Another says it's a different writing voice and style. Further, my lead characters do not make love until they know they are in love even if they haven't told the other person. Everyone assumed that I deliberately wrote a variation on Romeo and Juliet, but the association didn't occur to me until I read the Romantic Times review. I had been wracking my brain for several days, looking for a theme, saw that show, turned off the TV and went to my computer. I think that African-American women are sick of seeing themselves represented as the misbegotten dregs of the cup, as is the case in nearly all mainstream fiction about African Americans whether written by men or women.
Exceptions are comparatively rare.
My readers express joy in reading stories about people like themselves in which there are happy endings. They say they are sick of vulgarity, profanity and immorality. Now, I am not a Puritan and I do not set out to write stuff that can be studied in seminaries. However, my mother insisted that I learn the English language. She claimed that one used profanity and vulgarity because one's vocabulary was insufficient to express oneself otherwise.