Love Is in the Air—and on the Page
Writing with a little sweetness—and a little spice—these Boston University alums and authors are helping to fuel a rise in romance fiction
Illustrations by Mallory Heyer
Love Is in the Air—and on the Page
Writing with a little sweetness—and a little spice—these Boston University alums and authors are helping to fuel a rise in romance fiction
This article was originally published in Bostonia on November 25, 2025. By Alene Bouranova
EXCERPT
Enemies to lovers. Opposites who attract. Rekindled flames. Casual hookups grown deeper. A maybe-not-so-straight crush. Vacation flings turned year-round love affairs. Romance literature, once considered a guilty pleasure, is having a moment in the sun. The genre’s bright, breezy covers grace bookstore shelves around the world—including at a new crop of romance-only bookstores, like Harvard Square’s Lovestruck Books. If you look at readers on the beach or the bus, odds are you’ll clock at least one with their nose in a coyly titled book. (Giggling, blushing, and kicking feet sometimes, but not always, included.)
As for who’s knocking back these titles: romance readers skew heavily female—up to 82 percent, according to a study commissioned by the trade association Romance Writers of America—and younger, often in their 30s and under.
“I think there is so much good to be had from having this avenue for safe, healthy, happily-ever-after escapism,” says Kimberly Swiszcz (LAW’16), author of a romance series set in the fictional New Hampshire lake town of Wilcox Grove.
Swiszcz is one of a crop of BU’s romance and romance-adjacent alumni authors, which includes best-selling novelist Kate Quinn (CFA’04,’06) and author and sociologist Patricia Leavy (CAS’97), who published Cinematic Destinies (She Writes Press, 2025), the finale in her Red Carpet Romance trilogy, in September. (Another Boston University connection: the Special Collections of the BU Libraries holds the papers of the late, famed romance novelist Barbara Cartland, along with many others who have written in the genre. Cartland wrote more than 700 books.)
Romance as Comfort
“I always smile because it seems this comes up every few years, that romance is having a moment,” Quinn says. “But romance novels are some of the most lucrative titles that keep publishing houses afloat.” (There’s a reason Pride and Prejudice, published in 1813, has had so many film and TV adaptations—including a forthcoming Netflix series—and received consistently rave reviews on Goodreads and Google Books.)
Interest in romance often surges during times of trouble, Quinn says. She cites the COVID-19 pandemic as a huge boon for the genre. “People read romance and watch rom-coms for that warm bath of reassurance that, no matter how sad or dark things are, the couple is going to be fine,” she says. “That is really comforting, whether you’re living through a pandemic or a period of extreme political upheaval, or whatever you’re going through.”
Quinn’s hit historical fiction novels include The Alice Network (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2017), where two women’s lives intersect amid the back-drops of World Wars I and II; The Huntress (William Morrow Paperbacks, 2019), a Nazi-hunting page-turner set in the aftermath of World War II; and The Briar Club (William Morrow, 2024), a tale of female friendship and betrayal during the paranoia of the McCarthy era. She’s not a romance author by definition—writing about history, she says, she can’t guarantee you a happy ending—but her work always has strong romantic themes.
“I always have a romance in [my stories],” Quinn says. And in her reading habits, “I tend to gravitate back toward romance in dark times. It’s all about that comfort you get from seeing a couple on page one who hate each other, but who you know will work their way towards each other at the end, and enjoying the ride.”