About
Who wants a dad’s opinion on romance books? Probably nobody considering we are perpetually an antagonistic force throughout the genre.
Since I got into romance books it has become apparent that no couple has ever had a loving supporting father on both sides. To that end dad’s are often portrayed as arrogant in our beloved genre. So I guess I will express this arrogance by assuming that actually all of the internet wants my opinion on these books.
2024 was a really tough year for me—mostly due to excessive hours at work—and whether it was a symptom or a cause, I read a grand total of four novels, none of which were romance. In January of this year, I made a commitment to myself and my family to try to make 2025 better. As part of that, I wanted to get back to reading more. It also inspired me to revive Romance Reviews by Dad. I purged many of my legacy reviews when Reddit killed third-party app support, but I had preserved the first three on goodreads, and have re-posted them here.
When I first started writing Romance Reviews By Dad back in 2022, I was inspired to do so because as I became more of a romance fan, I laughed at how fathers of the main characters were perpetually antagonistic forces across the genre. As a father, who at the time was becoming an ever-bigger fan of romance, I thought it would be a “cheeky” way to frame my reviews. I genuinely just wanted a format to write about something that was bringing me joy.
On a more serious note, I thought—and still think— it is valuable to to put something out there as a cisgender man in a monogamous, heterosexual relationship praising the romance genre. There are so many amazing romance books. Modern masculinity cultural, especially in America, is so fragile, and societal expectations (in many circles) are so deprived of emotional intelligence that I think many men are denying themselves of joy and human art. Additionally, romance writers are predominately woman and romance readers are predominantly woman and lo and behold any many online communities the genre is a “meme” or dismissed as something less than other literature (mostly by people who have read less than 2000 pages of romance), thanks patriarchy! I know one anonymous blog is not going to fix these systemic issues but if I get 1 person to read a book they enjoy from writing these posts or 1 person stops yucking other peoples yum from reading my reviews then it will have been more than I wanted from it.