Kissing in America

Like Eva, the heroine of this book, I started reading romance novels at age 14, and at age 16 I had a brief relationship with a boy I met at our school's Model UN who lived 250 miles away. I thought we had found true love and that he could save me from my loneliness. He thought we had had a fun few days and that it was silly at our age to try to start something long-distance.

All of that background is to say that I could totally and painfully identify with Eva and the hopes she pinned on her relationship with Will, although the hole she was trying to fill was much deeper than mine. I thought the issues Eva encountered and the lessons she learned on her road trip to see Will again were realistic and interesting. And the final scenes set in California were hilarious, heartbreaking and hopeful.

Rabb's teenage characters are genuine and believable, which is what makes her portrayal of romance novels so bafflingly annoying. Has she ever actually read one? The fake examples she uses are completely absurd, full of purple prose that any decent romance novelist would eschew. She could have made her point about Eva escaping into romance novels without tearing down the entire genre.

The book loses half a star for dissing the romance novels I still love to read (although I have a much more realistic view of them almost 40 years later), but it regains it for the strong friendship between Eva and her best friend Annie, and the complex but loving relationship between Eva and her mother.

Ms. Rabb, let me know if you want a recommendation for some actual romance novels that have nary a “man-root” mention in them.