Does WhyChoose Sapphic Romance Exist?

Today's blog post was prompted, as so many are, by me scrolling through new releases and then suddenly pausing on a title. In this case, it was Adrian J. Smith's Nanny in the Middle, a sapphic whychoose romance.

Until I saw "whychoose" in the subtitle, I didn't know sapphic whychoose existed.

But it does! It's a small niche within the sapphic/wlw sub-genre, but is largely eclipsed by the much more widely-known FMM whychoose niche.

And to understand whychoose sapphic fiction, we need to first understand what the heck whychoose means.

What is the whychoose romance trope?

"Whychoose" grew out of the love triangle trope, with a few wise authors realizing they didn't want their characters to have to choose between love interests. Why choose, when their characters could have both?!

Whychoose is also now the more politically correct term used to describe what are sometimes still called reverse harem novels, where one female main character loves and is loved by multiple male love interests.

Obviously, the term reverse harem doesn't work with sapphic fiction, and neither does harem, since the word implies there is a male-identifying person at the center of the harem who is loved and loves the women in the harem.

Whychoose, however, does work with sapphic fiction, since it doesn't specify the gender of the people involved in the romantic relationship.

Whychoose is also considered a type of polyamorous relationship, where one character has multiple romantic partners, all of whom are aware of each other and may or may not themselves be linked romantically or sexually.

Does sapphic whychoose romance exist?

Sapphic whychoose does exist, though the books that contain only women-loving-women relationships, and not MF relationships as well, is small. I was only able to find 4 books that are explicitly WLW whychoose, without any MF relationships in the story: Adrian J. Smith's book, Children of the Night by Cara Malone, Tricky Girls by Holly Thorne, the Killer Queens series by Kylie Cross, and Alpha by Cheyenne Browning.

In fact, the dearth of sapphic whychoose romances is why Holly Thorne wrote Tricky Girls, according to her TikTok.

While I love authors writing the stories they want to see, it saddens me that Thorn had to do this, that she couldn't find enough of the stories she wanted to read already.

And the reason behind the lack of WLW whychoose romance books out there is the same as the lack of WLW romance readers; people are weird about WLW romance.

So many think it isn't for them, even if they do read other queer fiction. They'll read all the MM they can find, but avoid FF, sapphic, WLW romances unless they achieve the acclaim that more recent releases like Ashley Herring Blake's brilliant Bright Falls series, or Alexandria Bellefleur's Written in the Stars or Count Your Lucky Stars have.

No doubt that internalized misogyny is to blame, but rather than focusing on that can of worms, let's do the opposite: focus on the positive. The fact that Thorn, Cross, and Smith all have sapphic whychoose romance novels out this year gives me hope that there are more to come. That this is a sub-genre on the rise, and in the next few years, we'll see sapphic whychoose cropping up in many different sub-genres, from historical to sci-fi and maybe even western, too.

I'll even be sharing sapphic whychoose romance plot prompts later this week to inspire any writers looking to take a dip into this new, exciting sub-genre.

Until next blog post, happy reading and writing.