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Fewer teens are reading for fun these days than they were about a decade ago. That's according to a federal survey of 13-year-olds. It also found that when they do read for pleasure, they're doing so less frequently. But that is not the case for one group of high schoolers in Portland, Oregon, who are passionate about reading romance novels. Here's NPR's Sequoia Carrillo.
SEQUOIA CARRILLO, BYLINE: High schooler Rose Sandell loves reading romance novels so much her mom sometimes has to remind her to hydrate.
ROSE SANDELL: This week by itself, I've read, like, five.
CARRILLO: This week?
ROSE: This week.
CARRILLO: Oh, my God.
ROSE: (Laughter) So I'm a little behind on my U.S. history homework.
CARRILLO: This year Sandell is one of the leaders of the romance book club. We visited her and other members of Lincoln High School's club in Portland, Oregon, last spring. At the time, she was a freshman, a little shy but eager to talk about her favorite pastime.
ROSE: I love romcoms. I love mafia romances. I don't know. I love romance.
CARRILLO: These days, romance novels come in all shapes and sizes. They can be steamy or chaste. Some characters are living with disabilities, while others are navigating their identities and sexual orientations. One thing they all have in common, though - falling in love and getting a happily ever after.
ROSE: I just love how happy it makes me feel and how bubbly. And I love how, like, characters get their happy endings. It's just so magical.
CARRILLO: Romance book sales have been booming. They grew by more than 50% in 2022, according to Publishers Weekly. And that may be thanks to younger readers like Sandell and her friends, who don't see romance novels as a guilty pleasure. It's just something they like. Here's one of last year's club leaders, Lola Kovel.
LOLA KOVEL: So much of the romance genre - there's so much stigma around it that it really, like, shows a bunch of prejudice that people have about female authors and, like, female pleasure.
CARRILLO: I asked her and fellow club members what they look for in a romance read.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Ooh.
KOVEL: I'm a big enemies to lovers girl.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: I was going to say.
KOVEL: Or, like, a childhood friends to lovers.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: They, like, solve a mystery together or something.
CAMILLA CORREANI: Some sort of Taylor Swift involvement, maybe a little lake house. I'm, like, OK, just pass me the book now.
CARRILLO: Other voices were students Ruby Berman, Camilla Correani and Adele Betik. Camilla and Lola have graduated, but they still follow the club on social media to see which two books they choose each month.
LORI LIEBERMAN: Did you finish reading the book?
CARRILLO: Both have to be approved by their school librarian, Lori Lieberman. She's always happy to talk through books with her students. But there's one part of the books they leave out of discussions.
LIEBERMAN: It's kind of an unwritten rule about the romance book club - is we don't get into the real nitty gritty.
CARRILLO: The nitty gritty, the spice, the steam, basically all the parts of romance novels that the students very much do not want to talk about on school grounds.
LIEBERMAN: So we read books that have sex in them, but we don't really talk about the sexy parts, mostly because I really like my job, and I like to keep it. No 16-year-old wants to hear Miss Lieberman talking about the sexy parts in the romance books.
CARRILLO: Instead, they talk about the love story - the meet-cute, the chemistry, the hurdles, the fallout, the inevitable reunion that Rose Sandell likes so much.
ROSE: They always end up together, because love is the greatest superpower in the world.
CARRILLO: In many parts of the country, book bans are on the rise, led by adults who often object to sexual content or content with LGBTQ themes. But that's not the case at Lincoln, where Lieberman says the school administration and parents are big supporters.
GRAEME SANDELL: The romance stuff - I know some of it's a little - maybe a little racy.
CARRILLO: Graeme Sandell is Rose's father. He says he trusts Rose and the rest of the book club to handle the mature themes.
SANDELL: Rose reads romance books that have characters from all different walks of life. There might be some characters who are gay and some who are straight, and that's the world we live in. It's not like we want her to be sheltered from who gets to experience love in the world.
CARRILLO: Plus, he's just glad Rose is excited about reading.
SANDELL: She really hated reading when she was in elementary school 'cause it was so much work.
CARRILLO: Lori Lieberman says the club fundraises so it can buy the books without using school funds. And she trusts the students to discuss them responsibly. Former club leader Camilla Correani says that's because of the way she and her classmates approach the books.
CORREANI: And we also want to look at books, too, and, like, even with a critical eye. There's a lot of really harmful stereotypes and things like that in romance all the time and in a bunch of genres.
CARRILLO: They're often navigating discussions about race and gender or relationships and consent. She says in the club's early days, the group had a virtual author chat with Julia Quinn, the author of the wildly popular "Bridgerton" books that have since been turned into a Netflix series.
CORREANI: There is basically, like, a part in "Bridgerton" that Julia Quinn, the author, had talked about that she had written a while ago that is a little, like, iffy on the consent aspect of it.
CARRILLO: One of the books has an intimate scene in which the female character ignores her husband's boundaries. The students asked Qunin about it, and she was frank, telling them she wrote these books years ago and she's learned a lot since then. Student Ruby Berman thinks the imperfections of the genre are important to talk about and to learn from.
RUBY BERMAN: I think romance can really teach you, like, there's no right way to love someone and there's no one right way to have a relationship and that, like, love is a spectrum. And that's so important.
CARRILLO: Sequoia Carrillo, NPR News, Portland, Oregon.
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