AI or just asinine? Adventures in romance novels.

I'm only a newly minted romance reader, but I've noticed a strange trend lately. It's as if writers have been body-snatched and replaced by Potemkin humans: convincing on the surface, but with nothing behind it holding it up. Some of them read like an alien from another planet trying to teach you to drive, even though they've never seen a car before.

Why could this be? Hmm, I'm stumped. Let's ask our friendly neighborhood chatbot.


  • Genre Tropes and Expectations
  • Mass Production
  • Market Algorithms
  • Simplified Prose
  • AI Influence
  • Overemphasis on Formula
Slick. I like how it just slipped that one right in there, like some lettuce in a Dagwood-sized bs club sandwich. Like, "I doubt it's this, but I'll mention it anyway."


Bad romance novels from 2000 sound very different from bad romance novels of 2025. And while I don't want to impugn any hardworking, dedicated writers, I do want to take a closer look at a few of the absurd, sometimes funny signs I've noticed that, in my estimation, indicate that AI deserves, at the very least, a co-author credit. And other times, it could make a good case for plagiarism, if it owned any of its own IP.

Some might just be ghostwritten in busy little book-writing sweatshops, probably more than we realize. But I think romance readers deserve to take a look at what's happening beneath the surface, and why it's not just you when you feel something's a little "off" about these books.

Can't wait for you to come on this journey with me into the brave new world of computer-assisted sex books.

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