Love at the Line Level

Prose That Really Did It for Me

Some quick housekeeping:

1. Big thanks to Anne Helen Petersen’s Culture Study for the shoutout, and welcome to her readers! I hope you’ll dive into my comment section with the same passion you bring to hers.

2. While I have no plans to turn on paid subscriptions, I’m always open to thoughtful sponsors who treat love stories as the serious, joyful, transformative art they are.

That’s why I’m thrilled to be sponsored this week by A Novel Romance, an independent bookstore in Louisville, Kentucky dedicated entirely to romance. Their vision is simple but powerful: to create an inclusive sanctuary where the magic of love and literature intertwine.

All book links in this issue point to their storefront. If something here tempts you to click “buy,” I’d love for you to do it through them. And let this be your reminder to support your local indie—especially the ones that know how to alphabetize by trope.

Onwards!

Love at the Line Level: Prose that Really Did it For Me

Romance readers often talk about tropes, structure, or steam. And those things, the what of it all, matter deeply. They determine whether a story captures your attention, whether you stay up too late reading, whether the chemistry sizzles or falls flat.

But I confess: I care just as much, if not more, about the how. How are things said? What’s the actual language that delivers the story into your heart and keeps it echoing there long after you’ve left the pages behind?

In that spirit, I’m kicking off a recurring series called Love at the Line Level: Prose That Really Did It For Me. This isn’t about crowning or canceling. It’s about paying close attention. When a line works on me—really works—I want to understand why. What’s it doing on a craft level? What makes it land? What makes it stay?

Going forward, I’ll be alternating between longer essays and shorter pieces like this— lines I can’t stop thinking about, spotlights on books that deserve more attention. I’ll be back next Tuesday with a longer-form piece, but in the meantime: let’s talk about the sentences that made us feel something.

---

Characterization: When One Line Tells You Everything

The great romance writers have the gift of delivering an entire character, fully formed, in a single sentence.

Emily Henry, Happy Place:

Kimmy doesn’t cackle; she guffaws. Like every one of her laughs is Heimliched out of her. Like she’s constantly being caught off guard by her own joy.

In just three sentences, Henry delivers a fully realized character. “Guffaws” signals unselfconscious, full-body joy, while “Heimliched” adds comic surprise—a laugh that bursts out whether she wants it to or not. But the final line is the quiet triumph: Kimmy isn’t just joyful—she’s startled by it. That detail gives the prose emotional texture. It’s playful, precise, and just left of expected. 

Emily Henry, Happy Place:

Hank hugs me before we’re even introduced.

Here, Henry is even more efficient: seven words, and we already know who Hank is. Warm, unguarded, the kind of man who leads with affection. But this line also tells us something about Harriet. That Hank’s ease surprises her. That this kind of familial warmth feels like unfamiliar terrain. In one gesture, we meet Hank and glimpse the emotional scaffolding Harriet grew up without.

Annabel Monaghan, It’s a Love Story:

‘I’ve got this’ means I have this. I am not without.

The first time I ever saw my mother walk into a store, run her hand over a sweater, and then buy it, I felt actual joy. I do not exaggerate when I say that watching my mother purchase things that she didn't need was the great joy of my childhood. It was hope fulfilled.

Monaghan builds a whole emotional economy in these lines. “I am not without” signals both present-day independence and a childhood shaped by lack. The sweater moment is specific, but the feeling is universal: the awe of watching someone you love step, tentatively, triumphantly, into abundance. It’s about money, yes, but also about safety. Possibility. A life expanding just enough to allow for softness. This is character-building through lineage: we don’t just understand Jane, we understand what shaped her, and why having something now means something.

Annabel Monaghan, It’s a Love Story:

He picks up, groggy. It’s nine thirty. “Hi, Dan? This is Jane Jackson.”

“Why?” It’s definitely the first word he’s said today.

In a single, spare exchange, Monaghan sketches Dan with her trademark wry precision. He’s unbothered by social norms, unafraid to be rude, unapologetically himself—even when groggy and half-asleep. But the line also gives us Jane: her surprise at his bluntness, her judgement of his sloth. It’s another moment that reveals both characters at once, not just who they are, but how they slightly miss each other in tone.

---

Metaphor: When Words Are More Than Enough

Metaphor in romance isn’t just decorative, it’s diagnostic. The best metaphors don’t just describe what something looks like. They tell us how it feels. They collapse the space between physical and emotional, inner and outer, language and sensation.

Annabel Monaghan, It’s a Love Story:

I ran my fingers over the inside of his hand like it was a gift that had just been given to me and I wanted to learn how it worked.

This metaphor is tender, physical, and reverent all at once. It turns a hand into a talisman: something sacred and newly acquired, fragile enough to study. The rhythm is gentle, deliberate—just like the motion it describes.

