Following trends in romance novels can be as much of a roller-coaster ride as romance itself. One season, Regency stories may have readers fanning themselves and retreating to the fainting couch. The next, vampire lovers could be on the rise, making readers’ hearts beat fast for brooding, gloomy love.
This season’s of-the-moment romances are contemporary ones. Many of these novels are set in cozy, nosy small towns, where supporting characters in the local community can be as integral to the plot as the romantic leads.
“When readers pick up a small-town romance, they’re looking for the comfort of tradition and the close interpersonal connections that many people are missing in contemporary life,” says Alicia Condon, editorial director at Kensington. “These books feature relationships not just between hero and heroine, but among families, neighbors, and communities. The small town itself and the comfort foods, regional celebrations, and characters who play supporting roles in the novel are hallmarks of this kind of book.”
In May 2017, Kensington is publishing A Coldwater Warm Hearts Wedding by Lexi Eddings, the second book in her Coldwater series. Coldwater Cove is “a funny town in the Ozarks,” Condon says. “The town has a Methodist prayer chain, well-meaning busybody old ladies, and a local [eatery] where people gather to gossip.”
Kensington’s Dafina imprint is releasing Hope Blooms by Jamie Pope, a more somber take on small-town romance, in April 2017. The novel centers on Cassandra Miller, a teacher who has survived a shooting at her small-town school. She saved her class, but lost her baby and husband, and now she, and the town of Hope Falls, Conn., must learn to heal.
Where Everybody Knows Your Name
An author who sets her romance in a small town knows that it’s not just her characters who need to be memorable. The town itself must be a place where readers will want to stay awhile and, in the case of a series, be someplace they’ll want to revisit.
For instance, in Jodi Thomas’s Ransom Canyon series, the setting of Crossroads, Tex., is a draw for readers, says Susan Swinwood, executive editor at Harlequin. “With its homey, comfortable community, the town is quintessentially Texan,” she notes. Harlequin will publish the fifth book in the series, Wild Horse Springs, in February.
Harlequin, of course, publishes romance novels in myriad subgenres. For other publishers, the small town is their bread-and-butter milieu.
“Eighty percent of our books are set in small towns,” says Tara Gelsomino, executive editor at Crimson Romance, an e-book imprint of F+W Media. Small-town series have “the same appeal as a long-running TV show, where you’re happy to see characters when they pop up again.”
Gelsomino says that Crimson publishes “fairly traditional romances that don’t do much genre bending.” In November, the publisher is releasing Mistletoed in Merritt by Alicia Hunter Pace, a pen name for coauthors Stephanie Jones and Jean Hovey. It’s the third book in the Crossroads series, and it tells the story of “a second-chance romance in a small town called Merritt, Alabama, which is like a southern Stars Hollow,” Gelsomino says, referencing the setting of the TV show Gilmore Girls.
The Sweet Spot by Elley Arden (Crimson Romance, Dec.) is second in the Arlington Aces series, which follows the members of a coed baseball league in Arlington, Pa. The heroine of book two, the mother of an 11-year-old girl, “is cheated on and gets divorced after 19 years of marriage,” Gelsomino says. “She’s lived in the town her whole life, and is afraid of the gossip surrounding her.”
At St. Martin’s, Elizabeth Poteet, who edits print and digital-first titles, is “seeing small-town romances that are not just about the town, but that throw in the whole bag of tricks.” In February 2017, the publisher is launching Donna Alward’s Darling, VT series with Somebody Like You. “This series has so many tropes—reunited lovers, opposites attract, enemies to lovers, best friend’s little sister, secret baby,” Poteet says.
Christian publisher Revell has a healthy list of contemporary romances, including the forthcoming What Hope Remembers by Johnnie Alexander (May 2017) and On Love’s Gentle Shore by Liz Johnson
(July 2017), the third books in, respectively, the Misty Willow and Prince Edward Island Dreams series. Each delves into staple themes of small-town romance, including “healing from the past, overcoming your fears to find your future, or returning home only to find the love you thought you lost was still there,” says Vicki Crumpton, executive editor at Revell.
Not all publishers with forthcoming small-town romances consider themselves experts in the genre. Michelle Halket, publisher at Central Ave., whose books cover categories including mysteries and thrillers, general fiction, science fiction, and children’s books, says that only a few of the press’s averages 32 books a year are romances.
