If you are someone who enjoys stories with a lot of characterization, you would probably enjoy Charlaine Harris.
While her Sookie books are the most popular (and I really like tham), I enjoy a little five book mystery series written by her about a woman named Lily Bard even more. Lily works as a cleaning woman in various homes in a tiny town in Arkansas, and as the series goes on, you discover that something horrible happened to her in the past to make her hide out in this little town, and that makes her so untrusting and antisocial. As the books go on, Lily learns how to be human again - and edges towards happiness despite herself.
So Harris is into making deep character studies and putting her characters through some hard times so they can develop - but she doesn't ever get to the point where things get all emo. either.
I do really like the Sookie books.
Sookie is a beautiful busty blonde bar waitress in a tiny town in Louisiana. She is intelligent, though not well educated, as her family did not have money to send her to college. She is sweet and supportive of her friends, but can also be tough if situations require that. Sookie also has a problem in that she was born being able to read minds. This puts her off relationships with human males, as she knows their (ahem) intentions.
And then she meets a vampire and realizes that she cannot read the minds of supernatural people...
There is some romance and sex in all of the books but
Dead as a Doornail is probably the one that focuses the most on relationship issues, as several males wish to court Sookie.
But the romance angle is only part of it - there is plenty of action and adventure, and there is usually as much focus on Sookie's relationships with family and friends as there is with her various supernatural suitors.