Between the Lines: Reading the Reader

As an author who is a Christian but not a Christian author, I've been thinking lately about why stories matter and what fiction reveals about us as readers. The only true sex scene in the Freedom Series is both graphic and traumatic. It exposes the inner world of a woman who is victimized and terrified, drawing the reader into what it means to have hope and intimacy stolen in the name of control. But purpose matters too, and the story wouldn't be the same without the power of those moments. They are the ash from which a phoenix is born.

All of my novels have at least one on-page sex scene, and I've met readers at every level of comfort with that. Some are disappointed because my stories aren't "spicy" enough. Others are scandalized to learn that my books are "spicy" at all. What's amazing is how two people can read the exact same book and walk away with completely different impressions. Where one avoids or ignores what they see as explicit content, another seeks deliberate understanding of trauma, shame, courage, and vulnerability.

Neither reader is incorrect, but what we notice most is driven by experience and perception—and I think sometimes we forget that it's not always about the sex in the story. Sometimes it's about the story happening between the lines, in the marginal space where every scene is a brushstroke on a portrait. We forget that fiction isn't just telling us what happened; it's inviting us to understand.

And I think maybe that's why fiction matters. Because the stories that shape us are always more than just a story.

I've been a reader most of my life, and the emotional impact of fiction on my personal development is a major part of why I do what I do. I still vividly remember the first romance novel I ever read, not just for the sexuality of a nineties bodice-ripper, but for the way that story introduced me to new ways of thinking, new people I wouldn't have met, and new understanding of how stories teach us.

That book welcomed me into a large, close-knit family. It showed me a culture I didn't yet know, and it held my hand as it walked me for the first time through the literary magic of unfortunate misunderstanding. A man with a terrible reputation thinks he's kidnapping a girl he knows. It's hardly more than a prank—but everything changes for everyone involved when he realizes he's got the wrong girl. Throw in a pirate uncle, a public scandal, and a couple of Regency-era ballgowns and...well.

Was there sex in it? Sure. Was that the point? Not at all. But that story showed me the power of storytelling. We have so few letters in the alphabet—but we mix and mold them in infinite ways, and the words we form shape the hearts of the people who read them.

This week, I read a book that's sticking with me more than I expected it to. It's the second in a series, and I was excited to see a story I loved continue to develop through the eyes of different characters...until the abundance of on-page action started to seem annoyingly gratuitous. I almost closed the book and set it aside, but somewhere along the way, I stopped asking why there was so much sex, and started asking why the heroine was so incapable of accepting kindness without it.

The more I read, the more I saw the depth of the story. And the more depth I saw, the more deeply I recognized the necessity of those scenes. They weren't interruptions in the story. They revealed the emotional foundation the rest of the story stood on.

I think we've all been through hard things. We all know someone whose love language is sarcasm because for them, sincerity is an open door to pain. We all know someone familiar with trauma. Most of us know what it feels like to mistake isolation for safety.

And apart from the sex, that's what the book was about. A woman so defensive she borders on hateful, and a man who looks hard enough to see through it. A woman playing the vixen because she thinks that's all she has to offer...and a man who allows it for a while, because it's the only way to show her the truth. Every scene mattered. Every physical moment carried non-physical context.

"Why does kindness make her so uncomfortable?"

"How can she accept physical intimacy while rejecting emotional connection?"

"Who hurt her? And how is this dude putting up with this?"

Those questions mattered, specifically because sex wasn't the point of the story. Instead, it was evidence of a story that wouldn't have been as powerful without it.

So, do I think every reader should read everything? No. Am I saying the content doesn't matter? Also no.

But what if we chose to look at stories as invitations, and characters as portraits of people? We often forget the dialogue, and we rarely remember what happened in which chapter...but if we look inside the story we're reading, perhaps we open a door that transforms anger into recognition of fear. Perhaps we see through arrogance to the insecurity hiding beneath. Or maybe, in the place where we once saw stereotypes, we begin to make room for humanity.

Maybe stories aren't the lessons we memorize. And maybe they don't have to be. But so often, the stories that make us fall in love with fiction are pictures of the people we carry...and maybe what we choose to notice inside them says just as much about the reader as it does about the author.

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Here's the thing, though. I understand why some readers gravitate to—or completely avoid—certain types of content. I know people who never read anything with even a spark of magic, people who can't sleep at night if they catch even a hint of horror, and still others who simply do not see the sense in fantasy. We all know ourselves, and it's okay that we all have different convictions, different temptations, different boundaries.

But avoiding and understanding are not always the same. We may not read war novels, but we don't accuse every war novel of glorifying violence. We may not enjoy memoirs, but we don't believe grief memoirs encourage or endorse suffering. So why do we treat romance or sexuality so differently?

At the core of almost every story, regardless of genre, we find a glimpse of what it means to be human—to work through fear, to hunger for power, to long for intimacy. Since the beginning of time, human relationships have always been the place from which we explore and understand who we are in relation to the people around us.

I've heard people describe the same novel as beautiful, dangerous, healing, offensive, romantic...the list goes on. Different readers, different experiences, different viewpoints. Maybe that's why we connect with fictional characters differently, too. Because stories don't just reveal the content of the character; they reveal the character of the reader.

So whatever you're reading this week, I hope you'll hold those pages with an open heart. I hope you'll see the characters with open eyes. I hope you'll open your mind to what reading fiction teaches us about ourselves. And I hope, as always, that you'll...

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