Stumbling into Romance – how the genre changed my reading life
Laurie Jane shares how the romance genre changed her life when she was in a slump In mid-2018, I was having a rough time and I got a bit depressed. It wasn’t the first time I’d experienced depression and it wouldn’t be the last. Like all the times before, my productivity nosedived and, along with it, my ability to find joy in the activities I would normally use to escape from stress or anxiety — in particular, reading. For a person who has had their studies, their work, their dreams and even their identity tangled up in books in one way or another for as long as they can remember, this was an incredibly difficult reality to deal with. I’d pick up a book, start slogging through it and feel my mind coming apart like candy floss in a hurricane. Two chapters in, I’d be dragging my eyes along the same sentences over and over again, trying to understand what they meant, trying to appreciate the artistry of them, trying to lose myself in the story or the prose or both… but I couldn’t. I’d put