To me, romance and suspense go hand in hand. What's more suspenseful than wondering how two wonderful people can manage to get together in spite of the world going crazy around them?
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I think suspense is a big thing.
Suspense arises naturally from good writing - it's not a spice to be added separately.
Whether labeled as such or not, I think every book I've ever written has been, more or less, a romantic suspense. I have always put tremendous effort into making each book a page turner: The harder it is for the reader to put it down, the better I've done my job.
There's a lot of talk about the positive aspects of love. We as a society downplay the danger, the anxiety, and the disappointment. We romanticize romance.
I still read romance, and I read suspense. I read them both. And part of it is, I like stories with strong characters, and I like stories where there's closure at the end. And I like stories where there's hope. That's a kind of empowerment. I think romance novels are very empowering, and I think suspense novels are, too.
The thing about relationships is, the stronger they get, the more rapidly the realm of romance starts to overlap with the domestic.
In suspense novels even subplots about relationships have to have conflict.
I'm certain that most couples expect to find intimacy in marriage, but it somehow eludes them.
Romance is tempestuous. Love is calm.
In romance, we feel the need to zoom in and expound on our partner's foibles in intimate detail; in friendship, we tend to do the opposite, avoiding confrontation through fear, lethargy or both.