Funny You Should Ask

A literary trope is a situation or pattern that readers are drawn to and enjoy in endless iterations. One trope that proves particularly fruitful for the romance genre is the celebrity who falls for a regular person. Very often the celebrity is a powerful male—actor, musician, sports figure, etc.—who is drawn to someone who is not a celebrity but has a special quality he admires. Royal romances are one variation of this trope, where one person in the romance has royal stature and falls for a commoner. Some examples include: The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan or books in the Reluctant Royal series by Alyssa Cole.

Very often, conflict in the celebrity/“normal” trope revolves around whether the leads can reconcile their very different lifestyles and/or the “normal” person can learn to deal with the scrutiny of fame. Classics of the celebrity/“normal” romance include Natural Born Charmer, a New York Times Bestseller by Susan Elizabeth Phillips, which features a star quarterback who falls for an artist; Waiting for Tom Hanks by Kerry Winfrey, which features an actor falling in love with an aspiring screenwriter; and the Spoiler Alert series by Olivia Dade.