Well, here I am…getting assignments from my editor…not that I mind when the assignment is to read some more romance novels to get a better grip on where “Jumping in Puddles” falls on the spiciness spectrum. For those not aware, the Chili Pepper Rating scale is used to rate how spicy a romance novel is. It ranges from 0 chili peppers with nothing but longing glances to 5 chili peppers, which would be erotica…stories where sex is an integral part of the story-line.

So, with a little bit of help from my lovely niece, Jessica, I have been pouring over romance of various spiciness levels to see where my novel falls and in the process have found some really good reads!

As I have no real interest in zeros, ones, or twos, I started my journey with Olivia Cunning’s Backstage Pass series, following the rock band, Sinners, on tour as they fuck their way across the US and Canada. Each book is focused on one of the band members as they find their true love (that’s a trope I’ll always get on board with!) These are definitely 5 Chili Pepper reads. The sex is integral to the plot and plentiful even as the stories are poignant and engaging.

Next I dove into Olivia Dade’s Spoiler Alert series, based around several actors on a popular, long-running, fantasy TV show (a la Game of Thrones) and their journeys to true love. The themes of body positivity and diversity as well as neurodiversity are great to see and really make the stories resonate with me. These books probably fall into the 2.5 to 3 Chili Peppers level…the sex is explicit, but there really are only a couple of full-on explicit scenes. The rest are closed door or waves on the beach sort of thing.

Emily Henry was the next author I got into. I went into this one knowing that her reads are rated 2.5-3 Chili Peppers and that’s what they definitely were…one or two hot, explicit sex scenes with other less explicit interactions throughout. Her books are marginally linked together as they seem to be in the same universe (an author in one book is mentioned in another).

Lastly, I delved into Sawyer Bennett’s Cold Fury Series based around the Carolina Cold Fury NHL team as various players struggle to find true love. These books were rated a solid 4 Chili Peppers with 3 or more explicit scenes and pretty explicit language used throughout…hockey players don’t tend to pull punches, apparently. The series is 11 books long and each book follows a particular player against the backdrop of a team pushing to win (and ultimately winning) the Stanley Cup. The stories are great and reading them during the NHL playoffs this year made them even more timely. However, I didn’t like that some of the explicit scenes seemed to be barely consensual…’no’ definitely didn’t always mean ‘no’…this had me feeling uncomfortable a couple of times. Although perhaps the author was striving for reality as it seems a certain amount of sexual misconduct seems to be part of hockey culture (as brought to light in the charging of five Canadian Junior Team Hockey players with sexual assault), it still made me uncomfortable to see it in print.

So now comes the time when I have to do a comparison to “Jumping in Puddles” to see if I need to tone it down a little bit, or pump it up. After doing some stats, I found that my writing will definitely fall into a 3.5-4 Chili Peppers category and I’m fine with that. But now I’m hooked! Lots more books to read!