A couple of months ago, I wrote about “aspirational stories” and how our hopes and goals are sometimes reflected in the stories we read or write. Today, I want to talk more about the aspirational nature of some stories because this concept is part of why I love the romance genre so much.

As I mentioned before, according to Google, aspiration is “a hope or ambition of achieving something.” Most of us hope for or want to achieve something in our lives, but that doesn’t mean every story we choose to read will be aspirational.

That said, whatever our usual favored genres, we might sometimes be in the mood for an uplifting story. Happy endings usually create that sense, but happiness is subjective.