Hello everyone and welcome to my first ever (and maybe only) GENRE SHOWDOWN. In the right corner, we have contemporary romance and in the left, we have historical romance! And today we’re going to find out which genre I like better.
I’ve been working on this post since March, so I’m very excited to be able to share it with you today and let’s just jump straight into it.
Pre-Reading Hypothesis
My gut feeling is that historical romance is still going to be my favourite. It was the one that got me into romance in the first place so it holds a special place in my heart. At the same time, I’ve been realllllly enjoying contemporary romance lately so maybe it’ll be the winner.
How This Will Work
My idea was to originally read eight books from each genre and then take an average star rating at the end and compare the two. I picked a mix of authors I’d read before and new-to-me ones so that it would give me a chance to try some new things along the way. However, I made through six books in each genre and had a very clear winner so I decided to just call it there.
The Books
Contemporary: The Bromance Book Club by Lyssa Kay Adams // Ever After Always by Chloe Liese // All the Feels by Olivia Dade // All Rhodes Lead Here by Mariana Zapata // Take A Hint, Dani Brown by Talia Hibbert // Truth or Beard by Penny Reid
Historical: The Queer Principles of Kit Webb // The Companion by E.E Ottoman // A Rogue to Remember by Emily Sullivan // Scoundrel of My Heart by Lorraine Heath // The Duke Heist by Erica Ridley // West End Earl by Bethany Bennett
The Results
First up, if you’re interested in seeing the mini-reviews I wrote for any of these, you can click on the title and it’ll take you there. However, I don’t have any reviews of the DNFed books.
But wow, this did not go how I was expecting at all.
Out of the six contemporaries, my lowest rating was a 3.5 for Truth or Beard and The Bromance Book Club and two 4.5 for All the Feels and All Rhodes Lead Here.
But with historical, my only rating 4-star book was The Duke Heist and I DNFed three of the others. I honestly had a terrible time reading the majority of these which is why it took me so long to get this post together.
So with that said, I think it’s pretty obvious that I’m enjoying contemporary romance a lot more these days. In fact, this post has convinced me to take a step back from historical romance for a little while so that I don’t end up falling completely out of love with the genre.
But for now, that’s all for today! Are you more of a contemporary or historical romance reader? Have you read any of these? Let me know down below!
Earl Grey Books 