First synopsis: “Ike Graham, editor of a New York newspaper, learns of the case of Maggie, a young woman who lives in a rural area of Maryland and has a strange habit of running away from the altar just before getting married. Intrigued, Ike writes a column about the young woman’s case, without foreseeing Maggie’s anger and the chain of entanglements that will ensue. Second summary: “One day Magnus Sigge, baker and mayor of the town of Sandbergen, finds an unconscious woman in the sand while fishing. When she wakes up, she finds that she remembers nothing about herself or her past. While he waits for her to recover, Magnus offers her a job at his bakery and gives her a name: Lucia.” Third Summary: “Lina Solavita has just moved to Knockemout and is Nash’s new neighbor. She’s smart and sexy and the only one who sees the shadows the police chief hides. Lina doesn’t like personal contact, but for some reason Nash’s touch is different. He notices it too. It’s a shame Lina has secrets of her own and if Nash finds out the real reason she’s in town, he won’t forgive her. One of them corresponds A Movie the Hollywood with two big stars, another a romantic novel and one more thing a German television film.
For those who cannot assign each summary to its genre, you will find the answers here. The first is the summary of The runaway bride, a 1999 film directed by Garry Marshall and starring Richard Gere and Julia Roberts. The second summarizes the argument of The magic of sand mountains, a German television film of the saga by Inga Lindström (pseudonym of the writer Christiane Sadlo), which is broadcast on weekends and is summarized under the term “afternoon film”. And what remains is the plot of the novel Things we hide from the lightfrom Lucy Score which the Chic publishing house has just published in Spain, translated by Sonia Tanco. A book that meets all the requirements of the classic and normative romance novel, but is called “Small Town Romance”, which means it takes place in a small town, usually based in the United States. This type of book has had the greatest success so far, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, driven by the recommendations of Bookmaker (TikTok users who prescribe readings) Influencer. Now they are landing on the Spanish-speaking market.
Eva Lopez She is one of those book writers who is triumphing on the Chinese social network. Her profile @evayloslibros has 51,400 followers and her videos have reached almost two million likes. An expert in “fantasy, romance and thrillers,” as her TikTok description puts it, she tells El Periódico de España of the group Prensa Ibérica that “Small Town Romance” (henceforth STR) is “a metaphor.” . “in the Anglo-Saxon meaning of this word, that is, “an element or theme that is usually repeated within a genre and its subgenres (in this case within the romance genre).”
In any case, Eva López came to STR from Booktook, the literary community to which she herself belongs. “Right now are my favorites Archer’s voicefrom the author Mia Sheridan and the books of Elsie Silver which the Pàmies publishing house has just translated into Spanish and already published Win at all costs and on November 6th he published the next, Win to the limit“. Accordingly Elena Rodríguez, editor of Chic Editorial, this theme triumphs because it shows that there is life beyond the big cities where romantic novels used to be set. “There are loves and love stories worth telling that are set in outskirts or small towns, which adds a special charm to the storylines,” he claims. Identification with the heroine of the story is another key to STR’s success. “It’s easier to identify with a protagonist who lives in a small town, near the boy or man she’s interested in, who she meets at the grocery store, at the laundry, or at work,” she says . It is the concept of the “girl next door” (the neighbor, an ordinary girl) that is so exploited in advertising or in the fiction of cisgender heterosexual men, but applied to the opposite sex.
The LGTBI community is not very well represented in these titles. Although a quick Google search brings up lists of STR books with non-heterosexual characters, The bestsellers are normative in every way: both in the sexual orientation of the characters and in their physique (they are very descriptive) or the archetypes they represent. In fact, the storylines are so predictable that you can guess what’s going to happen in the first chapter, but this is more than just a problem, it’s an advantage for the reader. As Eva López says, “They are reads that I know I will enjoy because I like them and they are very predictable.” Some people might think that a predictable story means it’s not good, but I think the opposite. For me, predictability is synonymous with security“.
This feeling of calm is not far from what is caused by the so-called “comfort series”. those audiovisual creations in which the audience seeks refuge when they want to escape reality with a friendly fiction without surprises, because they have seen them a thousand times. Standard Friends, Modern family or course, Gilmore Girls which also happens to be set in a charming small American town. The scripts of Amy Sherman Palladino They are far from STR romance novels, but the infatuation of the neighbor and the dynamics of everyday life in a small town are also present. “The STR trope isn’t just limited to books,” says Eva López. “In fact, many have an audiovisual adaptation. For example, several of Nicholas Sparks: Noah’s diary, A refuge, The best of me, The last song O The longest journey“, lists the Booktoker.
The people’s queen
However, it won’t come close to the monstrous sales figures of the owner and romantic Danielle Steel (more than 500 million copies shipped), Lucy Score accumulates her fortune step by step. He achieved fame with more than twenty published titles the first book in his Knockemout trilogy Things we never leave behindwhich represented a real revolution in Tiktok. The book reached number one on the bestseller list. The New York Times and to the highest positions in the The Wall Street Journal j USA today. “I’m not going to lie, I read this book because I saw that everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, read it. Social networks, especially TikTok, have made this book visible and with more than 61.8 million views under the hashtag #ThingsWeNeverGotOver on TikTok, it continues to reach all parts of the world,” wrote literary blogger Silvana Reyes on the popular website. Book Riot.
Score began his career by self-publishing his books on Amazon. The first was titled Cocktails at seven, a short novel that only sold 35 copies. As he told in one interview In The Washington PostFaced with this result, he was on the verge of throwing in the towel and looking for “a real job.” But one day she received an email from another freelance writer that changed the course of her career. “Your brother shared a link to your book on a forum, I downloaded it and read it. I really want it. I run a small publishing label. “Would you be willing to rewrite it as a long novel and let me publish it?” I said in the email. As with the works he signs, what happened next will not surprise him (to the delight of his readers).
The Chic publishing house has so far published the first two titles in its successful trilogy, Things we never leave behind j Things we hide from the light, and she plans to release the third in 2024. “Her books are addictive, fun, brilliant, and Lucy Score has managed to appeal to a very wide (though not exclusively) female audience.” It has readers in their 20s and 50s., and when an author of such a specific genre appeals to such a wide readership, it is something wonderful,” explains Elena Rodríguez. These titles run more than 500 pages, which might put some readers off, but the publisher insists there is no reason to be intimidated. “I have a friend who doesn’t read novels, she only reads manga, and I gave her as a gift Things we never leave behind that he should read it, even though he didn’t know if he would read it. Well, it took two days and he asked me for weeks when we were going to publish the second book in the series. “Reaching readers outside of your own genre is something extraordinary that only a few authors manage to do,” he says.
Eva López has not yet entered the Score universe, although she plans to do so soon. For now, he recommends starting with Mia Sheridan and her novel in STR Archer’s voice. “In this book, Bree flees the city and moves to the city of Pelion [situado en el estado norteamericano de Maine] to escape trauma from his past. There he meets Archer Hale, a young man who cannot speak due to an accident he suffered as a child and whom the entire town ignores. Bree and Archer are two people who help each other and fall in love in the process. “It’s a beautiful STR,” he says.
There are also authors in Spain who have integrated this theme into their romance novels. Quotes from Elena Rodriguez Carmen Sereno and his book Nobody dies in Wellington, published by his publisher. “Carmen is an extraordinary author and her books, They not only have exciting storylines, but also locations that magically transport you“, he comments. Also take the opportunity to mention two other international Chic authors: “Brittainy Cherry and her series The Elements o Ilsa Madden-Mills con You are not my Romeo“. Romantic closeness-love.
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