{"id":7327,"date":"2011-09-27T07:54:35","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T11:54:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theseasonforromance.com\/wordpress\/?p=7327"},"modified":"2011-09-27T07:54:35","modified_gmt":"2011-09-27T11:54:35","slug":"age-difference-in-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/2011\/09\/27\/age-difference-in-romance\/","title":{"rendered":"Age difference in romance"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by <strong>Kat Latham<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Back in the early 90s, when I first started reading romance, I remember reading a few books where there was a big age difference between the hero and heroine. Of course, the hero was always the older one.<\/p>\n<p>In one book, the hero was in his late 30s and ended up with a 19-year-old woman. At the time, that didn\u2019t gross me out because I was barely a teenager\u202637 and 19 seemed equally elderly to me.\u00a0 But now that I\u2019m older, that age difference isn\u2019t romantic\u2014it\u2019s grooming.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><br \/>\n<img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-7329\" style=\"margin-left: 3px; margin-right: 3px; border: 1px solid #FFFFCC;\" title=\"badboysdo170\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/smittenbybooks.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/09\/badboysdo1701.jpg?resize=170%2C269\" alt=\"\" width=\"170\" height=\"269\" \/>I was thinking about this recently as I read <a href=\"http:\/\/www.victoriadahl.com\/\">Victoria Dahl<\/a>\u2019s latest contemporary, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.victoriadahl.com\/books-Contemporary.php#BBDDetail\">Bad Boys Do<\/a>\u2014a novel that\u2019s sure to be one of my top picks of 2011. The story features 29-year-old Jamie Donovan, a bartender with a bad-boy reputation, and Olivia Bishop, a mid-thirties teacher whose much-older husband left her for a much-younger woman.<\/p>\n<p>Age plays a big role in keeping Olivia and Jamie apart, as she believes he\u2019s someone she can fool around with but doesn\u2019t think he\u2019d want to settle down with her. Jamie, on the other hand, is thrilled to have a relationship that feels like an actual relationship instead of a hook-up. He\u2019s ready to grow up and man up, and being with Olivia encourages him to do both.<\/p>\n<p>When she\u2019s with Jamie, Olivia can explore the youthful side of herself that she suppressed throughout her marriage. Of course, one thing that makes this story different from the ones I read in the 90s is that both characters are well into their adulthoods when they get together. They\u2019re not a coupling between a starry-eyed innocent and a jaded man approaching middle age.<\/p>\n<p>Another difference is that the older person in the relationship is the woman. It\u2019s unusual in romance, especially when the age difference is more than a year or two. But it\u2019s a kind of relationship I hope to see explored even more.<\/p>\n<p><strong>How do you feel about age differences in romance? Do you know of other novels where the heroine\u2019s older than the hero?<\/strong><\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Kat Latham<\/strong>\u00a0has been reading romance for a couple of decades. With degrees in English lit and human rights, she loves stories that reflect the depth, humor and emotion of real life. When she\u2019s not writing contemporary romance novels, she can usually be found blogging or tweeting overly personal information. She loves meeting other readers and writers online, so\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/katrinalatham\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">follow her on Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/readericreatedhim.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">check out her blog<\/a>\u00a0and say hello!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Kat Latham Back in the early 90s, when I first started reading romance, I remember reading a few books where there was a big [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,34],"tags":[216,294],"class_list":["post-7327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harlequin","category-katrina","tag-contemporary","tag-guest-blog"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.4 - 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