yeah

and so romance because it is one of the few genres which this is becoming more complicated now but is predominantly viewed as being by women for women is always in conversation with what's going on with the lives of women in the world sometimes in quite oblique ways you're like oh how did you get from over here to over here what's this doing But it's always thinking through what's happening in the culture.

It doesn't exist in a vacuum.

And one of the bigger things that's happened in the culture in the last five years is, of course, the pandemic.

And there is a little bit of a misconception floating around that this led to romance suddenly becoming popular out of nowhere.

Romance has always been popular.

Did it make it a little bit more popular? Sure.

Yeah.