The romance genre is a popular category of books that consistently churns out bestsellers. The stories have a simple premise, showcasing a love story with a happily-ever-after ending. Romance genre has dedicated readers and it's audience is growing.

We spoke about the enduring love that books in the romance genre have seen. Authors Andaleeb Wajid and Shilpa Suraj talked to Harshita Nanda about a lot of facets that make a love story beloved to a reader.

Our Podcast Guests

Andaleeb Wajid is the author of fourteen published novels, including More than Just Biryani, Asmara’s Summer and Twenty-nine Going on Thirty. Her young adult novel When She Went Away was shortlisted for The Hindu Young World GoodBooks Award (2017). She enjoys writing about romance and food, and is also a creative writing facilitator at Nutcracker Workshops.

A published author with Harlequin India, Locksley Hall and Juggernaut, Shilpa Suraj writes stories that are sweet, tender, angsty and passionate. While romance and women’s fiction are her favourite genres, she believes that at the end of the day, all that matters is the story.

Harshita Nanda trained as an engineer, is a blogger and author of a recent novel, Xanadu. Her articles and short stories have been published on leading websites like SheThePeople, Momspresso and WomensWeb.

Harshita hosted the conversation and talked to both authors on a number of things. 

Andaleeb writes in romance and horror genre both but her romance books are much more in number. Shilpa and Andaleeb talked in depth about their writing choices. 

The tropes in the romance novels also came up for discussion. There are many themes that are explored regularly in the romance genre. In fact, authors have their favourites and Andaleeb and Shilpa talked about which tropes they are must likely to explore in their books. 

Even though romance genre has many readers, it's still looked down by many people. There is also a perception that men do not read romance novels. Andaleeb told us that many of her readers are male and they absolutely appreciate her work and stories. Shilpa talked more about how she develops her plot lines and characters, especially male protagonists of her novels. 

Romance books are called chick-lit and considered light reading. While it might take some time for readers to openly admit they enjoy reading a love story more than anything else, things are much better than before. 

Harshita wrapped up the conversation with Andaleeb and Shilpa by asking them about their favourite authors and why they love their own books. There were some really unexpected replies. 

Listen to the podcast to be part of this very fun conversation. 

 

Read reviews of Andaleeb's and Shilpa's books in the Review Section. 

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