My First Real Romance Novel (Revisiting Old Favorites Part 1)

One of my reading goals this year is to re-read some old favorites and see if they still hit the way they once did. I'm looking at the last twelve years and selecting my top book of the year for each, which means that I'll be re-reading one per month for all of 2025. 

Starting with January, I got to revisit what used to be my favorite romance novel of all time and my top book of 2013. It still stands up, though maybe not to the extent that some of my new favorites do. I read Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson for the first time when I was seventeen and at the time it changed me. I have written in a previous post about how I grew up incredibly conservative and I wasn't allowed to read romance novels that weren't Christian for my entire adolescence; trust me when I say, Christian romance is a genre to stay far away from. Now, that isn't to say that I never read books with romance in them, just never the classic romance novels you think of when it comes to the genre. That didn't stop me from diving into Archive of Our Own whenever I could, but I was an obedient kid and I stopped myself before any scenes of the sexual variety could appear. There are books I love now which I tried for the first time as a teen and stopped reading because of just that.

Blackmoore was something I'd never encountered before, a romance novel that didn't have sex in it and was completely devoid of religion. The protagonists loved each other passionately, and the declaration at the end was more romantic than anything I'd ever read or seen before. I'd always been a romantic, but that book awakened something in me. This was what romance novels were supposed to be, I could feel it. This is the genre I was looking for, but I didn't have to feel guilty because there wasn't anything "inappropriate" in it. I'd never heard of Clean Romance as a genre before, and while I do very much enjoy smutty romances now as an adult who has separated from her religious upbringing completely, it is refreshing sometimes to take a break and focus purely on the romantic feelings of characters. Since reading Blackmoore I have found quite a number of romance novels that I absolutely adore, but it will always stand out as the beginning of my love for the genre. 

Blackmoore tells the story of Kate who has a truly terrible mother, think Mrs. Bennet but sinister and way less funny. Her best friend Henry lives just next-door and is the epitome of a handsome hero. But Kate has been saying for the last two years that she will never marry. Henry has an estate that's been promised to him by his grandfather, Blackmoore. Kate has always longed to see Blackmoore, almost as much as she longs to travel to India with her aunt. Kate's mother would rather she stay and marry an eligible suitor, so she strikes a deal that she'll let Kate go to India if she receives and rejects three marriage proposals. Henry has finally invited Kate to Blackmoore for a house party, so she has only a few weeks to uphold her end of the bargain.

Revisiting this novel after many years of reading romance was an interesting experience. Donaldson is not the greatest writer I've ever encountered, and she's not my favorite author anymore. Sometimes her sentences can be clunky and the situations her characters find themselves in a bit unbelievable, but the romantic scenes still endure in my heart as some of the most beautiful I've read. Kate and Henry are wonderful characters, and Henry stands out as one of my favorite romance heroes of all time. What Donaldson captures so well in this book though is loneliness and feeling trapped by life circumstances. Kate feels stuck, like she'll never be free from the life that's been laid out for her. It's her journey towards freedom and the role Henry plays in it which truly makes this book live up to its memory for me and remain a favorite.