Romance vs Dystopian Reflection

The genre of a book determines the mood the reader mostly feels while reading it. Romance feels like dancing from one pastel pink cloud to another with your soulmate, leaving a trail of tiny hearts in your wake. Dystopia is characterized by gray skies, the crackle of thunder and lightning, and ear-splitting shrieks and thunderous bangs from all sides. The dancing on pink clouds symbolizes the feeling of euphoria someone in love experiences while the trail of hearts represents the spread of love and happiness everywhere they go. I usually read romance novels when I want to experience that simple kind of joy, where time slows down and nothing exists except you and the love of your life. However, I read dystopian novels to speed life up, the characters are constantly running from danger and never have a moment of peace. Reading it spikes my adrenaline since there’s always some crucial event taking place where something valuable is on the line. Blending these genres will compose a tale with both crisis and affection which creates the perfect balance of running for their lives and doing something romantic with their lover. Assigning a genre to a book is complicated since most books are a blend of multiple. For example, Shatter Me by Tahereh Mafi, the prequel to Watch Me, has an equal amount of Dystopian and Romance, where the main character(Juliette Ferrars), whose touch is lethal, lives in a world controlled by a tyrannical government and falls in love with the son of the Supreme Commander of North America, Aaron Warner. Together, they overthrow the Reestablishment with their friends, uncovering many secrets along the way. Multiple genres add depth to a storyline since just one makes it slightly generic. A story about a teen who discovers they’re not human, is forced to go to a new place that humans can’t enter, and becomes friends with the unpopular dork over the rich, popular bully who becomes their arch nemesis is a dull fantasy-academia plot. All in all, genres are mainly used to figure out the way the book feels even though most books are a blend of more than one.