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Romance & reality

Opinion

I’m a bestseller. My genre keeps bookshops alive. Stop calling it ‘trash’

Ali Berg Author September 23, 2025 — 7.35pm

A couple of weeks ago, I spoke at a packed-out romance panel at my favourite Australian bookstore – Readings Hawthorn – with some authors I idolise. At the end, a woman came up to me beaming. She told me that her book club has read all four of my novels because, as she put it, “We’re a trashy book club; we only read trashy books.”

She meant it with pure affection. Her eyes lit up as she described the joy of gathering with friends to swoon over fictional boyfriends and debate tropes (enemies-to-lovers versus only-one-bed is always a point of contention). I laughed with her. Who wouldn’t want to be in a book club like that?

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