For all you fellow Hallmark addicts and late-night romance readers.

I’ve loved reading romance novels for almost as long as I’ve been able to read. This love started, I suppose, with cheesy Disney romance movies where Prince Charming swooped in to save the day, and evolved from there.

Once I reached high school, my mom started sharing her favorite romance novels with me — starting with Janette Oke’s Love Comes Softly series (complete with the original 1980s cover and yellowed pages — see below.) I devoured all of her Janette Oke books (including the When Calls the Heart series — I’m sure I’ll be sharing my thoughts about those books versus the Hallmark series eventually because I have a lot to say there), and soon I was reading more and more Christian/inspirational romance.

Over time, I also started to develop my own taste in romance and started reading everything from inspirational romance to contemporary romance, to young adult romance (hello, Meg Cabot and Sarah Dessen) and historical romance.

I found that romance novels were my happy place — I would lock myself away in my room over school breaks and read a book (sometimes more) a day. And I always had my nose in a book while I was away from my room — I could often be found reading at my desk before class started and on the bus on the way home from school.

These habits, and my love for romance, continued through college and beyond, and I still adore the genre today. Now I’ve learned that there are even more subgenres and tropes than I could have ever imagined when I first started reading those Janette Oke books, and I’ve expanded my love of romance to include cheesy Hallmark movies of all kinds.

And that’s where the idea for Romance Lovers Anonymous comes into play.

Since 2014 or so, I’ve become an avid Hallmark movie watcher. It started during Christmas, of course, when a feel-good holiday romance movie was just what the doctor prescribed for a perfect Christmas season. Then, I realized that Hallmark actually has new movies that come out year-round, and they even have multiple channels now with new premieres every month of the year.

Soon I had wrangled my mom (and even my dad on occasion) into watching these new movies. We’d record the new premieres on my parents’ DVR and watch a feel-good movie or two over the weekend. We’ve watched romcoms, heartfelt dramas, mysteries, and even a few movies with a supernatural bend.

Now Hallmark even has several shows, and we watch almost all of them faithfully (aside from When Calls the Heart which, as I mentioned, I have some feelings about.)

While I read my cheesy romance novels and watch my cheesy Hallmark movies, I often wonder what other romance lovers would think about a particular author or a particular actor. I wonder if the same plot holes in so many movies bother them as much as they do me, and I wonder if my fellow romance readers realize what they’re missing out on when I read a new book by my favorite lesser-known author.

So I’m going to start sharing all things romance here, for all my fellow romance lovers.

I’m still figuring out exactly what this will look like. Right now, I’m thinking of articles about various romance tropes and subgenres, essays on the value of clean romances like my beloved Hallmark movies (not everything has to be steamy to be romantic, after all), and reviews of all the movies and books I can’t wait to read.

For now, it’ll just be me writing to my fellow romance lovers, but I’d love to eventually have some other writers join if there’s interest. I’m happy to simply spew my thoughts about all things ooey-gooey romance into the world for now, though.

Are you a romance lover? Do you watch practically every new Hallmark movie ever released? Do you have some thoughts about a specific genre convention? I want to hear from you! What do you want to read about here, and how did you first stumble upon your love for romance?

Let me know in the comments, and give Romance Lover’s Anonymous a follow if you’re a fellow cheesy romance lover like me.

Previously published in Romance Lovers Anonymous