As we begin creating the survey we’ll use to make a new AAR Top 100 list (2024), I thought we’d begin by assessing, in a survey, what current novels on the list readers think should stay and which should go.
We’ve done this survey seven times since 1998. You can see all the results as well as analyses here.
Click HERE to fill out the survey or use the embedded one below.
Create your own user feedback survey Yeah, yeah, I know. This is not a romance topic. BUT. I am on vacation with Dr. Feelgood and we spent some time today in the British Museum where we goggled again at the Elgin Marbles. (We’re headed to Greece on Friday–I look forward to seeing Greece’s claim to the artifacts evinced there.) Tonight, we…
I just reread Madeline Hunter’s marvelous By Possession. (It, like all her Medievals, is no longer available as an ebook, something I hope changes.) I loved the immersion in a time so very different than our own. I’d like to read more set in that era. What is your favorite Medieval romance? Why? And what…
We’re more than halfway through 2024–where DOES the time go? Thus far, AAR reviewers have designated 59 books (out of 178 reviewed) as DIKs. Two have received the rare grade of A+: Bridesmaid for Hire by Megan Quinn and The Perfect Find by Tia Williams. (Not all of the books we’ve reviewed have been romances.)…
We’re coming up on the holiday stretch: Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, the Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and the New Year. (Let me know if I’ve missed one you celebrate, please.) This constraints of this year–which I think of as the year which must not be named–means many of us will not spend these in the ways that we…
Today’s ask is inspired by a recent New York Times article about something many readers probably don’t think much about: how libraries pay for ebooks. Several states, including Connecticut and New Jersey, are trying to pass laws that would limit how much publishers can charge libraries for digital books. The idea is to make it…
In 2010, when I’d fallen deep deep deep into the wonderful world of romance novels (as an adult), my husband got curious. “What do you love about them?” he asked. “To begin with, everything,” I answered. As I read more, he commented on how happy I was when I finished a book I’d especially enjoyed….
I have one suggestion, which was discussed here before, I believe:
I would suggest a cutoff date.
Then, of course, we would need a title change to best romances published in the last 10-15-20 years or some such. To make it clear that this is what we are doing.
But I have no idea how much traction this idea has, and I am ok with the idea of just continuing as is.
It’s a pretty big tradition. I guess I don’t understand what we are afraid of–readers like what readers like. That’s all the poll reflects.
I suspect there will be lots of new books readers pick–this poll here is just to begin to create an initial list.
Plus then you wouldn’t have any of the classics like Jane Eyre or Pride and Prejudice or Georgette Heyer, who people are still actively reading and loving. If books of the 21st century are really more popular then they’ll get the most votes and push off some of the oldies.
I suspect that the new Top 100 will be at least 25% books published in the past ten years which, given how resilient many of the novels on this list have been, seems reasonable.
Agree 100%. I may not love all of the books written in recent years (although there are a few that stick out) but when I go to the historical romance subreddit, a lot of the books that get discussed are recent ones that came out after your 2018 list. And in contemporaries, there are just so. many. books that I wonder how many of the newer readers are exploring authors like SEP or Julie James who were very present in 2018. It’ll be an interesting list for sure!
We lost some comments–sorry!
Not just here . . . my comment on a recent review is also gone.
Yes. We lost all the comments from yesterday.
First, thank you all for having done all this in the past. It must have been a huge effort, even with the help of a computer..
I used to love to read what people had selected, as it gave me great suggestions.
I love its time mixture–from “Jane Eyre” to the most recent books in 2013 and am very interested to see what books will be in the updat. Sadly, I suspect that so many of these titles are unknown now to the general romance reader, but most of them are still terrific romances. Yes, some of them are totally outdated, but I believe most of them still hold up, and not just for an historical interest–“Oh, look at what people loved in the past. How COULD they?”. I hope that people will see some of these titles and buy and read them, today, so they endure.
We have discussed before the difference between “Best” and “favorites” and I will say it is hard to differentiate when it comes to genre fiction. I don’t know that there are any quantifiable elements that make a “best” romance and I would argue that some with the greatest impact on the market aren’t necessarily “best” books. For example, Kathleen Woodiwiss and Johanna Lindsey heavily impacted the market, but are they really the best romances we could recommend to someone? But they have a quantifiable (impact) that would make them eligible for such a list that better books don’t. What about the Vampire trend which so dominated the early nones? Is JR Ward really the best of those or just the most popular, and what criteria would we use to determine that?
As far as new versus old, even the AFI has to update its list because the 100 best movies will forever change based on what is released. Old movies have to make way for the new, and I would argue that Schindler’s List (1993) deserves to be valued and to have replaced whatever it replaced.
