“Sweetheart, we could have stripped everything down and started fresh, keeping the look on the outside. Modern minimalist on the inside. White walls. Black and gray furniture. Very open and airy. It will be a place.”
Modern minimalist? Something died inside Kincaid. “I can't be serious,” she blurted out.
When I read these lines from Loni Lauren's romance novel The One for You, something died inside me. Our first speaker, an Austin architect, wants to transform a luxurious, essential farmhouse in Texas wine country into an urban loft. Obviously, the only rational action for the book's heroine to take is to buy the book out from under him in order to save the sound bones of the house from the ways of all Waco's fixer-uppers. And that's a blessing. I wish more characters in romance novels had Kincaid's inner backbone.
Romance has a serious embellishment problem. The contemporary romance novels I chose to escape from the pandemic offer a variety of settings, pairings, relationship dynamics, and even twists. But the world of romance seems to have settled into the default interior design style for its heroes. Let's just say that every time I read about another “modern minimalist” living room, my mood is ruined.
Most romances specify the main character's hair and eye color, but there is usually some ambiguity about their exact appearance. That ambiguity allows the reader to project his or her own particular preferences onto the love interest. After all, being tall, dark, and handsome means different things to different people.
But that ambiguity becomes even more precise when it comes to matters of taste that define other characters. Food romances go down to recipe-level detail about the protagonist's taste preferences. In the romance between a rock star and a motorcycle club, readers will enjoy detailed descriptions of the protagonist's ink. Yet, time and time again, the scene is the same when the protagonist enters the door of a man's apartment after a date. He has one large sectional with a wall-mounted TV and a view befitting the location. body of water.
Drew, the love interest in Jasmine Guillory's The Wedding Date, has a textbook version (he's on the Pacific Ocean in Santa Monica).
After he opened the door, she stepped inside and was greeted by large windows, white walls, chrome-plated appliances, and black and white prints everywhere. She dropped her tote bag next to the gray couch and looked for a place to put her tacos.
So is Brett, Prince Charming in KA Tucker's modern Cinderella story Until It Fades (he's in Philadelphia's Schuylkill).
The main area is open with high ceilings above the living room. A loft overlooks us, followed by an industrial-looking metal staircase. Everything is bright. He only has two photos on the white walls, and soft gray curtains block the impressive view of the river even when closed. Honestly, it looks like Brett just moved in.
So does Wes, one of the two hockey player leads in Sarina Bowen and Elle Kennedy's gay romance film Him (he's on a lake in Toronto).
I turned away from the window and observed the vast open concept room. There is no furniture in this apartment, but you can already imagine how it will look with furniture. The living area has a leather sofa and a huge flat screen. dining room table. Tall stools for the eat-in breakfast counter.
The 1 Percent version includes more textiles, as seen in Alexis Hall's How to Bang a Billionaire, but is still pretty bland (he's in London's Hyde Park). ).
Oh my god, it looked like a picture in a magazine. Beautiful in a completely unrealistic way. Everything was marble, granite, silk, and…designed. The colors are taupe, cream, and pearl gray, all luxurious and calming. Just being there was devaluing the place. …
Very…glaring. And a sense of space. I think they called it sideways living or something. For people who are too rich and don't have enough room.
As Hall's smooth-talking narrator, Arden St. Ives, aptly puts it, “People are too rich for rooms and such,” is the story of a romance hero who is marked by sprawl rather than the stamp of individuality. It gets to the heart of a not-so-beautiful aesthetic. What too many romance protagonists see as a challenge, whereas Loni Lauren's Kincaid and I see it as a deal-breaker, is that if his house is cold, he doesn't want me to be in the living room. I hope it warms his heart.
The term “open concept” gives us a clue as to why so many authors think square footage is attractive enough. The origins of “open concept” are in Canada, where some of his most popular early HGTV renovation shows were filmed. Organizers adopted it as an alternative to the American “open plan,” and the term spread from there, a sort of bombastic, let's-get-all-out approach to renovation. Critics have questioned in recent years whether the open plan is suitable for family life. The pandemic has only further highlighted the need for rooms.
But it is no coincidence that the male protagonists of these books bought into this open plan. When New York Times contributor Rhonda Kaysen discussed HGTV on NPR in 2019, she revealed the reason behind the network's focus on kitchens, dining, and living rooms. It was “Men love demonstrations.'' “A man, he only watches HGTV if there's a sledgehammer,” she said. A large space is a symbol of masculinity, and is typical of things men want to be seen as big, such as a big TV or a big sofa.
