For those of you who know what I write, it won’t be a surprise to know that I like my books sexy. But it’s not essential.
Recently I read two books that were kisses-only by one author I already know I like, namely, Trish Wylie’s His L.A. Cinderella and Kate Hewitt’s The Sheikh’s Love Child (both recent releases). I’m a huge fan of Trish Wylie who is doing her best to bring the Harlequin lines up to date, trying to disperse the tycoon/mistress image that is dragging the image of the Presents/Modern line back forty years or more. (Btw, Harlequin, I get the books DESPITE the titles, not because of them – more later, on that, maybe).
The Wylie was a delightful read, charming with characters you can like and believe. The heroine abandoned her career as a scriptwriter when the first film she wrote with her partner and lover bombed at the box office. He carried on and found success, she went on to teach and they separated. He brings her back to write a sequel to what turned out to be a sleeper, and they fall in love all over again. I really enjoyed it.
Kate Hewitt is a new writer to me and while the book isn’t without its faults – it’s one of the rugby books, and as a rugby fan, they make me squirm – it worked. I nearly stopped reading at the first chapter, when the whiney hero feels so sorry for himself I wanted to slap him silly, but I did like the heroine when I read her, and as it turned out, the hero did have a reason to be so miserable. This has a secret baby theme, but I went past it, and while there were some inconsistencies, the central characters were strong and well-defined.
But for me, at any rate, there was a big hole in the middle of each book. No sex. No, I’m not shallow, I honestly believe that sex is a very important part of any adult romantic relationship. It needs to work in bed. You can have love without sex, you can have sex without love, but in the kind of relationship described in romance novels, sex is essential. I don’t even need it described in great detail.
It was entirely absent in the Wylie book, and while I could understand why she kept pushing him away, in the end it became a little TSTL and even tiresome. With the Hewitt, there was a consummated relationship, but it was in a kind of “oh well, we got that bit over with” way, although the sexual tension throughout the book was well described. I wanted to know why and how.
For a woman, sex changes everything, one way or the other and it does for many men, too. Good or bad, it’s an important part of the relationship. From getting down and dirty with each other, to the pillow talk, to the necessary intimacies that make a relationship real, I missed it in these books. It was like eating the icing without the cake.
In these books I loved the way the couples rebuilt their relationships, but I wanted more, even if it was just a “reconnecting in that way made all the difference” kind of vague description. Sex is there, it’s the elephant in the room, and when the epublishers finally opened the door and examined that part of it, it opened romance to a new world and a new sensibility. Authors could finally examine in detail that central part of a relationship, what is right about it, and what is wrong.
One of the most important parts of the best books about BDSM describe how one person finds fulfillment through a particular kind of sex, novels by the likes of Joey W. Hill and Doreen Orsini and in so doing, find the person who can help him or her achieve it. It’s about souls connecting as well as bodies, and I think that was what I missed in these two books.
Lynne – I totally agree. No sex = no clear understanding of their relationship dynamic, to me. It explains so much to read about how a couple handles that most intimate of acts. I don’t have to read each encounter in detail, but the first one and at least one more in the book are important, I think. They tell me a lot about the people I’m reading about, if they’re done well. An author can cover a lot of emotional ground with just one sex scene.
Great explanation of why sex is important in romance novels (even essential in most), and why it isn’t porn. I completely agree.
I had the choice when writing my fourth book to open with pages and pages and pages of dialogue, navel-gazing and interaction to illustrate the nature of the existing m/m couple’s relationship, their goals, motivations and conflicts–or open with two pages of sex. That one sex scene lays the foundation for readers, helps them understand the dynamics of the relationship and the problems facing the two men, and the different ways they view those problems and hope to deal with them. I hope it was hot, too, but that wasn’t the only reason I wrote it.
Sex can be the most emotional part of a book for me. If it’s well done and is relevant, it isn’t porn at all. I can safely say this because I watch a fair bit of porn, for reasons which are entirely different from the reasons I enjoy sex scenes in romance. Plus, sex scenes in porn almost never make me cry. 😉
I kind feel like a romance without sex is like a mystery novel without a murder. I’m not a mystery fan so I can’t promise that analogy is accurate, but if the core of the definition of the romance genre is “a story about the creation of a permanent romantic bond”, sex is part of the core of that. It’s essential. If I’m going to invest a couple hundred pages worth of attention, I want to see or at least know a heck of a lot about how it goes down between this particular pair.
