12 March 2010

Teen Romance Novels: More Than A Love Story

The most commonly held perception in the minds of an average person when it concerns typical romance novels is that they deal with men and women in various stages of undress who cavort and play and find their way through many impediments and then find everlasting love in the final chapter of the romance novel. In fact, even covers of teen romance novels will display men and women tightly embracing them accompanied by choice quotes from the novel that help arouse the interest of buyers and which leads them to draw such conclusions.

Negative Impression

For someone who has never read a romance novel, let alone a teen romance novel, the impression gained from viewing the covers of romance novels would veer towards the negative and perhaps even lead to believing that such novels are all about sexual encounters rather than good and clean romance.

Another common perception about teen romance novels is that women play a subordinate role to that of the man and this notion stems from the fact that men are seen embracing women who seem to have a very vulnerable persona what with swooning in the arms of the hero and having part of their dresses falling off the shoulders.

Though teenagers do not form the majority of romance novel readers, they do form a majority of readers of teen romance novels and it is therefore necessary that the novels that they read help benefit them by making them feel more pleasant and also lead to an improvement in their vocabulary and even better communication skills.

If teen romance novels help the young readers improve themselves, such novels can be considered as valuable reading and will make for useful reading material. However, teen romance novels should not be considered as self-help teaching manuals because they simply are stories that help project the author’s emotion filled shadow.

The demand for teen romance novels continues to grow mainly because the content gives the young reader a new reason to hope for a better life and it also allows them to celebrate as well as appreciate a life filled with hope and romance. Essentially, good teen romance novels are also known for being light reading material and there is almost always a happy ending that leaves the teenaged reader feeling pleasant and perhaps even enriched by the experience.

Young teenagers also find more motivation to read a teen romance novel from their own personal lives and finding love at that tender age drives them into finding out about how true love is achieved by fictional characters. In fact, by reading a good teen romance novel, a young impressionable mind can also get to learn about how to romance.

The bottom line is that teen romance novels need to contain content that goes beyond allowing young impressionable minds to escape from everyday life and should provide new knowledge and also teach young teenagers the proper values in life.