I’ve been asking around for a while for recs for romance book that feature plus sized men, and honestly this has been hard to come by. Why have I been asking about it? The standalone book I’m working on features a “thick and bearded” brewmaster.
Also, we see love for different body types for women in romance, so I feel like we should also see that with men. When I work on stuff, I like to read comps. Sometimes it’s just to get a feel for the market. In this case, I wanted to see how other authors were describing these heroes. I wanted to make sure I wrote this hero without using fatphobia or fatshaming language. I wanted to be very careful about that.
I have a couple recommendations that I think do an amazing job with featuring these heroes. I also found a lot of recommendations over on Instagram from Talk About Swoon I’m sharing their post here, but make sure you check it out too.
My beef with some of the other books I’ve been recommended is that at times these characters are described as just “big” and that if someone didn’t tell me they are supposed to heroes who don’t have six-pack abs, I wouldn’t know. My hockey players are described as big, so being vague about it doesn’t help. I definitely want to see more of these types of heroes in books! I just don’t think we need to write them in vague terms.
The one I’m reading now, it’s not until like 40% into the book where the hero is mentioned having a beer belly, I feel like at that point some readers might already have a picture of what he looked like in their heads. I was glad that was included, but I think the other ones I’ve read did it a little better.
Here are four books that I think do it really well.
If you have any other recommendations send them my way! I would love to read them.
XO
Danica
Above the shop by Chloe Maine