When Romance Writers Spark to a New Kind of Thrill(er)

When you think about it, romance and thrillers are two sides of the same genre coin. Their respective appeals thrive on high-concept premises involving strangers thrown together into unexpected conspiracies (as fake daters) or confrontations (as fellow suspects), yet even the most outlandish scenario can win over you, the reader. Both grab you by the throat; your pulse races; you have no choice but to keep flipping pages to get to the explosive moment that you’re expecting—a kiss, a kill—yet it will exhilarate you anew because it’s with these compelling leads.

So is it any surprise that many contemporary romance authors are experimenting with mysteries and thrillers? Using the same well-honed emotional intuition and signature heart-stopping moments for which they’re known in their much-swooned-over love stories, they have turned their attention away from a plot solely chasing a Happily Ever After; these pairings are trying to solve a mystery and/or save their own lives, while also wondering if they can find true love with a partner in crime. Some authors, like Christina Lauren and Kate Clayborn, have folded a more high-stakes plot—a treasure hunt adventure, a true-crime podcast road trip—into a traditionally recognizable romance narrative, while the prolific Alyssa Cole has written full-blown murder mysteries that nonetheless hinge on a romance that is equally likely to save the protagonist’s life as to end it.

This is by no means the first cross-pollination between these two particular genres; The Independent ran a 2021 piece highlighting the fact that popular thriller authors Paula Hawkins (The Girl on the Train) and Lisa Jewell (None of This is True) are among those who started out plucking heartstrings before picking up bloody knives and smoking guns, with greater success. However, the three aforementioned authors are all wildly popular in the romance world, established enough that each subsequent book presents that unique challenge of one-upping themselves. But like a detective in a locked-room mystery, we can potentially point to one “motive” in common: the COVID-19 pandemic.

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Christina Lauren (a.k.a. the writing duo of Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings) conceived of their 2022 adventure romance Something Wilder as an antidote to 2020’s global lockdown: “in a year that kept us home and away from family, friends, readers, and each other,” they explain in the acknowledgments, “we were ready to get out into the world—even if only through our characters—and have an adventure.” But it was encouragement from author Sarah MacLean that gave them the push to really metaphorically jump off that cliff—here, into Canyonlands National Park, in search of a long-buried treasure tied to Butch Cassidy himself.

The duo’s past romance scenarios have run the gamut from the cutthroat world of Hollywood agents (Dating You/Hating You) to the emotionally high-stakes scenario of two misfits masquerading as newlyweds (The Unhoneymooners), but for this change of pace they took inspiration from classic films like Romancing the Stone, which sees a romance novelist leaping into the kind of adventure that previously only existed in her imagination. Rather than emulate that fish-out-of-water premise, the two romantic leads are equally well suited to their treacherous environment: Lily Wilder is the daughter of fabled treasure hunter Duke Wilder, though his infamy was a consolation prize for his absentee parenting, saddling her with abandonment issues even as she uses his maps to take bachelor parties on facetious treasure hunts to earn a slim living. One of those camping trips includes Leo Grady, her ex who a decade prior left her unexpectedly when they were supposed to set out on their own. Their reunion is jarring enough, but when one of his college buddies turns out to be deadly serious about locating that treasure—even if it means Lily and her crew following Duke’s map at gunpoint—Leo must earn back her trust to save all their lives.

While the ensuing adventure lacks some of the thrills of Romancing the Stone, what Lauren has cunningly laid the groundwork for is the notion that the treasure itself is also a second-chance romance, between the seekers and what they believe they’ll find. They thought they’d lost it forever; they’ve been dreaming of it for years and years; and finally, it’s within their reach again, if only they can prove themselves worthier than they were last time they let it slip through their fingers.

While Alyssa Cole’s gripping thriller When No One is Watching came out in Fall 2020, obviously it was in the works pre-pandemic. No stranger to dramatic premises in her contemporary Reluctant Royals series, Cole nonetheless wanted to challenge herself to write characters that could “be more morally gray, where I could explore some darker areas,” she told the New York Times. Not being tied to an HEA was equally enticing, though a romance certainly underpins her contemporary horror story about gentrification in the historically Black Brooklyn neighborhood of Gifford Place.

