Hello, and happy Monday!

We’re starting September just two days early, and bringing out our newest book of the month: This Savage Song by Victoria Schwab. Willa and I (Aneeqah) both pushed to have this book as our BOTM because we had so much love for it- one of the reasons being the fact that this book has 0 romance in it.

We begin the discussion actually discussing what the heck we even define as romance, which is interesting, because we all have slightly different definitions of what we actually categorize as romance in YA novels. We discuss the intricacies of different types of relationships, and also talk about the lack of romances in novels and our general feelings on them. It’s also interesting, because all of us bring in some of our own experiences with seeing romance in teens, and we talk about how realistic romances actually are in YA. Beyond that, we move on to talk about some of our favorite books that have no romance, or have just a little. There’s a few slightly “cheat” picks in there, but we all tried to err on the side of cautious and pick books with as little romance as possible (which was a surprisingly difficult task!). Hopefully some of our discussions (and Willa’s interesting ability to totally forget about her own thoughts on a book) will leave you laughing, but also reconsidering the romance trope that is so present in YA.

And now what you’ve been waiting for the most… the book list! Remember, we do have all of these compiled for you on a Goodreads shelf as well, for your viewing pleasure.

The Book List 

• Girl in Pieces by Kathleen Glasglow
• The First Time She Drowned by Kerry Kletter
• The Passion of Dolssa by Julie Berry
• The Sword of Summer by Magnus Chase
• Me, Earl, and the Dying Girl by Jesse Andrews
• The Haters by Jesse Andrews
• A Madness So Discreet by Mindy McGinnis
• An Ember in the Ashes by Sabaa Tahir
• Girl in the Blue Coat by Monica Hesse
• She is Not Invisible by Marcus Sedgewick
• Falling Into Place by Amy Zhang
• The Graces by Laure Even
• Radio Silence by Alice Osman

As always, feel free to contact us on Twitter @ANovelChat or talk to us via email on [email protected]. We always want to hear your thoughts!

The post 026: Books with Little or No Romance appeared first on My Not So Real Life.