So just my .02 but I am not sure there is any way to distinguish between best and favorite for this genre. We could, if we feel energetic enough, try to do a reviewer’s choice versus fan/reader choice, but I wonder how different it would be? I’ve been a reader here much longer than a reviewer, and my choices are pretty much reflected on the current list.
I think it’s really just what readers like. Nothing more or nothing less.
Reviewers always have their own thing which is good. But I don’t think we, as reviewers here at AAR, would agree on a top 10! So, I’m cool with sticking with what the Top 100 has always been–what readers who cared enough to vote choose.
100% agree.
I only started reading romance novels about 4 years ago, and I found the AAR Top 100 helpful in getting me started. I delved into the backlists for authors like Mary Balogh, Tessa Dare, Lisa Kleypas, Julia Quinn, Joanna Bourne, etc. I really appreciated having that starting point, and it did not matter to me whether it was readers’ favorites list or someone’s definition of the “best.” All lists of this kind are subjective, and all are subject to debate, as Maggie noted below. I just wanted a list to give me some suggestions of books people enjoyed, and it served that purpose admirably. Now I’m looking forward to participating in the voting and seeing what’s on the next one. Thanks for making it a priority and putting in the work, Dabney!
Oh how good to know.
This actually relieves all my concerns!! Than you for your story.
I read romance since about 1976, starting with HPs as a not quite teen, and I was worried that this list might be a dusty melancholic look back of long term lovers of the genre.
If it still helps new readers to discover good books, then I am all fine with it, just as it is.
Gosh, I bet you’ve read most of the books on this list! It would be fun to know who on AAR has read most of the books on the list. Anyone read more than 80? More than 90???
That is a fun question!
Myself, I tried most of the authors. At some point.
But enjoyable reading is so personal, and so subjective, some very big names just do not work for me at all, for a fun read, even though there is nothing wrong with the books on any objective scale.
A very brief example – I did not like a few mega authors here, like
Julia Quinn- read one and did not continue,
Eloisa James people irritate me,
Sarah McLean – if she wrote a fantasy world, I would love her, but her use of a historical time period makes me crazy when I read it,
Zapata was very nice once, but her slow burn feels too YA, similar and slow for me in other samples I tried,
I loved JR Ward until book 6, cannot read her anymore, repetitive, language lost its appeal, relationship arc grew boring …
So I guess there is near no one on the list I did not at least sample but I have read around half of it.
Like you Lieselotte, I’ve tried at least one title for most of the authors who’ve appeared. Some work for me, others don’t. I still reference these lists when I’m looking for something new to try.
I’m excited to have a new list because I think it will have book on it I haven’t read!
I have read 78!
Impressive! I only have 30, but that’s ok. I prefer contemporaries now, and that list helped me figure it out.
I read only historicals, overall, for the first ten years I came back to romance and this list is HR heavy!
67!
I just counted and I’m at 49. It’s an interesting exercise and there are definitely a number on there where I stopped and thought, “why haven’t I read that?”
I’ve read about 70 titles on each year’s list. But that has at least as much to do with the same titles appearing from poll to poll as anything else, so it isn’t as impressive as it sounds. I’ve read 51 on the 1998 list (my lowest year) and 83 (my highest) on the 2013 list.
I haven’t read most of the books on the top 100 so I just chose my favourites. Echoing BeckyK’s point, AAR reviews have been a valuable resource for determining what books to read or skip. Well done and thank you to everyone involved in making it so. Also shout out to Caz whose review on goodreads (I forget what book it was) led me here first time around
Thanks so much! It’s always nice to know I’m not shouting into a vacuum 🙂
I went through and counted – I’ve read fewer than half the books on the first list (42), and of those, I picked under 20 I think should be on the list, going by which ones are or have been DIKs as in books I’ve liked enough to re-read.
And there are some books on there – for example, KJ Charles’ A Gentleman’s Position – that I didn’t vote for simply because I don’t think it’s one of the author’s “best” books (and let’s face it, she always sets a very high bar), and there are other authors with books on the list I don’t think are their “best”. In KJC’s case, An Unnatural Vice and Think of England should be on there, but aren’t.
I’ve read even fewer than you. I only picked a few from the list. About KJ Charles’ books– I’d keep A Seditious Affair, I still think it’s one of her best. I chose almost no m/f historical romances because even the ones I’ve read and enjoyed on the list I didn’t give an A to. My favorite Loretta Chase books aren’t on the list, for example.
I also have to consider if I listen to the book on audio and how the narration impacted my perception of the book. Kate Reading’s narration on (anything really but…) A Dangerous Kind of Lady by Mia Vincy was so amazing, for example. I can’t even imagine the book without it. I’d probably still have given it an A, but would it have had the same impact?
I still worry the nostalgic favorites that few are ever going to reread will take the place of newer books Like Mia Vincy’s, but I guess that’s the way it goes.
