Thoughts on romance novels?

Never read one before.
I'm planning to read a price of salt and some others since I like romantic films.
Any recommendations?

>>9920958
they are good when you run out of fire wood

>>9920958
Great, if you can get past the anvil-heavy allegories.

>>9921232
What have you read?
What did you enjoy?
Assuming that we're talking about genre fiction of course.

>>9921241
Mallory would be the best romance novel, now that I remember a lot of the good ones are poems. Don Quixote is of course GOAT, but it's only sort-of a romance.

>>9920976
I recommend don't read the price of salt. It's plodding, holds no surprises, and the relationship is a vaguely predatory one in which an older woman holds an inexperienced young girl in thrall (no it's not sexually appealing)- so a bunch of projecting on Highsmith's part.

>>9921287
Is it mainly popular simply because it was in the right place at the wrong time?
If it's really that bad than that's sad since I love that dynamic, although if it is as you say, than perhaps it might not be all that great.
Is it lolita levels of predatory?