here's the thing: I listen to a lot of lesbian romance audiobooks, and I can't tell if I just don't enjoy audiobooks as much, or the genre, or if I'm just being picky af most of the romance books I read, I end up kind of being over the relationship by the time they have the whole 3rd act sudden breakup arc that always gets resolved like 15 pages after lol

sometimes romance novels make me feel kinda heartless bc I feel so indifferent about some of the characters im supposed to root for, like they're (this is gonna sound DUMB lol) not 'real' people? they just kind of feel like a shell that got few basic attributes and traumas allocated to them and if u take those away, they crumble completely, like they don't feel like they're believable as actual people

ALSO, one of my biggest issues is that a lot of (I guess contemporary?) romance book setups have the obvious tropes and specific setting etc that I would eat UP in a fanfiction, but with an original novel kind of read like 'whatever' to me, bc I seldom feel like I was allowed to sit with the characters long enough to actually care what happens to their relationships? fanfiction can bypass all of this, because the source material already did that work for it, the characters can be used within these setting/tropes/whatever, but with novels and ocs, i almost always feel like I'm just missing sth everyone else seems to get from these books lol

unsure if any of this made sense since it's 3am and my sleep schedule is making my brain feel scrambled atm haha

interesting.... I've never read this authors books but I'm kind of already irritated with lack of acting like adults????? is that out of line? these people are supposed to be like 30....