THE NEW ROMANTICS

A decade after Fifty Shades, pop-culture romance has become alarmingly wholesome

- JUDY BERMAN

ONCE UPON A TIME, IN A UNIVERSE MUCH LIKE our own, the United States of America had a female President with a son named Alex Claremont-Diaz. When Alex met Henry, a British prince, it was mutual rancor at first sight; down-to-earth Alex thought Henry a snob, and haughty Henry thought Alex an ill-mannered commoner. This antipathy escalated into an international incident that climaxed in a giant cake toppling and burying them under layers of fluffy icing. Fast-forward through a handful of publicity stunts designed to sell the public on their friendship, and the two young men are hopelessly, hornily in love. But neither is openly queer. If you're worried this is all destined to end in heartbreak (and geopolitical catastrophe) then you probably aren't familiar with Casey McQuiston, who dreamed up the scenario in their hit 2019 novel Red, White, and Royal Blue. Now back on best-seller lists in anticipation of a frothy new adaptation on Prime Video, Royal Blue is emblematic of a new generation of love story that has conquered pop culture. I call it wholesome romance.

Decorated with cute illustrations, wholesome-romance covers leap out from bookstore displays in gummy-candy hues. Whether shelved as contemporary romance, YA, or new adult, these buoyant books take place in more idyllic versions of our reality, full of gentle humor and happy endings. The stakes are low, the people kind, the sex scenes vanilla. And the books, like Heartstopper (based on Alice Oseman's comic), which just dropped its second season on Netflix; and Amazon's The Summer I Turned Pretty, whose author Jenny Han's YA romances have fueled three movies and two TV series since 2018, are getting snapped up by Hollywood. The sensibility has breached the romancenovel-to-rom-com pipeline and spilled over into literary fiction, reality TV, podcasts.