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.
Denne historien er fra September 04, 2023-utgaven av Time.
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Denne historien er fra September 04, 2023-utgaven av Time.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
Allerede abonnent? Logg på
An exuberant ode to human possibility
VERY RARELY DOES THE RIGHT MOVIE ARRIVE AT precisely the right time, at a moment when compassion is in short supply and the collective human imagination has come to feel shrunken and desiccated.
Broadcasting a crisis for the world to see
ON SEPT. 5, 1972, A 32-YEAR-OLD PRODUCER NAMED Geoffrey S. Mason was working in a control room for ABC Sports in Munich while 12 hostages, including several members of the Israeli Olympic delegation, were being held in a building nearby.
The Power of the Peer
WITH MENTAL-HEALTH CARE IN SHORT SUPPLY, CAN REGULAR PEOPLE FILL THE GAP?
QUEERING THE STORY
Luca Guadagnino directs Daniel Craig in an adaptation of William S. Burroughs' 1985 novella Queer
Shopping under the influence
LTK CO-FOUNDER AMBER VENZ BOX SAW THE FUTURE OF RETAIL. IT TOOK YEARS FOR THE REST OF THE WORLD TO CATCH UP
The Kingmaker
Elon Musk's partnership with the President-elect
Turkey's Erdogan plots his next power grab
RECEP TAYYIP Erdogan is a political survivor.
Why maiden names matter in the age of AI and identity
IN THE DIGITAL AGE, A NAME IS MORE THAN JUST A label. It's tied to our professional history and social media presence.
The D.C. Brief
INSIDE DONALD TRUMP'S ORBIT, it's become a given that the former and future President can bypass Congress to magically fill his Cabinet with the loyalists of his choosing.
Let's embrace vulnerability in dating
AS A DATING COACH AND THE DIRECTOR OF RELATIONship science at Hinge, I often hear from people who feel like there's something big they need to disclose on early dates-chronic illness, mental-health struggles, college debt, family estrangement, lack of romantic experience, or trauma.