Shameless – you’re so right. And the analogy is spot on.
Kristin – brava.
Thanks for your responses – I’m away from home, so my Internet connection is intermittent.
Kristin – perfect, that’s exactly right. You’re starting your book with an “action” scene, showing not telling, which would draw me right in from the start.
Love your analogy, Shameless, that’s so right as far as I’m concerned!
I agree, and I’d like to add –
how hot are the characters for each other if they are satisfied with making out?
Passion is losing your mind, going nuts,ripped his shirt, can’t find your underwear later – kind of action,
when the characters just make out and maybe go to second base I’m not impressed by their chemistry at all.
I’ve read your article, and I have to respectfully disagree.
Why? Because I primarily read historicals, such as in the Regency and Victorian eras, where sexual morals were incredibly different, and many people found romance and love without sex (often with even knowing a great deal about it) until after marriage. It’s not that I find sex ALWAYS tiresome in historicals, but it often seems very anachronistic (like those Regency heroines who decide to go for a one-night stand and believe it won’t affect their lives and reputations! WHERE DO THEY GET THESE IDEAS?). Jane Austen’s characters didn’t have to have sex – Georgette Heyer’s characters didn’t have to have sex. Charles Dickens’ characters didn’t need to have sex (at least until they were married, anyway).
I think it all depends on the context of the story, really.
Shameless –> I have to disagree with you. A murder mystery without a murder is like a romance novel without ROMANCE, not without sex. Why? Because sex ISN’T THE CENTRE OF THE PLOT of the romance – it’s a contributor, but it’s not the only thing. I’m making a distinction between romance and erotica (where the sex is vital to the story and therefore the fact that the characters have sex is equally vital).
See it from the opposite point of view – many of you are dissatisfied by romances where the characters don’t have sex. Well, I am dissatisfied and often disgusted by romances where the characters have hot sex every other page but treat each other like garbage once they’re vertical.
To me, I can enjoy a romance with love, and I can enjoy a romance with love and sex, but I can’t enjoy a romance with sex and no love (or very contrived – “the sex is so good I must be in love with you” love). So in my viewpoint, sex has always been an oft-important but ultimately inferior element in the romance compared to the love and affection between the characters.
Sarah –> I disagree with you as well because I see a vital literary difference between passion and lust. People get all hot and bothered for gorgeous celebrities without any love being felt. That’s lust. People can also get all hot and bothered for people they just met and rip each other’s clothes off and fall into bed immediately – but that’s also lust, and not love, and certainly not romantic passion. You can’t love someone without some knowledge of their character, at least in a literary format like a romance novel.
Maybe it’s just a difference of opinion, but to me, passion is a mixture of sexual attraction and emotional attraction. To me, the characters have to love who they ARE as well as how they look (to a certain extent). And I’ve ultimately always preferred romance where the love is superior to the sexual attraction.
I’m always disgusted by romances where the hero falls for the heroine because the sex was good. You can have good sex with a total jackass – how is that love?
There are lots of examples where the characters having sex is vital to the romance (Jennifer Crusie’s novels are a good example), but there (at least to me) seem to be WAY more novels where the sex and its depiction is just shoehorned in there. Oftentimes it feels to me like it’s filling a quota – “Oh, I’m writing a romance, here’s the requisite sex scene! It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t move the plot forward or affect the character dynamic! Readers want to read about love nubbins!”
But I guess that’s another difference – LynneC, are you talking about the FACT that the romance characters should have sex being necessary to romance, or the DEPICTION of the characters having sex being necessary to romance? One example would be Julie James’ “Just the Sexiest Man Alive” – the characters are shown to have had sex, but there are no sex scenes. Did this bother you?
What an interesting post!
Actually, Regency people were probably more licentious than we are! The engravings by the likes of Gillray and Rowlandson depict a lifestlyle that is far from celibate! In Victorian times, there were more prostitutes per head of the population than there were at any other time, so the morality preached in those days were meant for women, not for men, who more or less did as they pleased (men are such beasts!)
