Discussion Challenge: When I Feared Romance

As I was wrapping up my last post I started remembering a time when I didn't like romance in my books. I had had some bad experiences with picking up a book I thought was light on romance and it ended up being overkill on it. It basically made me fear to ever pick up a book from the romance shelves ever again, because I pretty much thought that was what all the books would be like.

When I Feared Romance

I can't remember the book that I read specifically. But it was a vampire romance book, but I thought maybe there's not that much romance/sex in it. Well, I was wrong. There was a good guy and a bad guy. Both wanted to have sex with the heroine. I swear the bad guy told her he wanted to f*** at least three times on one page! Granted, I don't really remember how many times it was. But he went on and on about it! Then the heroine would rather have sex with the other guy because, obviously, he was the good guy! But she didn't know him any better than the bad guy.

Needless to say I was most displeased at the end of the book. I pretty much swore to never buy a book from the romance section again after that. I stuck to my other books that I was getting into, like the Weather Warderns series, The Hollows series, and The Southern Vampire Mystery series. Yes they had romance too, they had maybe 1 or 2 sex scenes, usually there would be 2 if it was Charlaine Harris's books! However, I was able to read through those easily enough because the sex was just something that happened. It wasn't really plot related, which I felt like it was in that other book.

Then I decided to give Maria V. Snyder's Poison Study a try, since Amazon recommended me Magic Study and not Poison Study (eyeroll). I found the book in the romance section and was a tad hesitant, but thought it's more fantasy related than anything. So I bought it anyway, and as we all know, I LOVED IT!

The next time I took a risk, I felt like it was a bigger one. It was for Stray by Rachel Vincent. We had a storyline that sounded really good, more mystery like and needing to hunt down bad guys. Some of my already favorite authors were quoted on the cover praising the book, so I thought okay, I will take the risk and buy it! And again, as we already know, I loved that one too! 

I guess since I was still a teenager when I crossed over to the "adult" books, since I found a severe lack of Paranormal YA titles back then (I call those the Dark Days), I was hoping I would find reads like the few Paranormal YA books that I did read. Romance was a mild theme if anything. Obviously there wasn't any sex in those books back then. I wanted a read that had action and a good storyline! One where the characters left the bedroom more often than not.

Again, these are the things I can remember from my teen mind back then. I still find that I prefer the romance not being the focus of the story, but I do like having romance in the books! Though I can say I feel more embarrassed when reading a sex scene in public no matter what book I'm reading! I feel like other people just KNOW what I'm reading in that moment! Lol!

So I'll ask you guys again, how do you feel about romance in your books? Are you romance readers or more the type that doesn't want the straight up romance story? When did you realize you did or didn't like romance in your reads? I struggle to phrase my question right since my rambling kind of went all over the place! LOL!