Realistic Fiction – Marked for Plot

For Real – An Antitrope Romance

For Real has been sitting on my TBR for a while. Actually, Hall’s Spires series (contemporary romance where each focuses on a different couple) has appealed to me since I found Waiting for the Flood to be an interesting Romance that … well that wasn’t a copy/paste of something else out there. The whole series tackles some more serious and unusual takes on romance genre conventions, but ultimately still very much still feel like Genre Romance. For Real isn’t making my list of favorite romances, but it was well-worth the weirdly large amount of time it took for me to hunt a copy down.

The Premise:
Laurie is a trauma doctor who still isn’t over a relationship that ended 6 years ago. On a whim, he takes 19 year old Toby home from a BDSM club, as Toby is clearly very new to being a dom. Unfortunately, Laurie is emotionally unavailable which leads to him fucking up pretty much everything other than the sex.

Read if You Like: relentless trope subversion, quality queer romances, not every conversation focusing on falling in love

Avoid if You Dislike: light to moderate BDSM elements, protagonists who don’t look like marble statues, characters who are kind of shitty but are working on it

Cut & Run – Look How Far We’ve Come

Cut & Run is a cult classic amongst the Queer Thriller crowd. It’s coming up on being two-decades old and recently got reprinted, so I knew I was going to pick it up. It has a reputation for being on the ‘mindless fun’ side of books, and it fit that brief delightfully. I’d been feeling a bit of burnout on reading, and this required so little brainpower that it started to fill my cup again. However, I also think it’s a good benchmark of what ‘well written’ gay love used to look like. It feels dated and a prime example of what happens when queer men are written with a straight female audience in mind.

This review will (in part) explore how this book gets writing queer men wrong. Many of these elements are frustrating patterns that still pop up in new releases. However, I want to anchor all of this with the idea that Roux & Urban were writing queer men long before it was seen as profitable, though they definitely profited. I wish we’d moved past the types of writing I found here, and I’m also thankful that they paved the way for better representation to follow.

I bear no ill will towards these authors and books, but this read was enough to convince me that I didn’t want to continue following these characters.

The Premise:
When a serial killer goes after the FBI agents investigating him, the Bureau takes an unusual step of assigning a new partnership to catch him. Ty is a loose cannon who recently fucked up a deep-cover case. Zane is a buttoned up agent from Cybercrimes who is trying to climb the ladder. They immediately decide they can’t stand each other.

Read if you Like: coworkers who hate and lust for each other, sexy fistfights, melodramatic serial killers, pulpy thrillers

Avoid if you Dislike: quality queer rep, there’s literally only one possible suspect, claustrophobia

Remarkably Bright Creatures – I Get the Hype … I Don’t Share It

This book was pretty far out of my wheelhouse, but it’s relentlessly good press plus my desire to stretch outside my comfort zone – this is so close to being realistic fiction in entirety – got me to pick it up. Octopuses are awesome, so what’s not to love? I left the book pretty torn: I understand why it worked for so many people, and I think if I were a bigger fan of realistic fiction I’d have enjoyed it. As it is, this was a slog to finish, despite really enjoying some significant chunks of the book.

The Premise
Brandon’s mother abandoned him at 9, and he never knew his father. After getting dumped by his girlfriend, he follows clues left behind to try and find his family. Tova is an aging woman who enjoys her knitting club and cleaning at the local aquarium, where she’s befriended the Giant Pacific Octopus. Marcellus is said octopus, who is desperately trying to find stimulation and enjoyment in his life.

Read If Looking For: heartfelt family stories, lovable old ladies, an octopus smarter than the humans who are stumbling through the plot

Avoid If Looking For: xenofiction to be the focal point, characters to communicate with each other

Comparable Media: A Man called Ove, Shadow Life

The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg

Mike Karpa wrote one of my favorite books from last year, and I knew I wanted to try more by him in 2026. Unfortunately, Red Dot is his only speculative fiction novel. I don’t read much non-Romance contemporary novels, but I chose The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg as one of my 12 books to prioritize this year. The Wealthy Whites of Williamsburg won’t top my best-of lists, it solidified that Karpa is an author I will continue to read, and I desperately hope he’s got more stories in the works for the future.

The Premise
Casey and Roger are worried about making ends meet while living as lavish a life as possible. Roger is a former hit-screenwriter who now teaches Film courses at ritzy colleges. Casey runs a struggling localization business and is trying to get her daughter Abby into an exclusive elementary school. Demmy is Roger’s daughter from his first wife, who enjoys gossip and high school politics at her Japanese immersion school. Pretty much everyone has at least one secret (other than Abby, who just wants to watch Lizzo music videos), and nobody’s particularly happy with the state of their lives. You wouldn’t know it from the outside, however.

Read if Looking For: insightful prose, dysfunctional families, insufferable lead characters, 5 year-olds obsessed with Lizzo

Avoid if Looking For: witty banter, fast-paced plots, diverse characters, endings as messy as the beginnings

Looking for Group

November through January has historically been a heavy romance season for me, and Looking for Group definitely jumpstarted that process. It was a bit of an impulse buy. Alexis Hall has been hit or miss for me, but the nerdy vibes of a video-game focused romance caught my eye. Also, the cover art is gorgeous (though inaccurate to the point of infuriating me. The whole schtick is that the love interest hates high elves and only plays dark elves … so why is a high elf on the cover? Also the humans are above the wrong characters). ANYWAYS. This book won me over by successfully executing romance plotlines with realistic characters and pacing, which I really enjoyed. If anyone else has good recs for other down-to-earth romances, I’m all ears!

The Premise:
Drew is a pretty big nerd. He’s one of the strongest tanks in the MMORPG Heroes of Legend, but when his competitive guild gives a valuable loot drop to someone who will barely use it instead of him, he ragequits. To try and find the joy in the game again, he joins a casual (but skilled) guild, where he meets Solaris. He quickly starts to fall for her, until she turns out to be a he, and Drew has a bit of a crisis. Add onto that his inability to manage pressure from his friends and issues expressing himself without being a big of a jerk, and Drew is on track to potentially ruin something beautiful before its even begun.

Read if Looking For: nerdy characters, realistic conflict resolutions and relationship development, bisexual awakening storylines

Avoid if you Dislike: video game chat dialogue, extensive descriptions of MMORPG gameplay, meet-cute, physically tame romances