Emily Henry, Happy Place:

Some passengers in the back burst into applause, and I yank out my earbuds, anxiety lifting off of me like dandelion seeds.

This line impressed me with its ability to make emotional release feel both immediately recognizable and completely fresh, transforming it into something visual and tactile. “Dandelion seeds” conveys lightness, ephemerality, and even the vulnerability of scattering. It’s metaphor with movement, a sensation you can picture and feel. 

---

Rhythm: When the Sentence Feels Like the Feeling

Sometimes a line lands not because of what it says, but because of how it moves. The rhythm mirrors the emotion. The syntax carries the shape of the feeling. 

Emily Henry, Happy Place:

And no matter the weather—feet of snow or sun bleeding the thirsty fields dry—when I walk up the steps and put my key into the lock, I feel a lift in my chest, a surety:

He will be waiting on the other side, still covered in sawdust and smelling like pine. Before I even see him, my heart starts singing its favorite song.

You, you, you.

This is musical writing that builds and releases. The long buildup mimics anticipation. The final “you, you, you” is the heartbeat, a staccato refrain that hits like longing and comfort in the same breath. The sentence doesn’t just describe love. It enacts it.

---

Humor: The Missing Element 

I’m always surprised how many rom-coms forget the second half of the name, mistaking quirk for comedy, or assuming that a volley of dialogue automatically qualifies as banter. It’s not surprising, really. Being genuinely funny is a skill—a rare one. So when a book startles a full laugh out of me, it feels like a gift.

Emily Henry, Funny Story:

A shared cuckolding is the most fertile ground from which love could ever spring.

It’s absurd. It’s erudite. It’s structurally perfect. And it works because the voice is completely, unapologetically committed. Humor at the line level isn't just about content—it’s about timing, tone, and delivery. In a genre built on emotional stakes, a line like this is both pressure valve and punctuation mark.

Annabel Monaghan, It’s a Love Story:

And the science of male-female interaction dictates that the more I make him laugh, the less he’ll want to be touched by me.

If Henry’s humor is bold and theatrical, Monaghan’s is sly and resigned. There’s no rimshot here, no punchline, just a perfectly weighted observation that slides in and sits there, uncomfortable in the best way. And that phrase: “the science of male-female interaction,” lands like something out of Romantic Comedy by Curtis Sittenfeld. In fact, when I first jotted it down, I double-checked the source, thinking it had come from Sittenfeld. That wasn’t a reaction I’d had to Monaghan’s earlier books—but in her latest, she’s operating on a new level. (More on that next week.)

---

Structure: The Delivery Is the Difference

And finally, a line from Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue. 

Partially because it’s Pride Month. Partially because this book is so good that, when I finished it for the first time, I turned straight back to page one without ever leaving the couch—already mourning a story I wasn’t ready to let go of.

Should I tell you that when we’re apart, your body comes back to me in dreams?

It’s not just outrageously romantic (even the movie knew this was original dialogue worth preserving at all costs). What makes it brilliant is how McQuiston delivers it. This line could never survive as spoken dialogue—not even with Henry’s linguistic poise. It would sound peacockish. Theatrical. Overwritten. And as interiority, it would isolate Henry’s longing from Alex’s experience of it.

Enter the genius of the epistolary form in Red, White & Royal Blue. It allows the reader to feel the full impact: both expression and reception. And somehow, in that quiet written exchange, the line lands on us too.

I keep reading that one paragraph over and over again. You know which one.

Us too, Alex. That line. And all the others that stay with us—the ones we highlight. Reread. Carry around. The ones that remind us: great love stories aren’t only about what happens— but how they’re written.

P.S. While procrastinating on editing this piece, I read the Elle Best Books of Summer 2025 article. The curation is excellent, the write-ups compelling, but what struck me most was the elevation of a quote from Among Friends by Hal Ebbott, a novel shelved firmly as literary fiction (with a capital F) and blurbed by Booker Prize winner John Banville.

They were like scars, these talents, like things learned in war: even when they were of use, part of her wished not to know.

The line is beautiful. Evocative. But once I was through admiring how it landed in my ear, I tried to untangle the metaphor and found it less precise than I’d hoped. The throughline—talents → things learned in war → useful but better left unknown—is clear and decidedly interesting. But “scars” threw me. Scars aren’t useful, I couldn’t help thinking, as I chased the sentence around my head a few more times to see if I’d missed something.

And to be fair, maybe I have. Regardless, the line is undeniably lovely. The book likely is too.

All I’m trying to say is: the gap between literary fiction and the books we looked at today? It’s not so big, is it?

Different subjects. Different themes, for certain.

But on the level of language—of rhythm, metaphor, surprise?

Not so different after all.

I’ll be back next Tuesday with a longer-form piece. In the meantime, I really want to hear from you in the comments: What are the sentences that have truly 'done it' for you? Share your favorite line-level moments in the comments below!

Image Credit: the_romcom_bookshelf