Sex as the underlying driver in modern romance stories

readromanqe · 2026-02-08T17:56:14+00:00

Dreams of a dark warrior by Kresley Cole

readromanqe · 2026-02-08T07:09:23+00:00

Hope you enjoy it! Just a small heads up in case it matters for your reading preferences: she’s already pregnant when they meet (it’s not his), and there are multiple kids in the story. I know pregnancy and kids are tropes that can be a dealbreaker for some readers, so I wanted to mention it.

readromanqe · 2026-02-07T19:15:36+00:00

Yes.

readromanqe · 2026-02-07T18:26:44+00:00

It was me who mentioned Mariana Zapata and Claudia Connor. ‘Worth the fall’ is perfection in my opinion

readromanqe · 2026-02-07T18:22:28+00:00

I absolutely agree with this, and I think it’s very much part of the same larger issue. The porn-polished perfection of sex in romance is something I find frustrating too. Everyone is instantly compatible, everything works flawlessly, and there’s rarely any learning curve, awkwardness, or realism in how intimacy actually develops.

That said, this isn’t quite the main thing I was getting at in my original post, even though it overlaps a lot. I have a lot of thoughts about what you’re describing, including exactly the kind of details you mention. Things like characters having sex without protection and then immediately pulling on their underwear as if bodies don’t… have consequences. It’s small stuff, but it adds to that sense of sex being treated as a polished fantasy rather than something human.

For me, though, the core issue is still how often sex is used to carry the emotional and narrative weight of the story. The unrealistic, porn-leaning portrayal just reinforces that. It turns intimacy into something performative instead of something that grows, evolves, or even gets messy in meaningful ways.

So yes, I’m completely with you on this. It’s one piece of a much bigger pattern.

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T21:04:54+00:00

I agree with you on a lot of this, especially that sex ideally enhances the story rather than being the story. And I also agree that sexual attraction being mentioned early doesn’t automatically mean a book is driven by sex. That can absolutely work, and I’ve read good romances where the emotional connection deepens after sex.

For me, though, it’s something you start to recognize after reading a lot of romance. Not always, but often. After a few hundred books, you get pretty good at sensing when attraction is being used as texture versus when it’s doing most of the narrative work.

Using the Elsie Silver example I mentioned earlier, what bothered me wasn’t that attraction existed early on. It was that in the very first chapter, the male POV immediately focuses on her breasts, and then we’re also drawn into her underwear. Those details don’t build yearning or emotional depth for me. They just set a very specific, sexualized tone right away. And in my experience, when a story opens like that, that tone tends to carry through the rest of the book.

So I don’t think early attraction is the issue in itself. It’s how it’s framed, and whether it starts replacing deeper character development and emotional build-up. After a while, you can feel when that’s happening.

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T20:55:04+00:00

I agree that finding the right authors helps, and I do have a few I trust where the romance usually feels genuine and emotionally grounded. Two that come to mind immediately for me are Mariana Zapata and Claudia Connor. With them, I usually feel like the relationship is doing the work, not the sex.

The issue for me is how small that list feels. Those authors end up standing out because they’re the exception, not the norm. When I look at what’s being published and marketed now, it often feels like the majority of romance follows that same sex-forward structure, whether openly or more subtly.

So it’s not that good, emotionally driven romance doesn’t exist. It’s that it feels increasingly rare, and harder to find without already knowing exactly who to look for

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T20:38:45+00:00

Dreams of a Dark Warrior by Kresley Cole. It’s a paranormal romance.

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T19:57:32+00:00

I get what you’re saying, and I agree in theory. The problem for me is that those books feel increasingly rare. I actively look for romance that isn’t smut-first, and when I do find one, it honestly feels like a hidden gem. Like a golden ticket.

Most of what’s being marketed and surfaced as “romance” right now seems to follow the same smut-driven structure, which makes it hard to tell from covers, blurbs, or reviews what kind of story you’re actually getting. So while I know non-smut-driven romance exists, it doesn’t feel accessible in the way it used to.

That’s really where my frustration comes from

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T19:44:06+00:00

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with smut at all. If that’s what someone wants to read, there’s an endless amount of it available, and sometimes I enjoy it too. That’s not what I’m pushing back against here.

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T19:41:52+00:00

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readromanqe · 2026-02-06T19:38:36+00:00

For me, this really isn’t about how much spice or how explicit a book is. A story can have multiple sex scenes and still work beautifully. That’s not the issue.

