When It’s NOT A Sentient Object Romance
By Graciella Delgado
Are the conversations surrounding these three novels indicative of a new trend in mislabeling literary fiction as knowledge of Sentient Object Romances continues to grow?
Over the course of the past six-ish months, something very specific keeps happening over and over again. I’ll be scrolling on social media and get a message or see a reference to an upcoming Sentient Object Romance. I, of course, tune in, get the title details, and look into it on my own, only to find that the book isn’t indie published like all the others are. My interest is piqued! I think, “Is this it? Are books like this finally known in the mainstream well enough to be traditionally published by Big 5 publishers?” I buy the book, request an ARC, or place a library hold. I read the book.
I am hit with a wave of confusion. This isn’t a Sentient Object Romance at all. It’s surrealist literary fiction about a lonely, out-of-place woman struggling to form relationships with other people and opts to fixate on an object nearby.
And this has happened three times so far.
Sky Daddy by Kate Folk, Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su, and Hard Copy by Fien Veldman all fall into this category of experience. Regularly, these three books get lumped into the Sentient Object Romance category based on surface-level descriptions and assumptions. The niche and bizarre sub-genre I hold so dear is becoming more commonly known by readers that are not its target demographic, thus resulting in mentions of it being the butt of the joke more often than not. With the Sentient Object Romance label being slapped on titles haphazardly, it’s not only misleading to genuine fans of the genre, but is also resulting in LitFic fans writing off books that are actually for them.
Sentient Object Romances make up a very niche subgenre in Romancelandia, love stories and erotic works centering objects that are typically inanimate that are now alive for a variety of magical, supernatural, and scientific reasons. They follow the standard genre conventions of romance in requiring the relationship between all parties involved being the driving force of the plot and ending in a “Happily Ever After.” Literary Fiction, on the other hand, is any fiction book centering the human condition or a character-driven plot. It’s character study that is not beholden to stricter rules like genre fiction is, so to confuse the two so constantly based solely on these specific Literary Fiction novels being odd and involving random objects feels…sloppy?
Hard Copy by Fien Veldman
Hard Copy by Fien Veldman is a book I’ve spoken about before on this column as it does still fall into the general category of love with a sentient object, but it’s not a romance. This follows a lonely young woman in a mind-numbingly mundane lower-level corporate job that serves as the gray backdrop to her blossoming connection to her desk printer. She finds joy in the printer, confides in it, and feels genuine care towards and from it. That printer is her best friend and she feels they communicate in a way entirely unique to them. When she’s put on medical leave from work and separated from her precious office tool, our narrator spirals into a crisis and we examine her personal history struggling with forming meaningful bonds with other people.
Sky Daddy by Kate Folk
Sky Daddy by Kate Folk follows a woman exploring her sexual and romantic attraction to airplanes. She is perpetually lonely and out of place, struggling for connection with her beloved airplanes and coworkers. She knows her attraction and desires are unusual, and she is fully aware of why she doesn’t have any friends. Understanding this disconnect, however, does not soothe the sting of solitude and rejection. We watch as she stumbles through attempts at dating human men and friendships with women in her age group, trying desperately to fit what's normal while holding onto her attraction to airplanes dearly in secret.
Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su
Blob: A Love Story by Maggie Su centers an aimless young woman who finds herself, once again, lonely and unlucky in love. She finds a mysterious blob of goo in an alleyway and takes it home thinking it’s a sickly species of blobfish that may need to be nursed back to health. She soon learns that the alien goo is eager to morph its physical form according to the request of our lonely narrator, and so it becomes a man. Like the title suggests, the central focus of this story is love, and while our main character does attempt to turn this blob into her ideal partner, the love we are meant to focus on and root for is the love our narrator needs to develop for herself.
This is also, honestly, the only Literary Fiction that I completely understand the confusion on. The title of it being “a love story” does set the expectation of romance being central (and it is!) but not in the way we’re expecting.
At the end of the day, though, none of these are romance novels.
With Sentient Object Romances entering further and further into the mainstream (or at least…general knowledge of its existence from viral social media posts) there’s been a recent trend of people mislabeling oddball literary fiction based solely on secondhand misinformation or a misunderstanding of the genre based on the brief description. People are eagerly miscategorizing more and more books to the point of constant confusion for enjoyers of strange novels about lonely women and Sentient Object Romances alike.
With how often the actual Sentient Object Romances go viral, I thought we were potentially inching closer to it bursting containment like how we’re seeing with specific fanfiction communities and omegaverse entering mainstream publishing. It would appear, however, that the opposite may be happening. Books that have little or nothing to do with my precious, niche genre are being sucked into the label for a brief laugh before the majority moves on without reading it because of how often this genre thrives on reactions from the general public to reviews or acknowledgements of the work. I actually find this weird recent trend to be quite frustrating in that it disorients fans of either way and is actively dissuading readers from finding books that actually are written for them. Fans of Literary Fiction centering perpetually awkward and complex women aren’t considering books they are, indeed the target demographic for and fans of sexy living objects finding love are accidentally stumbling into works much more serious in nature and not at all focused on a romance or anything lighthearted in nature like they had hoped. Worlds are colliding in the realm of weird fiction where they really shouldn’t be.
Not that I think the two groups need to be separated (I’m all for more people journeying into romances between humans and their desk lamps), but mislabeling ultimately hurts the authors searching for their desired and intended audiences and interferes with earnest community-building.