I write historicals and I always bear in mind that a respectable female certainly didn’t leap into bed with all and sundry, for the simple fact that pregnancy was a real danger for her. It wasn’t the virginity so much as the risk of pregnancy and, at certain eras, disease that stopped them. Morals had very little to do with it, in pre-Victorian eras practicality prevailed.
But even in contemporaries I don’t like the bloodless, love-without-passion approach of some romances. Heyer’s books are seething with sexual tension. Austen wrote social comedies, not romances, and similarly, Dickens wrote fiction, just about uncategorisable fiction and, of course, both Austen and Dickens were writing contemporary fiction (with the exceptions of A Tale Of Two Cities and Barnaby Rudge). But sex goes on in both Austen and Dickens, and is acknowledged as making a couple either happy or unhappy.
My personal preference is to follow a couple into the bedroom because so many intimacies, not just sex, happen in the bedroom. Barriers are down, people are vulnerable there.
Lust is not an emotion separate from anything else. Lust can lead to love, and in its honest form is a positive emotion. When two (or more) people indulge their mutual lust, it can be a liberating and wonderful experience. It’s not love, and as you say, a romance is essentially the story of a romantic relationship, but if an adult romantic relationship doesn’t include a healthy dose of lust, there could be something seriously amiss.
I write erotic romance – not erotica. In an erotic romance sex has to be at the centre of the story. But I have read erotic romance where there is no penetrative sex, too. Sexual tension must be high, and very often the characters find themselves and each other, through sex. Romance is and should never be divorced from lust, sex and passion, imo. They are all part of an adult romantic relationship. Erotic romance can also be the story of a couple who set out to mend their relationship, and they can do it with sex.
I do believe in love at first sight, but the wise person will wait to confirm that it’s true. But it’s not true that you have to know someone to love them, you just have to love them. Lasting love is usually the result of a deeper relationship, it’s true.
I’ve not read Julie James books yet – putting them on the list!
I definitely see your point. I guess I’m more annoyed by the depiction of sex scenes where the depiction serves no purpose. There are lots of examples where the sex scene moves forward the plot, but there are just as many sex scenes that, well, take up space, telling us little or nothing about the story. I think if I had to choose between a romance with no sex or sex scene and a romance with a sex scene that didn’t further the plot or develop the characters – I’d prefer the first one.
I don’t think a romance has to have sex (or a sex scene) in it just because it’s a romance, is what I’m trying to say. If it makes sense to the story and the scene definitely shows us something about the characters (like the love scene between Kate and Anthony in Julia Quinn’s “The Viscount Who Loved Me), then by all means put one in! But if there’s no reason for a sex scene other than “my book’s a romance and by definition it needs one,” than I would contest the need for a scene.
And I do understand the vulnerability inherent in the bedroom – but I do believe each character should have a motivation for going into the bedroom, just as they need a motivation for every other action they take in the story that furthers the plot. A really romantic example is Sophia Nash’s “A Dangerous Beauty” (I’d recommend it!). That was a hot scene, but there was a reason and motivation for why we needed to see it and why it was so important for both characters. In it, the heroine has a long-held terror for being touched by a man’s hands so, uh, the hero has to … improvise. 🙂 In this case the details made sense and it was a wonderful scene that said so much about the characters!
As an opposite example – there’s “Untouched” by Anna Campbell. While, yes, the hero’s isolation and virginity makes the fact that they have sex (and the first couple of sex scenes) relevant – there were about, oh, seven or eight more sex scenes in there (three of which were BACK TO BACK with no plot development in between) that were, well, redundant to say the least.
I am in no way contesting your opinion – just presenting an opposing one to show it exists and there are some readers who don’t mind a lack of sex scenes. That’s what I love about the romance genre. There are so many subgenres and categories and ideas that everyone can find something they want. 🙂
I agree with AnimeJune. There are many romances that don’t have any sex scenes; they are still perfectly valid as romances and many of them are excellent.
It sounds to me like the problems with the books described above weren’t actually lack of sex in the story — with one, it was that the postponement of it was a plot annoyance, with the other, that it happened but wasn’t very interesting. So that’s not really proving the point, for me.