I like to think I’m widely read in the romance genre, but when The Romance Writers of America announced the RITA award finalists in March, I looked over the list in confusion. I’d only heard of a handful of authors, and I’d read just four of the finalists.

Was I doing romance wrong? 

A quick primer: RWA holds a contest meant to “promote excellence in the romance genre by recognizing outstanding published novels and novellas.” Winners receive a RITA award, named after Rita Clay Estrada, the first president of RWA. This year, about 75 distinct titles are finalists in 13 different categories. Only three finalists are by authors of color; only six are about queer relationships.  In 13 of the past 20 years, white authors swept the RITAs, winning every award in every category. No black author has ever won a RITA. After a huge uproar about the 2018 finalists, RWA pledged to improve its process. But this year’s finalists are as inexplicably wrong as they were last year, leaving RWA to admit it has a judging problem and the rest of us to wonder what the hell happened. 

A friend challenged me to read all the RITA finalists; although the slightest wind is enough to deter me from biking along Lake Michigan, climbing a ridiculous reading mountain is exactly my kind of endurance feat. In the end, I read 60 out of the 65 finalists in 11 RITA categories. 

I have some conclusions about what I found in the books and how this suggests broader problems with how the contest is run. But the biggest takeaway: It isn’t me doing romance wrong, it’s the RITAs. 

#1: Romance has a white privilege problem. An overwhelming number of the white authors in the finals write books set in homogenized, white worlds. Regardless of whether the characters are human beings or paranormal creatures, whether they are in contemporary or historical settings, and whether they live in small towns or major cities, these are texts largely populated with white, cis-gendered heterosexual characters. In these books, white, European standards of beauty are pervasive; cops and soldiers are always portrayed as heroic warriors for justice; brown and black people in foreign countries are at best extras and at worst cannon fodder for white characters on epic adventures.

#2: Romance talks about money but not class. At the end of a satisfying romance, readers must believe that the love interests are happy and secure, and money equals security. That doesn’t make it any less remarkable that there are few middle- or lower-class characters among the nominees; that male characters are always far wealthier than the women they fall in love with; and that no white billionaire in a romance would ever vote for Donald Trump despite much electoral evidence to the contrary.

#3: Only a third of RITA finalists are truly excellent romances. The list cleaves itself neatly into thirds: excellent romances I’d recommend to anyone, competent books that I might recommend to a reader looking for something specific, and profoundly problematic books that I wouldn’t recommend to anyone. Sure, I’m just one reader, but I am a reader with a fierce, loyal love for the genre. Something is very wrong when a reader like me finds a solid third of the books to be unreadable— be it the writing style, characterizations, or themes. Many of the year’s best-regarded books are not finalists—either because authors chose not to enter them or because they were eliminated in the preliminary round. It's impossible to know why innovative, interesting books aren’t in the finals, but the presence of poorly written and sometimes deeply offensive books is a problem RWA must solve.

#4: The current RITA selection process fails to achieve the stated purpose of the contest. I can rattle off the names of a host of other book awards for both genre and literary fiction—Edgar, Hugo, Newbery, Pulitzer. I know they are a mark of quality and excellence even if I’m not widely read in those genres. The biggest problem with the RITAs is the process. Authors pay to enter their books, and the contest remains open until the 2000 slots are filled. The preliminary round is judged by other authors who receive no training in scoring entries or avoiding bias. The result is a process that can’t identify the best books in the pool of entries, let alone the best books in the genre.

At this year’s RWA conference, the board will evaluate potential changes to the RITA process that are meant to address reader bias in judging. This won’t be an easy problem to solve. The genre is huge, and between traditional and self-publishing, hundreds of new romances are released per month. There are excellent stories in romance, and the genre is hungry for the respect it deserves. But how can we expect others to recognize our best work when we can’t find a way to do so ourselves?  

Jennifer Prokop is the Kirkus romance correspondent and co-hosts the romance podcast Fated Mates. You can find her on Twitter @JenReadsRomance.