The publisher acquired Abbie Williams’s nine-book Shore Leave Café series, Halket says, because it presents “a realistic view of what life is like when you’re 35, a mother of three, working in a small-town diner—and then meet a man who is 22.” The series kicked at the beginning of November with Summer at the Shore Leave Café, and continues through fall 2017.
Could’ve Said Yes, the third book in Tracy March’s Thistle Bend series (Loveswept, Dec.) returns readers to Thistle Bend, Colo., where Ellie London learns to bounce back after her fiancé cheats on her. “It’s more sweet than uber-sexy,” says Susan Grimshaw, editor at large at Random House.
Many small-town romances wear their sweetness on their covers, with wistful, pastel-hued photography. Others, such as Million Dollar Cowboy (Avon, Apr. 2017), may be wrapped in a deceptive package. Given the rough-riding cowboy trope in romance—and the six-pack abs Million Dollar Cowboy’s cover model sports—new readers could be misled by the title, which is new to Lori Wilde’s Cupid, Texas series. But Erika Tsang, editorial director at Avon, says that this book, like its predecessors in the series, puts a premium on the ranching-town setting and the families who dwell there.
New Love Interests, New Readers
Just as romantic heroes typically have a certain look on book jackets, heroines, too, tend to fit a particular type. But that’s beginning to change, says Amy Pierpont, executive editor at Grand Central, citing female leads who don’t fit the “waiflike blonde” mold.
Alison Bliss’s Perfect Fit series, set in small-town Granite, Tex., kicks off in November with Size Matters and features a “curvaceous heroine,” Pierpont says. Bliss “wanted to write the small town in a way that really shows Texas, by featuring realistic-looking women, which readers have been asking for.” The second book in the Perfect Fit series, On the Plus Side, publishes in June 2017.
Some authors are writing heroines who prioritize career first, love second. In Buns (Gallery, May 2017), the third book in Alice Clayton’s Hudson Valley series, Clara Morgan is a hotel-rebranding executive who sets her sights on Bryant Mountain House in Bailey Falls.
“Books like [these] appeal to a younger audience because a lot of women are not getting married out of college—they’re pursuing careers and putting work first,” says Lauren McKenna, executive editor at Gallery and Pocket and editorial director at Pocket Star. (The title Buns refers both to the hot cross buns the hotel restaurant is famous for and to love interest Archie Bryant. The first two books in the series are Nuts and Cream of the Crop.)
LGBTQ romance is seeing a shift of its own, not in readership necessarily, but in setting. At Bold Strokes, several forthcoming romances take place in small towns, but “in none of them is being gay an issue,” says Ruth Sternglantz, editorial and marketing consultant at Bold Strokes. Those titles include November’s Love on Call, the third book in Radclyffe’s Rivers Community series, in which the local hospital “is a locus for the life cycles in a small, rural town.”
In the standalone romance You Make Me Tremble by Karis Walsh (July 2017), seismologist Casey Radnor heads to a town in the San Juan Islands that’s been devastated by an earthquake, where she meets animal-rescue worker Iris Mallery.
Another standalone from Bold Strokes, Strawberry Summer by Melissa Brayden (Apr. 2017), is set in rural Tanner Peak, Calif., and details, over the course of several summers, the love affair between a farm girl and a retail magnate’s daughter.
“Ten years ago, [our] small-town romances were more likely set in places known for being very gay-friendly,” Sternglantz says. “But now we have romances set all over the country, even the red states.”
For Sarah Lyons, editor at Riptide, which has a heavy focus on male-male romance, the small-town trend is even newer. “It’s something that queer romance has just figured out, because of the history of being queer in a small town, and how difficult that can be,” she says. “We’ve seen a lot of characters in small towns who want to get out, or grew up there but didn’t stay. But now, increasingly, you can be queer in a small town, and queer romance is noticing that.”
In Glass Tidings (Dec.), a standalone title by Amy Jo Cousins, peripatetic Eddie Rodrigues gets stranded in a remote town in the Midwest. “Part of the point of his being stuck there is that it’s so different from what he’s used to seeing [when traveling] to big cities,” Lyons says. “People have been there for generations.” Naturally, he finds love with local shop owner Grayson Croft —and realizes that small towns are the place to be, after all.
Below, more on the subject of romance books.
When Love is a Family Affair: New Romance Books, 2017
Ladies on Top: New Romance Books, 2017
Nicole Audrey Spector is a Los Angeles writer whose work has appeared in the Atlantic, the New Yorker, and Vice.
