It’s this connection between women and power that’s at the heart of the witchy romcom boom. “So I think it’s just like the perfect mix of giving women freedom of expression in every sense.” Because they’ve got their magic, they’ve got each other, they’re dangerous, they can’t be controlled,” Harper says. “The same things that make witches threatening in history is probably the same thing that makes Sapphic romance threatening to the patriarchy, where it’s these unfettered women who don’t need men for anything anymore at this point. It was integral to the queer love story she wanted to tell. This seemed like a great way of keeping the feel of it really fresh.”īut for Harper, featuring witches in a romcom was more than just a fun gimmick. “We don’t want romcoms to feel so similar to readers that they felt like they’ve already read the book in. “The first time I got a witchy romcom submission, I was blown away because it was so much fun,” Hwang says.
These kinds of stories cast a spell on editors like Cindy Hwang, vice president and editorial director at Berkley, Penguin Random House’s romance imprint. In 2021, “Payback’s A Witch” became one of dozens of witchy romcoms that flew onto shelves over the past two years. Harper’s novel follows Emmy, a witch who returns to her magical hometown and teams up with two other witches to get revenge on a man who broke their hearts only to end up entranced by one of them. “Everything was very dark and depressing and I just wanted it to kind of feel like living in a Yankee candle, but like a Halloween scented one.” “I wanted it to be this very escapist book because I was writing the proposal for it mid-pandemic,” Harper says. While many of us spent the dark early days of the pandemic baking bread and picking up hobbies we’d quickly abandon, author Lana Harper was brewing up something else: a pitch for a new novel that would combine witches with the winning formula of a romantic comedy. Witches have always been a staple of the fantasy genre, but in the last two years they’ve spelled over into romance novels - making contemporary romance just a little bit more magical. Well there’s a new book genre becoming more popular that may be the perfect fit for you: witchy romcoms. Are you feeling bewitched, bothered and a little bad this Halloween?
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