It’s a new pink library: romance novels are exploding on the sales charts in Quebec. Books by Colleen Hoover, Danielle Steel and Julia Quinn propelled the genre by 53%, in literature, in the Gaspard 2023 report. On the sidelines of the Quebec International Book Fair, The duty examines, in a series of three articles, contemporary romance, which attracts many, many readers, women and girls. Second text.
The romance novel may be experiencing a resurgence in popularity in Quebec, but it is still the Anglo-Saxon bestsellers that steal the show. To win back the hearts of local readers, Quebec authors and publishing houses are increasingly seeking to move away from classic rose-water stories and chick lit.
“We’ve been doing the same thing for years, readers are getting tired of it. We have to take them elsewhere, we have to reinvent romance with our stories and our Quebec voices,” argues the director of Éditions Maison Rose, Rebecca Lecours.
In the top 10 best-selling romance books in the Gaspard 2023 report, the Americans Colleen Hoover, Danielle Steele, Julia Quinn and the British Hannah Grace take all the place. Only Quebecer Amélie Dubois managed to slip in with The time when… I gave way to an elephant (Publishers combined). If we examine the top 30, we find only two other authors from here: JoÈve Dupuis in 21e place with Unsupervised mothers, volume 3 (de Mortagne) and Catherine Bourgault in 26e position with 30 more days to hate you (JCL).
How can we explain this love fever for foreign novels? Why does Quebec romance arouse less thrills? In the opinion of readers consulted by The dutythere is a lack of diversification of sentimental stories here.
“I would take some new romance and some dark romance written and made in Quebec! » exclaims Élisabeth Desbiens, 36 years old, avid romance reader. “We have many authors of chick reads, here, but these are very down to earth stories, with mothers looking for love again. It’s not what I like,” she regrets, admitting to turning to foreign novels.
On the shelves of our bookstores, we find mainly Quebec novels with rose water or chick reads from here. On the one hand, there are these very flowery stories in which the protagonists overcome lots of obstacles before finding true love. A style popularized in the 1970s by Harlequin editions, but which, in the opinion of many, quickly becomes redundant.
On the other, there is the chick readspropelled in the 1990s by the successes of the type Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding, or Sex and the City, by Candace Bushnell. In this register, the main character is a modern woman who recounts the vagaries of singleness, divorce or motherhood, who goes through romantic or friendly conflicts, all with a lot of humor and self-deprecation. The quest for love is therefore relegated to the background, sometimes even non-existent.
Love differently
“We are a little late in Quebec. Sentimental literature is much more varied. There is an explosion of new genres in the United States and France,” says Rebecca Lecours of Éditions Maison Rose. She launched her publishing house in 2022 to offer a publishing space to romance authors who want to try something else in this niche. Since the mid-1990s, romance has been segmented into subgenres to meet the specific expectations of female readers. We find erotic romance, historical romance, romanticasyor even dark romance.
Published by Éditions de Mortagne, recognized for their Lime et citron collection, which includes around fifty novels by chick reads, we also seek to make more room for other types of love stories. “After a peak in popularity in 2020-2021, we feel we are running out of steam. I won’t say that we’ve covered Lime et citron, but we have to diversify into sentimental novels to stand out from the crowd,” recognizes the main editor, Marie-Eve Jeannotte.
To embody this renewal, Éditions de Mortagne are publishing classic, historical and also erotic romance this year for the very first time.
Even the Quebec authors of chick reads the most read seek to reinvent themselves today. “We get tired of the classic recipe. I avoid it in my books, I don’t like this predictability of the love quest and the obvious outcome,” confides Amélie Dubois, who signed the bestselling series. What is happening…
In his last series The time when…, she voluntarily moves away from the chick reads by offering comedy instead. She tells stories inspired by her travels, without necessarily talking about love.
Is the media’s fault?
In short, a wind of change is blowing over local romance, but will it be enough to bring local authors back to the top of the charts? Those involved in the field agree: the lack of visibility in the traditional media – which seem to shun this literary genre – is very detrimental to them.
“I almost never have interviews in the media and my books are never mentioned in the expected titles of the season. However, I have sold 600,000 books since the start of my career and I find myself in the Gaspard list,” laments Amélie Dubois.
“With the advent of the mass circulation press and the rise of industrial literature, the sentimental novel was downgraded, much more than other popular subgenres, such as detective or science fiction,” analyzes the sociologist Marie-Pier Luneau, who signs with Jean-Philippe Warren, Love like a novel. The sentimental novel in Quebec, from yesterday to today. “The fact that they are overwhelmingly aimed at women has strongly contributed to devaluing these novels, as if they were necessarily “dumb”,” she adds.
“It’s like telling my readers that they have no taste. It’s insulting, adds Amélie Dubois. […] If the public likes it, buys it and asks for more, it would be fun – and normal – for us to talk about it more, right? »
Tomorrow: the dark romancewhen the prince is not charming at all.