The True Love Experiment

Fizzy’s books, in a literal sense, symbolize her career and ambition, but they also symbolize romance as a beloved fiction genre and allow the characters to reflect on attitudes toward popular entertainment more generally. This expands to include the reality dating TV show later on. Fizzy’s books illustrate the variety of romance plots and are sometimes a gentle in-joke about the world of romance. For instance, her titles often evoke genre tropes or stereotypes about romances. She mentions Cloaked Lust in the Prologue, which immediately invites a deprecatory assessment of the book’s literary value. Other titles are meant to show Fizzy’s range as an author. When Connor is going through Nat’s bookshelves, he finds Ravenous on the High Seas, which includes “a lost heir, a sword-wielding heroine, a country on the brink of war, and hidden treasure that could save them all” (28)—a book low on realism but high on fantastic appeal. Later, Fizzy admits that one of her books was a hit because it capitalized on the interest in DNADuo technology, showing how the romance genre is responsive to trends in popular culture.

The appeal of Fizzy’s books is a reflection of her appeal as a person; the reviews in Entertainment Weekly and the invitations to give commencement addresses show that she is highly regarded in her field and by her readers, no matter how others might denigrate her genre.