Welcome to the round up for Romance, Romantic Suspense and Erotica for 2013.

Whilst we dropped the ball a little during 2013 given that we didn’t have very many monthly round ups for this genre,  the participants in the challenge certainly represented the genre well. There were more than 240 reviews that were added to the challenge. Those 240 reviews covered 165 different books by 106 different authors. Very impressive.

The Girl in the Hard Hat by Loretta Hill (published by Random House)

HalfMoonBayYoung

The individual books that received the most reviews were Half Moon Bay by Helene Young and The Girl in the Hard Hat which were both reviewed 8 times, and even more importantly, reviewed pretty much universally positively as well.

outbackdreams-johns

The author who was reviewed most was Rachael Johns who was reviewed an amazing 16 times for 5 different titles from her earliest novels through to her latest releases.

When I look at the various different types of romance,  it is clear that contemporary romance has had yet another strong year, especially those with rural themes, something that is reflected with our most reviewed books and author and has been a strong trend for a couple of years now. Historical romance was well represented with some of the familiar names like Anna Campbell and Anne Gracie as well as a few lesser known names being given their chance to shine. There weren’t too many  paranormal romances reviewed. There were also relatively few erotica titles reviewed, so perhaps we should put the challenge out there to try to get some more reviews in that particularly category!

One other interesting things that became clear from the statistics is the impact that the relatively new digital first imprints like Escape, Destiny, Random Romance etc. These particular books are attracting a fair audience amongst our reviewers with over 70 books being reviewed over the course of the year. Some of those books have gone on to be print books, but most of them are attracting those readers who like to read electronically. It is interesting to contemplate what impact these kinds of books will make in the future especially given that so many of those books are not only by Australian women but also telling stories that are predominantly set in Australia featuring Australian characters rather than having to adapt to other locations! Some of those books are also selling well in overseas markets. Exciting times.

I mentioned at the beginning of the post that we hadn’t done particularly well in our recaps in 2013 but we have a plan so expect regular coverage of the romance genre during the upcoming year!

Thanks to everyone who contributed a review for this category during the 2013 challenge. I am really looking forward to seeing what romance gems the readers of romance unearth this year as part of the challenge.

As always you can find more of the romance reviews at any time by clicking on the various Weebly pages

Romance Weebly 2012

Romance Weebly January to June 2013

Romance Weebly July to December 2013

Romance Weebly 2014

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Marg has long been an avid reader of all genres, with the most books read being in the romance genre. Marg has been blogging about all different genres and other things at Adventures of an Intrepid Reader for more than 8 years. You can tweet to her @margreads.