Review: Love Stories Are… by Katharine M. Sweet

Deeply realistic and crushingly tender, Love Stories Are… by Katharine M. Sweet is the next chapter in the story of the Goodroe clan after Love Is…. This time it is Mat’s brother Vinnie and his editor Anna’s turn to be at the center of a romantic drama, reflecting on the complex reality of marriage, family, and love.

Although Anna and Vinnie’s story is central to the book, the title captures the multiplicity of relationships that makes Love Stories Are… not only a remarkable novel, but also a captivating showcase of the human capacity to love in spite of pain, fear, and trauma. Mixing the hard, even brutal reality of a family trying to escape its past in criminal Houston, with the healing powers of kindness, mutual respect, and acceptance, Sweet has written a soul-filling story with a strong sense of morality, which emerges naturally without ever ringing forced or untrue.

Kass and Mat’s love story and the birth of their child Lizzie has left a deep mark on the Goodroe clan. Now Mat, his brother Vinnie, and their adoptive father Rex are reaching the closest to normal they’ve ever experienced. Vinnie loves taking care of his niece, and with his job at a strip club, he feels like he can atone for some of the crimes he has committed by making the place legitimate and safe for his coworkers.

Vinnie also has a secret dream to be a writer, diligently working on a book inspired by his family’s troubled and partly secret family history. Thinking his book can never be published, he sends a draft to a local publisher, hoping that the inevitable rejection will finally set his heart at peace. He could not be more wrong: not only is the book picked up, but his editor Anna Kane awakens in him feelings he has never felt before. How can he tell his family that he’s about to publish a book based on their tumultuous lives?

A deeply romantic book that avoids romance clichès, Love Stories Are… successfully walks the line between drama, love story, realistic narrative, and comedy. Sweet’s witty and natural writing brings to the page a story that is all the more romantic because of its realism, delving into heavy topics such as childhood trauma, crime, and death in a way that is never oversimplified. As a result, the romantic and spicy scenes are all the more affecting, because they are not set in an ideal world, but in the imperfect whirlwind of real life.

In the midst of all the heavy real-life situations that Sweet explores, Love Stories Are… is also extremely funny, with snappy dialogue and a real knack for fully-rounded character development – an incredible balance that Sweet handles masterfully. Subtitled a “RomCom with Drama,” the novel certainly lives up to that billing with its naturalistic look at love and family, where love is not treated as the answer to all problems, but rather as a pervasive and guiding force in the narrative, sculpting these characters’ lives as it does in life.

All told, Love Stories Are… is a uniquely layered and powerful romance that is so authentic that readers will more than once believe these characters are real.