Having moved back to care for her ill mother and recuperate from an abusive marriage, Sydney Green is initially disturbed to discover that so many of her childhood’s personal landmarks have been replaced by high-end home goods stores, and that her neighbors are getting shoved out in favor of white families who can afford the jacked-up housing costs. In an act of pettiness, Sydney organizes a neighborhood walking tour to remind the interlopers who actually lives here; and who becomes her research assistant but Theo, the well-meaning white guy who just bought a brownstone with his Karen-esque girlfriend Kim. But as Sydney is drawn to Theo despite her better judgment, he becomes her sole ally in uncovering the sinister motivations behind Gifford’s rapid transformation, and the truth as to where all the Black people are actually disappearing to (hint: it’s not the suburbs).

The romance trope that Cole uses to greatest effect in Watching is that of the dual perspective of the two romantic leads, especially since Sydney’s ex-husband gaslit her to the point that she can hardly trust herself to know what’s real, let alone anyone else. Often in romance, this provides delicious (and agonizing) dramatic irony because the reader knows information that the hero(ine) is withholding from the other, but we’re stuck watching the misunderstandings stack up. When the same approach is applied to a thriller context, it shifts the two narrators from difficult to downright unreliable and ratchets up the tension—because a missed piece of information is the difference between a breakup and a body found in the next chapter.

This dissonance is what appealed to Cole about trying a new genre. “When I’m writing romance, I’m leaning more into the good,” she told the Times. “In every romance, you have to also make the reader feel bad sometimes, but you lean into certain beats that will make the reader feel happy, feel hopeful and excited. In this, it was fun to be able to lean into things that would make the reader feel anxious because I was anxious in writing it. I could explore the kinds of things that can be done in the story when focusing on that slate of emotions as opposed to romantic emotions.” That includes delving into conspiracy theories, drawing of course from the fraught history of Black bodies being violated and experimented on without their consent, but also how covid mitigation (or the lack thereof) made it so that people could not trust one another to look out for each other’s health.

Cole tapped into that same pandemic anxiety for her follow-up thriller: One of Us Knows, out this April, opens with the genre’s familiar hallmark of the protagonist stepping into an unknown situation complicated by some temporary amnesia and thus having to play catchup while meeting new people in an unfamiliar setting. Though in the case of Kenetria Nash, who has dissociative identity disorder (DID), she has been dormant for six years while her alters took turns “fronting” her body. By the time Ken comes back to the forefront, she’s standing on a ferry dock awaiting her new job as the new caretaker of a historic island in the Hudson River. Oh, and it’s December 2022, which means she’s in for several shocks to the system, rapidly taking in everything from the Trump presidency to COVID-19.

Not to mention that the caretaker job quickly reveals itself as too good to be true, with Ken stumbling her way through the dark history of Daybreak Island—including how it got its name, daring its inhabitants to make it through the night—and a generations-long conspiracy that’s even more unhinged than what goes on beneath Gifford Place. It’s no surprise that Ken flickers in and out of control, with her exhausted alters needing to step back in and keep their shared body alive.

Of all the books mentioned here, Cole makes the most ambitious swing regarding the romantic leads for One of Us Knows. It will not surprise her thriller readers to learn that nothing good comes from Kenetria’s history of tangling with a white man in spoiled rich boy Landon and his controlling politician father. But though her ex inconveniently appears on Daybreak Island, he’s not the one who’s occupying her waking thoughts and wandering fantasies. That honor belongs to Solomon—yep, one of Ken’s alters. Not only does she recall hot hookups that felt keenly like two people making love despite just one set of hands, but their bond goes even deeper; Solomon is all of the best parts of Ken, from her artistic talent to her executive function. And while her initial reaction to discovering that they shared a body was to flagellate herself for not being as innately creative or competent as she had previously believed, over the course of this heart-pounding mystery they relearn how to share the stress of fronting and apply each of their respective strengths to surviving into 2023.

Cole isn’t afraid to explore relationships that might be discounted or even judged for being taboo, weaving them into her mystery so that—as in the increasingly popular subgenres of sci-fi and fantasy romance—these sparks of attraction and personal bonds have as much bearing on the plot as the latest narrative twist. For all that Ken and Solomon try to keep their fling between just the two of them, it’s clear that their forbidden feelings have made an impact on the rest of their internal system of personalities. In fact, the ongoing commentary from the other alters initially has them resembling a typical rom-com supporting cast: you’ve got the naïvely sweet weirdo (Empress), the mystical white girl (Mesmer), even the older mentor (Della) reminding the leads not to make the same mistakes she did. Except that Della has gone missing, and Solomon’s investigations into what—or who—might have kidnapped her recasts the entire mismatched ensemble into a cohort of suspects. After all, what else could have brought them all together from such disparate lives?

