Book Genres that i’m still confused about

Helloo! 👋🏼

Truth be told, I only started to really see the larger broadcast of the different genres as I became a book blogger.. and yep, there’s definately still confusion for some of them!

Romance / erotica

So.. I thought every love story WAS romance.. but turns out it isn’t! 😳 I’ve recently found out that the relationship needs to be the plot line AND have a happy ending to be a ‘true romance’.

And erotica- now I do know the difference between erotica and smut, what i’m still confused about is how not all romances that contain some spicy inside isn’t eroticas??

Mystery / thriller

For the longest time I thought those two were interchangeable 😅.. is it one of those “every thriller is a mystery but not every mystery is thriller” kinda thing? Because they sure comes together a load of times!

YA / Adult

Okay, *theorically* that’s not a genre. BUT what even is the split? At first I thought the age of the MC- but that’s not it.

It is kinda like other medias? E for everyone = MG, PG13 = YA & R = adult? But then- teenagers do need safe and healthy depictions of sex in novels.. so where do we draw the line?? 🤔

As I started labelling my book reviews with the genres of the book, you can guess that’s kinda tricking me 😅 I’ll just settle for what Storygraph gives me.. which isn’t the same as GR sometimes!

And that’s only within the genres I like to read, there’s probably a few others that I don’t know very well.

Is there genres that still confuses you, Or that used to in the past?