Since fewer people read LGBTQ romances, some of the best romances being written today (in my opinion, as far as quality of the story and the writing) are probably not going to see the light of day on the list–books like Nicky James’ Promises of Forever, Brair Prescott’s Until You, or We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian. I do hope we get some decent DEI rep on the list. Having a lot of older romances packing the list makes diversity a bit more challenging.
Dabney, in the write-up on the 2013 list, you mention doing blog posts on the books that finished 101-200 but I couldn’t find that anywhere. Did that actually happen?
(I am in no way trying to put more work on your plate, but it would be interesting to see what finishes in the Top 200 or even Top 500)
I don’t know. It’s in what I think of as vintage AAR. I’ll see if it’s easy to find.
I’ve been through each Top 100 list over the years. The difference from one year to the next is interesting. In the first 2-3 years there were titles that appeared, disappeared and came back – but they are rare (e.g. Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught is on every list except 2004, Venetia appears in 2000, 2004, 2007 and 2013 but not 2010 or 2018). For the most part, enduring titles stay from list to list (e.g. A Kingdom of Dreams by Judith McNaught appears in 1998 and stays until 2013; Pride and Prejudice has been on every list from 1998 – 2018).
It is easy to spot authors who enjoyed a spurt of popularity: JR Ward has 4 books from the Black Dagger series on the list in 2007 and they stay until 2013, when they’ve tapered off to two and only one in 2018. Suzanne Brockmann had 7 or 8 eight titles on 2004’s list but only three by 2007. There are a handful of authors who’ve made a Top 100 List only once (e.g. Lynn Kurland).
Obviously all 100 titles were “new” in 1998, the first year the poll was conducted. A quick manual count of “new to the list” titles are as follows:
1998 – 100 titles
2000 – 46 new titles (I think readers were getting used to the idea of nominating)
2004 – 36 new titles
2007 – 29 new titles
2010 – 21 new titles
2013 – 18 new titles
2018 – 33 new titles
Also, FTW, the blog post about the 1998 list said AAR readers were asked to nominate their favorite (not “best”) romances.
Interesting. Thanks!
Ah – that last sentence sums up an important point for me personally, because I think there’s a difference between “best” and “favourite”. I have favourites that I can see have technical problems, for instance, which makes them books I wouldn’t necessarily recommend unreservedly. To me, “best” means taking a more critical approach, but then those are distinctions that not everyone might make; having a reviewer hat on when reading a lot of the time means that I do.
As I said in one of the comments that was lost over the weekend, we had a debate a few months back about what the poll should be and that whatever it is should be reflected in the title. As Dabney says below, it’s a poll of what readers like, so calling it The Top 100 Favourite Romances would make sense.
Well, 1998 was a long time ago. I think we’ll stick with what it’s been called for the past almost quarter century!!
And who’s to say readers don’t know best?
I know you’re probably making a joke here, but no one is saying that.
Agree with you Caz: Favorite is different than best. I think we just need to continue to remind ourselves when the polling comes around that the list was always about creating a list of readers’ favorites (at that point in time).
The Top 100 lists also reflect the question and conversation Dabney posed recently about where are all the great NEW film favorites. . . creativity ebbs and flows. Some time periods are better than others for memorable titles – or at least titles that people want to watch over and over again. Hence the staying power of favorite films from the 1940s or 1980s – especially if people don’t feel like something significantly better has appeared to displace those favorites. It doesn’t mean nothing good has been enjoyed since, but what gets put on a list of favorites? It has to appeal to A LOT of people to eliminate something already in place.
OTOH, Dabney has a point about these lists in general. Books that become wildly popular, that appeal to a majority of AAR readers, do bump titles off the lists to make room for themselves. For example:
AAR’s list in 2004 saw the additions of Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie (published in 2004), More Than a Mistress by Mary Balogh (2000), See Jane Score (2003), Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh (2004), and A Summer To Remember by Mary Balogh (2002).
New to the Top 100 in 2007: Kleypas Wallflower series was published in 2005 and 2006 and several of those titles made the 2007 list. Also, Lord Perfect (2006) and Mr. Impossible (2005) by Loretta Chase.
New in 2010: The Madness of Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley (2009), Bound By Your Touch (2009) and The Duke of Shadows (2008) by Meredith Duran, and new titles by Joanna Bourne and Sherry Thomas.
New to the Top 100 in 2013: Joanna Bourne, Julie Anne Long, Cecelia Grant, and Sherry Thomas with one or more titles each.
New in 2018: Beard Science by Penny Reid (2016) (and it debuted almost in the Top 10 that year). Also, A Gentleman’s Position (2016) and A Seditious Affair (2015) by KJ Charles.
