Title: Ride Into Romance

Author: Karen Black

Genre: Romance

When you have the courage to walk away from comfort and security, you find out what it means to live rather than just to exist, and to be loved because you’re you, and not someone’s idea of who you should be. Maggie Austin discovers all this and more in Karen Black’s Ride into Romance, a friends-to-lovers, feel-good love story set in the exciting world of horse-racing.

Romance, both on paper and in real-life, needs room to breathe. Maggie and the male lead character Johnny have a long history together, and it’s in those moments when that history is layered over the present so that it adds nuance and build-up to every interaction that this book really shines. The point of a romance novel, after all, is that even though readers already know there’s going to be a happy ending, and that the main characters are likely to end up with each other, it’s the steps the characters take to fight for that happy ending that makes reading romance novels so entertaining.

Maggie and Johnny’s romance is very much a product of the times. A usual criticism of the romance genre is its supposed misogynistic portrayal of female characters: the demure miss, the wilting flower in need of stable partner, and the princess in the tower waiting to be saved. The genre has evolved over the years, and that evolution is apparent in Maggie’s character development. Her arc practically screams “strong independent woman,” and that effect in this book cannot be overstated.

However, sometimes the need to portray the shifting dynamics within male-female relationships comes at the expense of creating good male characters. Either they’re portrayed as the token alpha male, as in the case of the main “villain” of this book, or they’re just not given as much opportunity to grow alongside their female counterparts, as in the case of Johnny. This bias against male characters, especially in heterosexual romance novels, doesn’t need to exist to underscore the rebranding of the romance genre to suit modern sensibilities; this genre more than any other needs to have strongly-written male characters. It’s not a love story without them, after all.

There were other plot elements added to the romance, probably to flesh the story out a bit more and give it more substance. The horseracing elements were a positive addition to the book. It gave the author an opportunity to play with various settings, all of which were well-crafted and grounding. The author’s attention to detail captured both the daily grind of working on a busy ranch, the seedy loneliness of a bar, and the equal parts tense and exhilarating atmosphere of a horse race.

However, there are times when there is beauty in simplicity. In the latter half of the book, the romance definitely took a backseat as the author tried to tie all the different elements together, and the book lost some of its momentum. By the time the book reached its inevitable conclusion, Karen Black managed to regain that momentum and delivered a solid ending, with a redemption arc added in for good measure. It only goes to show that just having all the necessary ingredients isn’t enough, you also have to know the right proportions for mixing them together to achieve some semblance of harmony and balance.

Ride Into Romance is the quintessential escapist read, with all the elements that make romance such an enduring giant in the literary genre. There is the push-pull, will-they-won’t-they dynamic, the expected angst, and all the feels to keep readers turning pages into the night. More importantly, just like any romance novel, this is a book anchored in hope, that even in this world where people have stopped believing in things like true love and forever, there is a place where we can believe, even if it’s just for the length of time it takes to read a book that love still conquers all and happy endings still exist.

This Editorial Review was written by the Book Review Directory staff. To receive a similarly honest, professional review for one of your own books, click here.