Category: Author’s Alley
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The Photograph Wall
Every year on their anniversary, they added one photograph to the hallway wall. Just one — chosen carefully, sometimes after genuine debate, meant to represent the entire year in a single frame. It had started accidentally. Their first anniversary, neither of them had planned anything elaborate, and Theo had simply printed a photo from a…
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The Understudy
He learned her job. Not formally — he had no reason to, no professional overlap, an entirely different field. But over six years of listening to her talk through cases at dinner, he’d absorbed enough of family law to occasionally, accurately, predict how a judge might rule. “You’d have made a decent lawyer,” Solange told…
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What is Romantasy? A Sassy Beginner’s Guide to the Hottest Trend in Fiction
Okay, bestie, look at me. If you’ve spent more than five minutes on social media lately, you’ve definitely seen people stressing out over fictional kingdoms, shadow daddies, and literal dragons. Welcome to the world of romantasy books—the glorious, completely addictive lovechild of high-stakes fantasy and unhinged, spicy romance. During Read-a-Romance Month this August, searches for…
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The Worry Stone
He kept a smooth gray stone in his pocket. Had for as long as she’d known him — and before that too, apparently, since childhood, a habit from a grandfather who’d given him the original and told him to rub it when his thoughts got too loud. Bea had thought it was sweet, slightly odd,…
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Red Flags vs. Green Flags: Ranking Our Ultimate Summer Book Boyfriends
Alright, bestie, pull up a chair and grab your iced matcha, because it’s time to have a very serious, completely unhinged intervention. We are officially in the final stretch of Read-a-Romance Month, and our Kindle highlights are getting out of hand. It’s time to talk about the fictional men who have been ruining our real-life…
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The Late Shift
She worked nights. Had for years, long before he came along, and she’d assumed any relationship would eventually buckle under the strange architecture of her schedule. Idris hadn’t buckled. He’d rearranged. He couldn’t change his own hours — a normal nine-to-five, immovable — but he’d quietly shifted everything else. Dinner became breakfast, eaten together at…
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Why the Fake Dating Trope Will Forever Hold the Romance Genre in a Chokehold
Alright, look. We need to talk about our collective obsession with couples who aren’t actually couples, but are totally couples. You know exactly what I’m talking about, bestie. The fake dating trope has a iron-clad grip on the romance book community, and honestly? We never want it to let go. With August being Read-a-Romance Month,…
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The Translation
Her mother didn’t speak English. He’d learned forty careful phrases before meeting her for the first time, written phonetically on his hand in pen because he was too nervous to trust his memory. Ingrid had warned him it wasn’t necessary. Her mother had lived in the country for thirty years; she managed fine with gestures…
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The Practice Run
He proposed badly the first time. Deliberately. Oskar had planned the real proposal for weeks — the right restaurant, the right ring, the right words rehearsed until they felt natural. But three days before, lying in bed, he’d had a sudden and specific fear: that the real moment would feel like a performance, too polished,…
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5 Romance Book Tropes You Absolutely Need to Binge This August
Let’s be real for a second, bestie. August is the official month of peak laziness, melting ice cream, and existential dread about summer ending. But more importantly? It is Read-a-Romance Month. If your beach bag doesn’t have at least one unhinged, page-turning contemporary romance stuffed inside it, are you even vacationing correctly? I know what…
Sonia M. Rompoti, MSc, Bsc 