Romance tropes. As readers, we have a love/hate relationship with them. The love triangle. The Cyrano.  Instantaneous love at first sight. While these are often still found in books, the literature is breaking these molds and moving in newer directions. One onus that is driving this is a more widely diverse set of protagonists, especially with the continued We Need Diverse Books movement. We are seeing more diverse protagonists in adult romance stories—as evidenced by The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang, where Stella, our main female protagonist, is on the autism spectrum.

Similar strides are being made in YA, with characters mirroring the variety of diversity we’d see in real life—and giving readers a chance to embrace a wider selection of stories they can identify with. Here are a few different varietals of protagonist that people might consider adding to their to-be-read lists:

For more, go to http://www.heartskiss.com/ and select Issue #11. Purchase through Kindle or Kobo for electronic access.