Hey y’all…it’s Halloween season and as you may or may not know, I’m dedicating this entire month to the PARANORMAL!

Now in all honesty, I don’t tend to read a whole lot of PNR (aka Paranormal Romance) but I read my fair share. As I was digging around, looking for books to highlight, I realized that there’s a hell of a lot of paranormal subgenres and tropes (themes)! It can get confusing, or maybe that’s just me? 😏 For instance, did you know that PARANORMAL, SCIENCE FICTION and FANTASY could actually fall under different genres of Romance in general? I noticed that some people separate them into subgenres and some lump paranormal, science fiction and fantasy all together!

 

 

Yup…so in a nutshell, PARANORMAL is something that CANNOT be explained by science, is not what we’d consider “normal” and usually happens here on Earth.

For example: The Black Dagger Brotherhood series by J.R. Ward (check out my series list: Reading Order For The Black Dagger Brotherhood Series by J.R. Ward)

FANTASY is anything that your imagination can conjure up, usually something mystical.

For example: The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling

SCIENCE FICTION are stories that tend to take place on other planets, or they might occur in space or involve time travel.

For example: the Brides of the Kindred series by Evangeline Anderson

If any of these also involve romantic relationships, then they fall under the ROMANCE GENRE. And THEN, these books are usually labeled as the SUBgenre, PARANORMAL ROMANCE but they are actually different! Confused yet??

Here’s MY breakdown and yes some things fall under more than one category! Plus, I feel like these are kind of fluid, they’re interchangeable and can be mixed and matched…

ROMANCE (Genre)

⇒Paranormal (Subgenre):

• Shape shifters: anything that can change from a human to something else,  i.e. wolf, bear, dragon, tiger, coyote, jaguar etc.

• Vampires

• Ghosts/Ghouls

• Demons/Angels

• Psychics/Telepathics

• Witches/Warlocks

• Zombies

⇒Fantasy (Subgenre):

• Fairies/Fae

• Elves

• Goddesses/Gods

• Pixies

• Valkyries

• Mages/Wizards

• Djinns/Genies

• Dragons/Unicorns

• Griffins/Gargoyles

• Dwarves/Giants

• Gnomes/Goblins

• Sorcerers

• Lycan/Werewolf

⇒Science Fiction (Subgenre):

• Robots

• Aliens

• Interstellar Travel

• UFOs

• Parallel Universe

• Time Travel

• Post Apocalyptic

(I probably missed about a thousand other things but you get the gist!)

 

Ok, tell me what YOU think! Do you think Paranormal Romance should all be lumped together or separated into subgenres? Does it matter?!?