How messy is too messy?

Last week, urged on by a recommendation from a fellow reader and craving some soccer romance after the excitement of the World Cup, I picked up Abby Offsides by Anna McCallie. And I had the most up and down romance reading experience of my year so far.

The writing in Abby Offsides is great. The banter is sharp, the narrative voice vivid and distinctive from the very first page, and the journey that our heroine Abby, who moves to the UK to work for a soccer team after a devastating breakup, goes on is thoughtfully and wonderfully done. I loved how beautifully McCallie writes about the powerful feelings that come along with sports fandom, the bond Abby forms with the team, and the achingly slow burn between her and star midfielder Lachlan. But I also wanted to scream at these characters for a significant chunk of the book, because Lachlan is married, even if his marriage is seemingly reaching its end, and this is a romance about two people having an emotional affair. I can forgive a lot in a romance novel and yet I never quite forgave this.

To its credit, the book never shies away from the fact that this is what’s happening between Abby and Lachlan. When the crash comes, it comes hard. The third-act breakup (of sorts) lasts for about 70 or 80 pages and uses every single one of them. Abby acknowledges that they’ve both done something wrong and goes on a deeply satisfying journey of self-discovery. Lachlan’s wife is a real character and not an artificial obstacle. But I don’t know if I believed in these two characters’ happily ever after by the final chapter.

It’s not that I need my main characters to be perfect. One of my all time favorite romances, Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas, begins a week after the hero has tried to abduct one of the main characters of the previous installment. Sebastian is “debauched, amoral, and perversely proud of it” and openly disdainful of Evie when he first meets her. What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long, another of my favorites, starts when the hero decides to seduce and abandon the heroine for revenge. (She realizes what he’s up to almost immediately and it’s fantastic.) Sherry Thomas’ characters hurt each other deeply and often actively deceive each other and I think her historical romances are some of the very best out there. Of course, historical romances play by a different set of rules. It’s a world of heightened emotions and consequences removed from our own and one where I’m willing to accept things that I would never buy into in a contemporary romance.

However, I’ve also spent the last few years proclaiming my love for messy contemporary romances like You Again by Kate Goldbeck, Will They or Won’t They by Ava Wilder, and August Lane by Regina Black. Just last month, I bemoaned a contemporary romance where everything felt too neat and tidy for my personal reading preferences. Theoretically, this should have been everything that I wanted. Yet I turned the last page and still wasn’t sold on this couple’s love story, mostly because I believed in Abby’s growth but not necessarily Lachlan’s. One of the reasons that his relationship with his wife is on the rocks is that they want opposite kinds of lives, while Abby slots into his life perfectly. Who’s to say that he wouldn’t develop a deeply emotionally, boundary-crossing friendship with another woman again if Abby starts to want something different for herself later on?

There’s also one crucial difference between Abby Offsides and the three contemporary romances I mentioned earlier: it’s single-POV while all three are dual-POV. We’re firmly in Abby’s head from start to finish, crying and laughing and growing with her. Like I mentioned earlier, seeing her grow into someone who leans into the difficult conversations instead of ducking them is one of the great pleasures of reading this book. But I wanted to see Lachlan’s growth too, to see him reflect and express remorse and untangle his mistakes. I think I might have been a lot more willing to swoon over the romance if I’d gotten to peek inside his head more. I’ve read and enjoyed plenty of single-POV romances over the years and marveled at authors’ ability to write a protagonist in glorious, vivid detail solely through the eyes of the person who loves them. (Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian and Playing for Keeps by Alexandria Bellefleur both do this very well.) However, the messier a particular situation gets, the more I need to be immersed in both sides of it as a reader.

I’m hoping that we get more messy contemporary romances in the years to come. More love stories about people who are still figuring it out, more third act breakups that last longer than a few pages, and more hard-fought happy endings that don’t feel predestined. I think I’d still recommend Abby Offsides, depending on the reader, and I’m hoping for more romance reading experiences like it. More books that make me ponder what I respond to and what’s successful in the genre, that leave me in suspense as to how the author is ever going to get these two people together, and that have me wanting to discuss with other readers immediately.

If you’ve read Abby Offsides, I’d love to hear from you! What kind of messy is too messy for you as a romance reader?

Currently reading: The Great Wherever by Shannon Sanders, an expansive family saga narrated by ghosts that’s the FictionMatters buzzy book of the month.

Recommendations, miscellany, and little bits of joy:

• The campy, glittery Rocky Horror Show on Broadway. Luke Evans was out the night I went (*sobs*) but I was still delighted to see Sherie Rene Scott, Stephanie Hsu, Andrew Durand, and the transformation of Studio 54.

• Fluffy, delicious madeleines from Marbre in Brooklyn. The chocolate one received particularly high reviews in my household.

• The acquisition of a new cookbook, Caroline Chambers’ What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make It Fast, and successfully executing a 15-minute recipe for a delicious Greek chop! I wouldn’t call myself an inspired cook but I can follow a recipe faithfully and there’s a huge section of 15-minute recipes I want to try.