That said, When No One is Watching is still the more effective thriller. The cast of characters are more sharply realized than the alters-as-peanut-gallery, and the comps are clearer: Get Out set in contemporary gentrifying Brooklyn, especially augmented and complicated by the interracial romance. Yet One of Us Knows demonstrates Cole’s undeniably ambitious narrative choices and insightful subversions of the reading experiences; I can’t wait to see what she plucks from the romance toolbox for her next thriller.

Kate Clayborn first teased her forthcoming novel The Other Side of Disappearing via her Substack a year ago, as she explained that “with every book I’ve ever written, I’ve tried to push myself—to explore different tropes or narrative structures or points of view, to think about the themes that seem to me so central to the experience of modern life—all while maintaining what I love in a great romance. The heat and heart and emotion, the words and turns of phrase that make your stomach swoop and your fingers twitch with the need to keep turning pages.” My consistently favorite thing about every Clayborn novel is how she masterfully balances a yearning love plot with other life events or hurdles that take equal precedence: the devastation of a friend breakup, what it means to be indebted to someone, showing up for people not when it’s easy but through the discomfort of grief and loss. To hear that she was challenging herself with a mystery plot into which a romance fits, instead of the other way around, made the wait for this “big and different and scary” (as she describes it in her acknowledgments) project even more taut.

Disappearing has a similar structure to Something Wild, in that it’s plotted along the stops—and, more crucially, the detours—of a road trip. There’s a podcast to listen to (oh, boy, is there ever), paired with an immaculately planned itinerary that will go out the window once love complicates an already emotionally fraught journey. Like Lily Wilder, Jess Greene is the greatest clue to the “map” that true crime podcasters Salem Durant and Adam Hawkins are consulting, as they seek to record a follow-up to Salem’s smash-hit Serial-esque podcast The Last Con of Lynton Baltimore. After all, it’s Jess’ postcards from her and half-sister Tegan’s mother that provide the route and clues to where Charlotte followed along with con artist Lynton Baltimore (or, as the girls knew him, Miles Daniels) when she abandoned her daughters a decade prior.

Jess and Adam’s romance isn’t a second-chance reunion the way it is for Lily and Leo, but there’s the same knife’s-edge sense that betrayal could come at any moment, as their motivations are nearly at polar opposites: She only agrees to join on the road trip to protect teenage Tegan and help her find closure, while Salem pushes Adam to get Jess to talk on the record, dangling his dream project of an investigative podcast about American football and traumatic concussions. How could he give up the chance to do the work he’s truly invested in, even if it means manipulating this interview subject?

Except that Clayborn does a fascinating thing not even halfway through the book: She has Adam confess his ulterior motive to Jess, before they’ve even kissed. Even some of the most well-written contemporary romances thrive on the third-act misunderstanding, which is often undercut by how clearly it’s broadcast as well as how quickly one or both leads wins the other one back. The fact that Adam is incredibly upfront with Jess—as much, in fact, as a normal person in this situation would be—is a refreshing departure from overdramatic romance tropes and continues to ground the story in realism, a Clayborn hallmark.

Probably the clearest mystery of the bunch, albeit one based more on emotional revelations than plot twists, The Other Side of Disappearing examines its own title from every possible angle, teasing out the tension between disappearing physically versus metaphorically, and how the freedom of abandoning obligations can quickly turn damaging. Though it doesn’t build to any explosive revelations like the other aforementioned thrillers, it instead focuses on the negative space created by the character of Charlotte, and how her absence nonetheless takes up physical space in Jess and Tegan’s lives.

Love and hate, life and death, crimes of passion and passionate crimes: they’re all intertwined when romance writers apply what they’ve learned about bringing people together (after pushing them apart, of course) to establishing and solving mysteries. But the most thrilling part of all is watching these beloved authors push through their fears and stretch their limits… just like someone finally giving in to falling in love.

Natalie Zutter is a Brooklyn-based playwright and pop culture critic whose work has appeared on Tor.com, NPR Books, Den of Geek, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @nataliezutter