Romance Novels with Complex Themes

Romance Novels with Complex Themes

This article relates to Great Big Beautiful Life

In many ways, Emily Henry's Great Big Beautiful Life is about the complex bond between mothers and daughters that prompts mothers to act in strange, counterintuitive ways. While the novel is quite unabashedly a romance, thoroughly embracing the genre's tropes, it is much more than a happy, breezy read with a satisfying end. Going against the grain of a run-of-the-mill romance that might avoid deep exploration of dark territories like parental expectations and strained mother-daughter relationships, Great Big Beautiful Life incorporates these complex themes into its plot.

Many other romance novels, such as the three listed below, have done the same. These novels include some of the genre's typical tropes — fake boyfriend, holiday romance, forced proximity, enemies-to-lovers — and unfailingly deliver the comfort of familiarity by culminating in happy resolutions. At the same time, they are also unafraid to tap into uncomfortable topics such as loss, abuse, bereavement, and bullying.

Here's Looking at You by Mhairi McFarlane

Anna Alessi is an intelligent history professor living her dream life. Bullied for her physical appearance in high school, she undergoes an ugly-duckling transformation but still carries the emotional scars from her youth. When she reconnects with one of her former bullies, James, for work, he seems to be a changed man, except it's hard for Anna to believe it.

The novel follows their growth from mutual hatred to tentative friendship and then romance as they each realize there is more to the other than they first thought. The adult relationship between the bully and the bullied is sensitively developed, and Anna undergoes healing as she realizes that being bullied wasn't her fault. James, on the other hand, having forgotten that he was the orchestrator of the most traumatic night of high school for Anna, undergoes his own redemption and resolution arc.

Beach Read by Emily Henry

Emily Henry's debut novel for adults begins with bereavement. Not only has the protagonist, January Andrews, recently lost her father, but she has also learned that he had a brief secret affair with a woman who wasn't her mother, so it's a loss of the kind of father she thought she had as well. It might seem strange that Henry chooses to title a novel dealing with such heavy material a "beach read," but it is apt considering its premise involves the two writer protagonists, January and Gus, spending a summer as neighbors in a lakeside town to work on their respective, very different novels. January is a romance writer whose very idea of true love is challenged by the knowledge of her father's affair, while Gus is a writer of "serious" literary fiction. Both are undergoing a crippling case of writer's block.

As Gus and January enter into a mutual challenge to swap genres for the summer to help get the words flowing again, their relationship develops into love, but each must first overcome their emotional demons. January, meanwhile, manages to find empathy for her father when she is put into a position that evokes the circumstances of his affair.

The No-Show by Beth O'Leary

The premise of the book is intriguing. Three very different women are stood up by the same man, Joseph Carter, on Valentine's Day — for breakfast, lunch, and dinner dates. In an interesting twist of the genre, the book arguably has a male protagonist, who is shown mostly through the perspectives of the three female heroines. You don't know if you should root for the jilter, but might find yourself doing so anyway. Ironically, it is his sincerity that makes him appealing and attractive to the three women.

The novel unravels like a mystery, slowly unveiling what really happened and what these relationships actually are. Behind his earnestness and sincere efforts is Joseph's brokenness and inability to cope. Ultimately, the book is a poignant journey of love, loss, and building the courage to love again.

Filed under Reading Lists

This "beyond the book article" relates to Great Big Beautiful Life. It originally ran in June 2025 and has been updated for the May 2026 paperback edition. Go to magazine.