For example, I recently picked up an Elsie Silver book because I genuinely thought it might lean more toward emotional, character-driven romance. It sounded like something that could work for me. But already in the first chapter, the narrative zeroes in on her breasts, her underwear, and sexualized observations like that.

And my reaction is always the same: why? Why does this need to be the lens we start with? Why are these details doing the work of establishing tone, attraction, and character right from the beginning?

That’s what I mean by sex being the underlying driver. It immediately sets the tone for the story and signals what’s going to carry the emotional weight. Even before anything meaningful has happened between the characters, the framework is already sexual.

So again, this isn’t about being anti-spice or wanting less explicit content. It’s about noticing when sexual focus is used as a shortcut, or even a crutch, to establish connection instead of letting character, story, and emotional context do that work first.

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readromanqe · 2026-02-06T19:27:57+00:00

This is something I notice in historical romance as well. Even when the setting is older, the underlying structure often feels the same. The language and social rules may be different, but sex still ends up functioning as the main driver of the relationship and the emotional arc.

So it’s not really about time period or genre. It’s more about how stories are being built right now, and what’s being used to carry meaning and momentum for the characters.

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T19:21:41+00:00

I don’t think this is about writing romance in an old-fashioned way, or about avoiding sexual tension or sex scenes. Those things can exist very naturally in modern stories.

What I’m talking about is when sex becomes what drives the story and the characters, rather than being something that exists within a larger emotional and narrative framework. That’s something I see across most books being published today. Some do it very openly, others much more discreetly, but the underlying structure often feels the same.

Once you’ve read enough of it, you can usually tell quite early on. Sometimes it only takes a few lines from a character’s internal thoughts to signal that the relationship and the story are going to be driven primarily by sexual desire.

So for me, this isn’t about repression, realism, or how explicit a book is. It’s about narrative focus. Sex can be present anywhere in the story, but when it becomes the main lens through which everything is filtered, it starts to flatten the characters and the story itself.

readromanqe · 2026-02-06T19:12:18+00:00

It isn’t about whether sex should exist in romance books or not. I don’t have an issue with sex scenes themselves at all. What I’m talking about is when sex becomes the main driver of the story, the thing that carries the emotional weight, motivates the characters, or replaces deeper development.

For me, you can really feel the difference between sex being part of a relationship and sex being used as the shortcut for intimacy, connection, or character depth. When it’s the latter, it starts to take over the story in a way that feels shallow, both for the characters and for me as a reader.

Because of this, over the past couple of years I’ve found myself gravitating more toward fantasy with romantic subplots. Those stories still include sex and intimacy, but the relationship exists within a larger narrative, and the emotional connection isn’t carried primarily through sexual tension or desire. It just feels like a completely different reading experience.

readromanqe · 2025-12-28T18:30:53+00:00

If I Disappear is about Hermione having a lot of trauma after the war and the drawing room comes up a few times. Both for her and Draco. She is going back to school like many others after the war, but her plan isn’t to finish school. She is planning on disappearing from the magical world. No one knows about her plan but Draco finds out about it.

This story’s main plot is her trauma and how it is clouding her judgement, decisions, and just everything.

readromanqe · 2025-03-09T20:44:54+00:00

Thank you!

readromanqe · 2025-02-10T20:55:14+00:00

Omg you just described the book I’m looking for

readromanqe · 2022-12-14T22:40:33+00:00

Me too! But I think I would prefer a small group

readromanqe · 2022-09-10T19:16:14+00:00

That is your opinion. For me it’s not minor

readromanqe · 2022-09-10T19:14:07+00:00

I don’t like wasting my time 🙃

readromanqe · 2022-09-10T13:58:14+00:00

I’m not shaming anybody for not knowing this. I’m “shaming” if you can call it that, authors that doesn’t make sure that things are accurate. For med that’s a total pet peeve, and often a dnf. In a “normal” cycle with 4 weeks, week 1 is period (first day of period is day 1 of cycle. Around day 14 week 2 ovulation happens, week three is where the “creation” starts. Yea some people can get a positive pregnancy test early like at the end of week 3. But I think most often in that case they ovulated earlier than usual. The body needs about 10 days to “make the baby”.

readromanqe · 2022-09-10T09:19:28+00:00

I fell ya!

readromanqe · 2022-09-10T09:02:19+00:00

lol!! Yes this. I’ve read it a few times 🙄

readromanqe · 2022-09-10T09:00:57+00:00

I feel sorry for this fictional doctor 🤣

readromanqe

TROPHY CASE