Sakura of DOOM

Or the protagonist in a story depicting gay culture happens to be the only monogamous gay character. Or the good characters in a novel about India are all anti-suttee, and the bad characters are all pro-suttee. Hell, even the stories where bad characters are allergic to the good characters' cats annoy me.

It's not so much that I object to all romance heroines being feminists; it's that I object to them being 20th century feminists rather than 19th century feminists (or 16th century, or whatever). I can see that it might be hard to identify with someone who was antifeminist, enough to write the character, even. But I really like the thought process for being feminist, or abolitionist, or whatever in the context of the time and culture; I don't like time-travel stories without a time-traveler.

I would be interested in any romance recs that you felt dealt with race well. I've been racking my brain and not thinking of any, but that's probably because I'm trying to think of them. Elizabeth Grayson's So Wide the Sky was good; the hero is half-Indian, and the heroine is a white captive (in a comparatively unromanticized treatment) who is returned to the whites and is unable to fit in. I have a guilty fondness for Chase's The Sandalwood Princess, but it's terrible on race -- Magical Negro Indian, sexualized Indian Princess, etc. I liked it for the other tropes.