Still Doesn't Get It
In fairness to the genre, this is pretty much my reaction to Larry Niven.
Full disclosure, this is absolutely inspired by this piece from Halfwing – who seriously needs to quit his dumb job or whatever and get back to posting excellent TF/TG art before I steal more of his good ideas ;)
(True story: my introduction to this particular flavor of "romance novel" came when I was about twelve, at the height of my devoted-bookworm phase, and a lady at my church happened to leave one of the things lying around where I could get at it. Kid-me had more or less sussed out that the dollar paperbacks next to the checkout at the grocery store with Airbrush Fabio on the cover were some kind of prurient interest I was not equipped to process, but this one was dressed up all quasi-respectable as historical-ish fiction – something something buried secrets in an English country village – and kid-me figures, hey, I've read Silas Marner, that's basically the same thing, right?
The fact that there was a misunderstanding on my part became apparent soon enough, but the particulars weren't properly cleared up 'til I had to ask the adults in my life what "turgid" meant…)