Perhaps, for romance, you could give some classics, like Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm a try?

One thought — maybe totally incorrect — is that most romance novels are bought by people who don;t buy that many of them, and in that case the titles works as a good shorthand. then for the rest of us “discerning” readers… we know not to judge a book by the title, so we’ll buy it if it looks interesting, although we have to work harder to see if it is.

I keep coming back to this disjunct between our online criticism of titles and covers, and the uniform lockstep insistence on them by every single publisher in the genre for every single book. Since I am just a romance reader, and they are in the business, I can’t help but wonder if they know what they are doing — sales wise– even if I hate it.

I switched it up with a nice mystery and am feeling back in the game. But, man, that was a bad spell.

I think I reached a level of genre exhaustion a while back with urban fantasy (adult UF). I’ve read a LOT, and after a while I started to feel a little burnt out on the tough-but-vulnerable protagonist and the love triangles, and the grumpy-but-morally-upstanding police detective that the main character has to deal with re. paranormal crimes… I mean, this stuff is done well – often brilliantly – but I think I read too much.

That’s why I like things that are a little different in UF these days. Like Vicki Pettersson’s books and Devon Monk’s.

If you are looking at something “off the wall”, even though they are paranormal, the Daywatch, Nightwatch, etc. (there are 4 books now) are good if you haven’t already read them-the author is Russian so you have to stick with it but once you get the “language” of the book, they are great.