The Spanish Love Deception is a 2021 romance novel by Elena Armas that fits quite snugly within a faddish explosion of similar books on the theme of how mutual unattraction inevitably transforms into true love.
Most marketing of this novel is sure to include a quote from a reviewer that seems to have become a key element in successfully selling the premise. According to this reviewer, the novel contains “Everything you could want in a romance.” For readers of this novel, that means wanting the first-person protagonist, Catalina, to wind up with a workmate named Aaron even though they seem incapable of even being in the same room together without being just pain-crazy to each other. The pathway toward the inevitable happy ending that does, indeed, send the couple merrily on their way involves Catalina desperately needing a fake boyfriend immediately to accompany her back to Spain so that meeting with the family at the wedding of her sister is not entirely a nightmare. In addition to her family, of course, there is also the ex-boyfriend she ran away from in the first place which has her winding up in New York City working alongside Aaron.
Attempting to give readers everything they want in a romance is dangerous territory for any author working within the genre. Generally speaking, readers devoted to any specific genre do not want any surprises or upsetting of the conventions, so introducing any subversion of the genre is best ignored. Part of the enjoyment of reading within the same genre is the foreknowledge of enjoying the satisfying comfort of familiarity. With that in mind, it is not at all surprising that The Spanish Love Deception proved to be one of the most wildly popular romance novels in recent years. Likewise, however, those who are not fervent fans of a genre generally eschew books that fit within the category because they want and expect at least one or two aspects of a book to be different or offer an unexpected twist or surprise.
The implication of a book containing “everything” one could want in a romance is a dual-edged sword. For fans of the genre, it means a perfect reading experience. For non-fans of the genre, it is a dire warning to stay far away. That division sums up how one will approach The Spanish Love Deception. One could well argue that the author overcame this fundamental paradox by pointing to the same figures of success. On some level, it appears as though the novel was able to break through beyond the committed romance genre fanbase and offer some appeal to those who don’t habitually read romance novels.
One possible explanation is that many readers simply find Catalina’s narration appealing. In this case, the key to the popularity is not so much the story itself but how the story is being told. The first-person narration gets the job done but at the expense of potentially raising a red flag about the narrator’s reliability. The very first thing the reader learns about her, literally in the middle of the second sentence of the book, is about her self-image. She asks readers to “trust me, I had a vivid imagination.” If the narration that follows from that all through the rest of the book does not allow readers to agree with her self-summation, it could bring everything else she says under the spotlight of unreliability.
Or perhaps the book is yet another demonstration that the 21st century has become the Age of Irony. Perhaps readers have simply grown too suspicious of the love-at-first-sight idea of finding the perfect soul mate. This novel is one of a plethora of “I hate you then I love you” stories finding success not just within the page but on the big and small screen.
