What is a reverse harem

This weekend I came across a post on Reddit discussing the Reverse Harem genre and how what we call it may or may not have unanticipated connotations. I have been thinking a lot about how the Reverse Harem genre has evolved since I first became interested in it and, more recently, what is a reverse harem, how requests on the blog have evolved. After researching this topic off and on, I decided it was time I actually took a stab at articulating my thoughts.

This post was born from the comments thread of a months-old post on the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books blog, where a few other readers and I talked briefly about the reverse harem trope and its popularity. While I have coauthored several reverse harem RH romance books, I should say that I do not see myself as an absolute authority on the subject, and readers and authors alike will probably agree with some of my points and disagree with others. The largely held expectation is that the female main character never has to choose between the love interests, and she should end up with all of them. WhyChoose is a popular hashtag denoting an RH story both on book retailer sales pages and on social media. I am not going to attempt solving that puzzle in this post, but author T. Mann was generous enough to share with me how she once explained it at an author-reader event: RH books focus on relationships over sex.

What is a reverse harem

Sarah S. Twitter: missbookgoddess Instagram: Sarahbookgoddess. View All posts by Sarah S. But have you heard of reverse harem romance books? Shall we? In a reverse harem romance, the protagonist has multiple partners to choose from. According to The Naughty Book Box , there are additional reverse harem words to know, like:. And although these books often come in series, standalone books, like With a Bite and a Howl recommended below, do exist, too. I was fortunate to talk to reverse harem author Smauggy , who has written the popular Eternals series , about writing reverse harem romance. A few months prior, I had left an abusive relationship and was dating my now husband and had some challenges dealing with past trauma. I found a reading app that I used often to distract myself and then I started writing on there. The story projected a lot of my own life experiences will never make this mistake again! The story kind of spiraled into a reverse harem mafia romance from there.

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Books featuring a single heroine and multiple men, all of whom she is in a committed relationship with, are hardly new. Their golden years were from roughly to , give or take a few years. From a sociological perspective, there are a couple of things I could discuss — the increasing acceptance of alternative lifestyles, the new ease with which indie authors can get themselves recognised, etc, etc. Manga of course gets an honourable mention. Harems are common there, and from that we get the shiny new genre name: reverse harem. Suddenly, these books have managed to rebrand themselves. One reason behind this sudden surge is that the reverse harem genre has managed to diversify.

But what does it mean? What is Reverse Harem anyway? Simply put, Reverse Harem, also known as RH, is a romance story that involves multiple love interests of 3 or more men. You get the picture. Then I read one. And another one. And yet another one.

What is a reverse harem

Sarah S. Twitter: missbookgoddess Instagram: Sarahbookgoddess. View All posts by Sarah S. But have you heard of reverse harem romance books? Shall we? In a reverse harem romance, the protagonist has multiple partners to choose from.

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The story projected a lot of my own life experiences will never make this mistake again! For more guidance, see Wikipedia:Translation. The most distinguishable trait is the group of polyamorous females or males who accompany the protagonist and, in some instances, live with the protagonist. Given my admittedly nonexistent experience with reverse harem in Japanese manga and anime, I will not be covering it in this post. Mixed harem: a female protagonist has multiple partners of mixed genders with the focus still being on the heroine. The reverse harem genre recently arose from its roots in the Japanese Otome games and anime to gain popularity in Western romance fiction. Manga artists Anime directors. This queer paranormal reverse harem romance with male-on-male sexual action is sure to draw you in. Bones, April 4 In addition, sexuality is not as heavily foregrounded in reverse harem novels as it is in traditional harem novels, C.

Namera is currently an English student at the University of Cambridge who loves romance novels, Harry Potter, true crime stories, and cats.

Teo, Hsu-Ming. She gets them all, and they all live out their happily ever after as one united family. The definitions below are in the order of the kinds of Reverse Harems you indicated you preferred. Sign me up. Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive. It also allows for some great backstories and world-building. Leave a comment Cancel reply. Her day job is being a demure boarding-school student. Winter signs away her life to Giovanni, a Mafia member, to release her brother from a burdening debt. She loves them, they love her, and the reverse harem dynamic is simply accepted as fact. Stunich, C. Readers still want RH, and I expect this to continue indefinitely. People Manga artists Anime directors.