A good romance feels like putting two puzzle pieces together. One piece might be gruff and grumpy while the other is sweet and affectionate. Two pieces might be very alike, but detest each other: similar-shaped curves that just won't line up. One proud piece, one prejudiced. The dramatic core of the romance novel is the moment when the two pieces finally click! into place, but for that click to satisfy, readers need to know those puzzle pieces in detail. Their shapes, their histories, their hard and soft edges, the curves and scope of all the different parts that make two people work. It means that every romance novel is at its heart a character study, an examination of those details that make someone who they are.
Unsurprising then, that in romance literature as everywhere else, race matters. The choice to write a character as a particular race is never a coincidence. Though whiteness is often permitted to pass uncommented, Sally Rooney's novels are as much about what it is like when two white people fall in love as Tia Williams' are an ode to the romantic experience of two Black people. Our racial identities and experiences form a core part of our personhood. In a character study, they're significant.
