14 Jan 2026 2 min read Blog

Review for The Observer: In Love With Love by Ella Risbridger

I have a new review out in the Observer, of In Love With Love: The Persistence and Joy of Romantic Fiction by Ella Risbridger:

I liked this book and it would definitely be an excellent reference work if you're newish to reading romance. The tone becomes a bit self-consciously quirky in places, but not so often that it is distracting.

Here's an extract from my review:

"Risbridger's knowledge of this type of fiction is both broad and deep. She hits all the expected subjects: the ever-evolving appeal of Pride and Prejudice; the global phenomenon of Fifty Shades of Grey; the endless fascination of fairytales and especially Prince Charming; the enduring, prolific powerhouse that is Mills & Boon. But she is well versed enough to go beyond the obvious. The connections she makes between genre stalwarts, literary greats and newer trends are delightful. Mr Darcy has correspondences with the creature of Beauty and the Beast and with the "grumpy hot billionaire" protagonists who brood at us from Kindle Unlimited covers. Fifty Shades of Grey is a partly epistolary novel like Frankenstein or Les Liaisons Dangereuses because its central couple are continually exchanging text messages and emails that are printed in full. A Prince Charming can be a science professor in late 1930s Vienna or Peter Wimsey in a golden age detective novel by Dorothy L Sayers, or even a blue alien with some exciting extra bits in his loincloth in the hugely popular recent series Ice Planet Barbarians. In fact, the chief joy of In Love With Love is that the reader will come out of it with a long and varied list of other books to read."

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