In fact, all of the above are symbols of traditional masculinity. If a man with a sledgehammer is strong, a man with a big apartment is rich. Despite the recent rise of “cinnamon roll heroes” (compassionate, kind, and supportive), the world of romance still has status professions, athletic prowess, and fashion as basic as this type of decoration. It's full of notes. The bad boy wears a leather jacket, the boy next door wears a Henley shirt, and the millionaire wears custom-made clothes. There's nothing wrong with wanting that fantasy, as long as you're also aware of its limitations.
It's one thing to have a mattress on the floor of despair, but these examples are all wealthy men, so the emptyness of their homes represents the blandness of their souls. I can't help but interpret it as something like this. Of course, the heroine of the romance never stops expressing herself with her eccentric decorations because of her low-paid job. Kincaid must sell her beloved lake house to save a wine country farmhouse from Fixer Upper Dam. In Alexa Martin's Girlfriend Fumbled, poppy, a waitress and single mother, redoes her kitchen with the help of Pinterest and a free class at a local hardware store.
It turns out you can fake a butcher block countertop with pine panels. Considering my kitchen is the size of a postage stamp, the grand total came to less than 100 buckaroos. Cole lent me some tools, but for one day? Look! new countertop. A few months later, I painted the upper cabinets bright white and the lower cabinets the same mint color as the front door. A few months after splurging on a white subway tile backsplash, and some really great tips. I regretted it for weeks because it cost so much money, but now it's my favorite part.
These heroines make ends meet, make their homes their own, act like slightly manic pixie interior design girls, and use thrifting, color theory, and the power of houseplants to create black-and-white photos and leather cross-sections. save men from a life of In this hetero-sequel to Him, a hockey teammate falls in love with the co-owner of a concierge service when she asks him to redecorate her apartment.
She also did a great job. The furniture and tableware are attractive but understated. All I sent her was her floor plan and a cry for help, and she headed into town. She didn't even know what to buy, but she just accommodated things I might have overlooked. Each bathroom has hand towels and soap dispensers.
One of the group of elite college athletes is really missing out on the flood of NIL money Shogun's ambiguous ending, explained by its creator Why a nearly 50-year-old album continues to captivate a new generation Zendaya's latest is 'the best' The album is being touted as one of the sexiest movies ever made. ” Is that…?
Did I overlook the hand towel? Now I'm imagining this billionaire moving rolls of paper towels from the kitchen to the bathroom to the bedroom until this woman intervenes.
The idea that men can't find their comfort zone also affects romance between men. In Hall, Bowen, and Kennedy's novels, the less wealthy partners of couples are (thankfully) not written into the role of “female” makeovers. Arden lives in an industrial loft that has barely been renovated. Jamie moves in with Wes and seems perfectly content with his leather sofa and flat screen. It is his mother who adds him and his mug.
One writer who gets interior design right is Lily Morton. The lawyers, actors and photojournalists featured in Morton's series own mouthwatering properties, including a mansion in Cornwall, a villa in the south of France and a houseboat in London. The best one is the London townhouse of Asa Jacobs, the 40-something star of the Game of Thrones-style series The Deal Makers. The moment Jude, the book's narrator, first knocked on his pink front door, I thought, “I must have remembered this from the first time I saw his beautiful grounds at Pemberley.” Like me, he seemed unsure whether to drool over Asa or her house.
He clearly has a penchant for bold colors, as this room is painted a warm turquoise color. Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves line three of his walls, and another is covered with framed old flyers. A large leather sofa and his two deep armchairs sit in front of the fireplace, and light streams in through French windows that offer a glimpse of the long garden. This cozy room makes you want to curl up and read a book, allowing you to relax a little.
I relaxed even more in the kitchen. There, Jude has no stainless steel and finds a housekeeper who likes cakes like Mary Berry.
It has light oak cupboards and luxurious slate tile flooring, but the highlight is the hundreds of small copper tiles that make the glassware shine.
Every moment in a romance novel should build intimacy, from the cute encounter to the happy encounter that follows. Spending time in each other's space is an important part of that process. Scenes that begin with the man checking his vision tend to end with him checking something else on the large couch. Who wants to be seduced by a floor model? Why does all attraction have to be one-sided, at least by design? Just as you shouldn't expect love to solve your emotional problems, just as you shouldn't expect love to solve your emotional problems, You should not expect to recover your rebound. There are some things you should do for yourself.