The Romance Novel That Cured My Genre Snobbery

I read Beach Read expecting to confirm what I thought I knew about romance novels. Emily Henry's book about two writers, January and Gus, who swap genres for the summer is not what I expected. The emotional intelligence of this novel, the specificity of the grief underneath it, and the genuine wit in the dialogue made me sit with my assumptions about the genre for a long time after I finished. I was wrong about romance and this was the book that showed me I was wrong.