I think they can appeal to non-anime lovers depending on who developed the otome visual novel. The main focus of these kinds of games is to simply deliver a simple romantic story much like a book or novel but with added artwork and background music. And with these kinds of games technically being digital books, they give you choices to make that shape and change the story dynamically throughout and result in many very different endings (think the opposite of Mass Effect 3). Most visual novels are not all that great, but I found that ones made by Americans tend to be less 'anime-lover'ish and more enjoyable. The demo for Princess of Ruin covers the first arc of the story which is comprised of a third of the entire story so it should give an idea of what it has to offer.
