"Upbeat and heartfelt..."
- Sheri Linden, The Hollywood Reporter
"Move over Grisham and King, it turns out that the true titans of publishing are women..."
- Myrocia Watamaniuk, Hot Docs Canadian International Film Festival
"It’s easy to dismiss this H.E.A. (Happily Ever After) literature, but the film surprises with its feminist message: Romance fiction is sneered at, we’re told, because it’s written by, read by, and is about women. This is the one place where you will consistently find women’s sexuality treated fairly and positively. As one author puts it: “You can have sex without dying horribly, which I thought was a plus.”
– Marsha Lederman, The Globe and Mail
"For romance aficionados, Love Between the Covers will articulate and confirm all the reasons they love romance. For viewers who know little or nothing about romance fiction, Kahn’s documentary will deliver one astonishment after another."
- Donna Seaman, The Booklist Reader
"The feature-length film takes an affectionate look at the vast, unheralded community of women who have effectively kept the publishing industry afloat..."
- James Sullivan, The Boston Globe
"The joy and excitement of the participants here are palpable... Show readers some love and buy this film."
- Melanie C. Duncan, Shurling Lib., Macon, GA, Library Journal
"The documentary was really fabulous! It gives viewers an intimate portrait of the careers of Eloisa James, Radclyffe/L.L. Rand, Beverly Jenkins, Susan Donovan, Celeste Bradley and newcomer Joanne Lockyer — among others. The biggest takeaway for us was the empowerment that the romance genre provides."
- Kristin Wise, RT Book Reviews
"Romance writing isn’t just a billion-dollar industry. It’s also the nicest meritocracy around."
- Emma Teitel, Maclean's Magazine
"A light, bubbly, unwaveringly feel-good doc, Laurie Kahn’s Love Between the Covers plays as a celebration of the often-maligned world of romance fiction... After a witty credit sequence playing with that cover imagery, one of the film’s first revelations is that romance writers cannot be pigeonholed as faceless, soulless hacks word counting every paragraph...
A slickly-produced, entertaining doc."
- Maurie Alioff, POV Magazine
"In addition to directly addressing sexism in the romance industry, the novelists that director Laurie Kahn interviews make some great sociological critiques about the constructed nature of genre, conventions, and reader expectations; Nora Roberts says (paraphrased) “if I read a mystery and didn’t find out who the killer was by the end, I’d be pissed. Is that formulaic? No, it’s a reader expectation. So why is it formulaic when characters in a romance live happily ever after?”...
This film feels like a welcome update to Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance, with the focus shifted away from readers and toward writers and the publishing industry."
- Diana Miller, Canadian Sociological Association
"If you've ever been curious to pick up a romance novel and see what lies within those pages, prepare for some eye-opening revelations. Director Laurie Kahn delves deep into the wildly thriving and powerful community of women who read and write romance novels. Following a breadth of prominent authors including Nora Roberts and Beverly Jenkins, and a diverse array of scholars and publishing professionals, this documentary questions why romantic fiction continues to be dismissed and trivialized when it should be celebrated for creating powerful heroines and delivering the proverbial happy ending. Readers and authors unite to blow open stereotypes and challenge the perception of their craft, in this groundbreaking exploration of a billion dollar business dominated by women."
- Lucy Mukerjee-Brown, The Los Angeles Film Festival
"[A] smart, fun documentary...The film offers a trove of fascinating lore, diving into the extreme backlash the genre has met with since its origins in the domestic fiction and marriage plots of the late 19th century...An inspirational thread of feminist idealism runs through this film and the genre itself."
- Molly Boyle, The Santa Fe New Mexican
"Love Between the Covers is my favorite documentary of the year so far and could easily turn out to be the best one I see in 2015."
- Ren Jender, Bitch Flicks
"Quite simply, Love Between the Covers is about, well, love. It’s a fun documentary of smart, talented women who hone their craft and the women who adore their novels coming together in a great, shared female space... I was impressed by how Love Between the Covers took a feminist stance–an intersectional feminist stance at that!–about a topic that could have so easily resulted in a puff piece."
-Laura Di Girolamo, Cinefilles
“Love Between the Covers is an appealing doc that looks into an oft-ignored genre with humour and humanity...
IS LOVE BETWEEN THE COVERS ESSENTIAL FESTIVAL VIEWING?
Yes. Love Between the Covers will not just cater to fans of romance novels, but audiences who enjoy writing, reading and exploring the creative process.”
- Jordan Adler, Toronto Film Scene
