Why Romance??

Since this blog is about my romance reading habits, the first question one would ask is why romance? Why not mystery? Why not horror?
The main reason would be fear of the unkown. I've been an avid reader all my life. From those very first days of 'See Dick Run' - yes I'm that old - I have been hooked on reading. My first series of books I checked out of our local bookmobile were Freddy the Pig books. To this day I seem to be the only one who has read that wonderful series about Freddy the talking pig detective and all his various friends; the cat, the mice, the cow and the horse.
I've read all types of books in my life. I went through a Stephen King phase. I went through a true crime phase. I went through a biography and autobiographical phase. I even went through a sports book phase. I read Don Cherry's book. But now my choice of reading material is strictly romance. Many years ago, long before I settled on romance, I read a book called The Balloonist. Many of the details are sketchy; we are talking quite a few years ago, but the gist of the story is a young woman and small crew took a long flight in a hot air balloon over the Atlantic. Things did not go well. They ran into many difficulties and their journey was doomed. I wish I could remember exactly how it ended. It would strengthen my case, but suffice it to say, they didn't survive the journey. It was a totally unexpected ending. I even turned the book over, opened it again and checked to make sure I didn't miss some pages where they miraculously escaped. But there wasn't, and they didn't.
With that end and similar type endings in other books, I realized over time that when I closed the cover on a book, I wanted to feel better than when I first opened the book. I wanted to KNOW that there would be a happy ending. Romance books fill that need. And with all the different genres in romance today, I can still have different choices.