An Old Friend & A Continuous Romance

I have always tried to steer away from reading a book of romance, which is usually too unrealistic for me. However recently I try to write a kind of Kung Fu story happened around Mongolian steppe. I should say proto-Mongolian steppe since the story is set in the 7th century when Mongolia as a country would not be happening until 400 to 500 years later. In order to do this, I realize that I need to read some books of romance and see how such stories are developed.

This is why I read “People We Meet On Vacation” by Emily Henry, which is a nice story about Poppy who worked for R & R travel magazine, and Alex who just finished his writing program and started to teach in a high school. Poppy’s job gives her the opportunity to travel around and write about places. Basically free vacations for the sake of her work. She always ask her friend Alex to accompany her. They are friends who travel together, they are friends who don’t date each other but date other people, they end up as two couples, each with partners, travel together, they date each other and then separate, and finally they become a couple.

I like the writing, which has more details than what it is necessary, which enjoys using words and phrases like leprechaun, jaw taut, ratty luggage, flagstone siding. On every other page, I found an unfamiliar phrase that I was too lazy to look up. And my ignorance of their meaning made me like the book even more for some strange reason. Although there were a lot of details, I didn’t feel they were too overwhelming even though I thought theoretically they should be.

However what I like most about the book is the portrayal of Alex, who is almost as sweet as a woman, as responsive in conversation as a best friend, as fussy as a nurse in taking care of Poppy. I can very well imagine Alex as a girl and this book is about the relationship between two girls.
Reflecting on this point, I suddenly realize that most romance books are actually writing about relationships between two girls, although the plot is about a man and a woman. This is why I feel that those story lines and descriptions are so unrealistic, not reflecting at all the man-woman relationships I’ve observed or experienced in real life.

After reading this book, I feel that my own prose starts to stretch a little bit, with more unnecessary details emerging, more unembarrassed descriptions of a cooking method that is deemed irrelevant to the plot, more appearance of verbs like “quaff” (swallow hurriedly), “slosh” (splash) , “tamp” (pack), “comp” (give away free), “chug” (move slowly), more immediate “fattening” of the narration. I still haven’t used nouns as verbs, which is a common occurrence in the book.