Of course, the interesting bit of data is what gets bumped and what gets to stay. Personally, I get why Pride and Prejudice has been on every list since 1998. But, personally, I don’t get Jane Eyre by Bronte or Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught, for example. Hence, Dabney’s two lists above. What do readers absolutely want to keep for consideration from the last list; and are there titles we want to remove from consideration?
BTW – There are other books and authors who appear on these same lists, from these same years – the examples above are just from my own personal reading related to Top 100 lists because that is what is in my reading logs. (I tag books with AAR Top 100 entries by the year in which they first appear, making the info above easy to find. But the logic holds, I think.)
So here are the current top 25 on the survey to keep:
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen, Classic Fiction, 1983
Devil in Winter, Lisa Kleypas, Historical Romance, 2006
Lord of Scoundrels, Loretta Chase, Historical Romance, 1995
The Spymaster’s Lady, Joanna Bourne, Historical Romance, 2008
What I Did for a Duke, Julie Anne Long, Historical Romance, 2011
Persuasion, Jane Austen, Classic Fiction, 2003
Slightly Dangerous, Mary Balogh, Historical Romance, 2005
Lord Perfect, Loretta Chase, Historical Romance, 2006
Act Like It, Lucy Parker, Contemporary Romance, 2015
Mr. Impossible, Loretta Chase, Historical Romance, 2005
The Duke of Shadows, Meredith Duran, Historical Romance, 2008
The Black Hawk, Joanna Bourne, Historical Romance, 2011
Flowers From the Storm, Laura Kinsale, Historical Romance, 2003
Bet Me, Jennifer Crusie, Contemporary Romance, 2004
The Madness of Lord Ian MacKenzie, Jennifer Ashley, Historical Romance, 2009
The Hating Game, Sally Thorne, Contemporary Romance, 2016
Jane Eyre, Charlotte Bronte, Classic Fiction, 2004
Outlander, Diana Gabaldon, Time Travel Romance, 1992
Ravished, Amanda Quick, Historical Romance, 1992
More than a Mistress, Mary Balogh, Historical Romance, 2001
Not Quite a Husband, Sherry Thomas, Historical Romance, 2009/06
The Rake, Mary Jo Putney, Historical Romance, 1998
Welcome to Temptation, Jennifer Crusie, Romantic Suspense, 2004
Devil’s Cub, Georgette Heyer, Historical Romance, 2003
Dreaming of You, Lisa Kleypas, Historical Romance, 1994
And here are the top 25 to dump:
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me, Mariana Zapata, Contemporary Romance, 2016
Kulti, Mariana Zapata, Contemporary Romance, 2015
Neanderthal Seeks Human, Penny Reid, Contemporary Romance, 2013
Ain’t She Sweet?, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Contemporary Romance
Nobody’s Baby But Mine, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Contemporary Romance, 1997
Dream a Little Dream, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Contemporary Romance, 1998
The Hating Game, Sally Thorne, Contemporary Romance, 2016
Outlander, Diana Gabaldon, Time Travel Romance, 1992
Almost Heaven, Judith McNaught, Historical Romance, 1991
Dark Lover, J.R. Ward, Vampire Romance, 2005
The Secret, Julie Garwood, Medieval Romance, 1992
The Duke and I, Julia Quinn, Historical Romance, 2000
Lover Awakened, J.R. Ward, Vampire Romance, 2009
It Had To Be You, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Contemporary Romance, 1994
Ransom, Julie Garwood, Medieval Romance, 1999
Beard Science, Penny Reid, Contemporary Romance, 2016
Romancing Mister Bridgerton, Julia Quinn, Historical Romance, 2002
Any Duchess Will Do, Tessa Dare, Historical Romance, 2013
The Duchess Deal, Tessa Dare, Historical Romance, 2017
A Hunger Like No Other, Kresley Cole, Paranormal Romance, 2006
Mackenzie’s Mountain, Linda Howard, Contemporary Romance, 2000
Mr. Perfect, Linda Howard, Contemporary Romance, 2001
Sea Swept, Nora Roberts, Contemporary Romance, 1998
Anyone But You, Jennifer Cruise, Series Romance, 1996
Blue Eyed Devil, Lisa Kleypas, Contemporary Romance, 2008
I do not see, by the way, using the dump info in shaping the survey. I just thought it would be fun to know!
Outlander and The Hating Game are on both list!
Goodness I’ve read 68 – and the irony is I don’t read as much straight romance as I used to – almost no historical at all. The list is definitely a product of its time and I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing.
Well, it’s also a product of our readership which is older–many of these are loved by those who have been reading romance for decades.
I hope there are enough AAR readers interested in authors and characters of color, as well as LGBTQ authors/characters, to get a few more diverse books on the list this time around.
We’ll see. I feel as if we cannot tell readers what they should love. We will certainly put lots of diverse books on the ballot and see how they do.