It makes the romance seem like a subplot because it doesn’t dominate the book. What happened right after the kiss?īecause of this, their whole relationship comes across as tell instead of show. For example, they might share their first kiss at the end of a chapter, then the next chapter opens like, “Three weeks later…” There are big time jumps in which a lot of their interactions are back fed to the reader in chunks of narration. The main reason this didn’t work as a romance is because much of the development of their relationship happens off page. He’s the typical grumpy MZ love interest, only more mature than most of the others (both age-wise and when it comes to communicating and voicing his emotions). She’s recovering from heartbreak, facing her grief over her mother’s death, and trying to make a home for herself in the one place she feels like she might be able to.įor, like, 90% of this, the male lead feels more like a random side character she’s attracted to. It’s almost solely spent on the heroine and her journey. Very little time is spent on the relationship development of the male and female lead. This, to me, really read more like women’s fiction than romance. I’ve seen other readers discuss (in great lengths) how close to the line some of MZ’s books come to tipping from romance into “chick-lit”, and while I’ve agreed with a lot of points made by both sides, I’ve never personally felt that any of her books have fallen into the latter category. Most of her stories are slow-burn because the female leads are working on themselves in some way – they’re coming into their own, learning to run a marathon, training to hike epic mountains, getting over past trauma, etc. One of the reasons I enjoy them so much is because she writes such amazing heroines. The Wall of Winnipeg and Me is easily my favorite contemporary romance of all-time, but I love a lot of MZ’s other slow-burn romances as well. I consider myself to be a die-hard Mariana Zapata fan. On the other… this isn’t a romance novel.
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