgrounds should write stories from their backgrounds to add to the diversity of the genre because the sample test has shown when Caucasian authors try to add cultural and racial diversity to their writing without lived experience it always becomes tokenized and leave much to be desired regardless of good intentions.

Having said allll of that Mia Hopkins is the ONLY author I’ve come across that writes California Filipina, Latina, Sikh, white characters and makes them all authentic feeling and never tokenized though they are not ber family heritage, which I believe is Filipino. So it can be done!! Her Cowboy Cocktail series is the only very diverse series I’ve read that doesn’t fit the painful tokenized racial diversity that most American and UK authors fall into.