So here is a confession – I’ve never really thought of myself as somebody who enjoys romance before. I read a few of my mother’s Harlequins as a teen and didn’t think much of them.

I have always loved science fiction and fantasy. At some point I started reading fan-fiction for my favourite shows and whoops, turns out I like romance just fine as long as it involves my preferred types of characters.

So I decided to give romance another try. As it happens I have a Little Free Library on my front lawn and somebody dropped off a whole stack of romance novels so I decided to give them a fair shake. I started with The Notebook because I know it’s reasonably popular and was turned into a movie.

The book is written from the perspective of a man in a nursing home. His wife suffers from dementia, and every day he reads to her from a notebook where he recorded the story of how they met, were separated, and were reunited years later. She doesn’t remember the story, doesn’t remember him, but sometimes there are glimpses of memory where she comes back and knows him. It’s pretty tragic because inevitably she forgets him again and the next day he comes back and tries again.

Honestly I found it a really sad story. It’s supposed to be about a lifetime of love and how they are still connected to each other, but I found the dementia really overshadowed the love story. And the love story was nice! She was a rich town girl, he was a working-class country boy, her family didn’t approve. I can work with that!

So I can say that I have found out that The Notebook isn’t my cup of tea, any more than those long-ago Harlequins. But fortunately romance is a genre that has a lot to choose from and I haven’t given up yet.