Good Book Stuff Part 2: Knowing what to Expect

[alanajoli]

This next reason to like books is a double-edged sword. Sometimes, readers like me want to pick up a book and know what to expect. (We could reread, sure, but knowing *exactly* what's going to happen and knowing what to expect are just different enough to make the second appealing.) I strongly suspect that most romance readers, rather than actually being interested in romantic sex sequences, are actually driven by this factor. When a romance reader picks up a book, she knows that in the first two chapters, she will me the hero and the heroine, and that, by the end of the book, they will live happily ever after. The things that stand in their way are interesting, but sort of moot. The reason to read a romance novel is that you know exactly how it's going to turn out--and more than that, everything is going to turn out okay.

This isn't something I want out of all of my fiction, and I'm fairly certain that reserving it for my romance reading is what I'm really looking for. As I mentioned in my previous entry, I do like to be surprised in my fiction reading. But there are days when I don't want to read something depressing, or even realistic. I want to have a nice little fairy tale ending as two unlikely individuals struggle toward their happy ending. (And honestly, romance novels have a much higher ratio of happy endings than fairy tales ever did.)