Romance Novels

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I'm also going to chime in on how awesome the last book in the Bedwyn series is.

I've been reading books set in what's known as The/An Omegaverse in which people are Alpha, Beta, or Omega. Mpreg is one one of the tropes that shows up. One aspect of some of the Omegaverse settings is that they don't include any women. Like there is one where it was explained as some kind of cataclysmic event and then men evolved, but it's still a dangerous medical event. For the most part though, it's just m/m romance, with men giving birth. The authors tend to be women, so that weirds me out more than a little.

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Mar 6, 2020 0:29:22 GMT -4 Carolinian said:

I'm new to the romance genre so appreciate the author suggestions. I listen to audiobooks via Scribd while I work to keep me focused and enjoyed the two by Loretta Chase I've listened to. OTOH I listened to The Duke I Tempted by Scarlet Peckham and thought it was dreadful- the female lead runs a plant nursery and it was obvious the author did minimal research. I'm looking forward to listening to Mary Balough.

Suggestion-- I read a chick lit romance, Well Met by Jen DeLuca. Romance at the Renn Faire. Sweet and frothy, no surprises but a pleasant journey.

I had actually just checked out Well Met from the library for this weekend's reading:)

Glad to hear it's worth a read.

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Since I've been home, I've been going through and re-reading my romance 'keepers' to see if they're still keepers, and whoo boy, you can definitely see a division line time-wise in terms of length/depth of plot. Some of my old Harlequins/Silhouettes have marital infidelity (both hero and heroine), poverty, addiction issues, domestic violence, etc.

I started flipping through some old Gellis, Woodiwiss, and Lindsey books and those things were 350+ pages with tiny print, and a crapton of detail and background plots, with the H/H not even meeting til page 50! Even Lord of Scoundrels, which I just re-read took time to get the plot really moving.

Around about the early 2000s, the books start to get thinner and the print larger, and I don't have a lot of keeper books published after then. I know there was a huge publisher consolidation and the decline of the midlist, along with the rise of what critics called the Regency Disneyland. A lot of my favorite authors disappeared or took their writing in totally different directions (Lorraine Heath) and I just lost interest. I kept buying books that sounded good but they went to the TBR pile. I have favorite post-2000 authors like Courtney Milan and Rose Lerner, but I don't know that I'll ever have the historical romance love I used to.

I'm going to read some of my unread books and hopefully I'll find some new stuff to love.

[technicolor]

I haven't read so many older romance authors, but going by what I know: You see a tonal shift in Mary Balogh as well IMO. She's still one of the more adventurous authors who tackles a wider range of topics than is usual in the genre. But I do think she was more blunt in her older works. There is a real focus on historic attitudes towards all sorts of issues; including the ugly societal reality women had to deal with. That...is still present in her newer works, but in my perception it's considerably softened.

Today, she probably wouldn't write something like "Indiscreet" again. It deals with the ugly reactions of society and even her own family to a woman being raped and also has rather questionable and hurtful behaviour by the "main male character" (I don't really want to call him a hero...) when he pursues her too aggressively and inadvertedly ruins her reputation all over again and they have to marry. The book doesn't soften that, it doesn't make excuses for the man and the way he realizes how much the heroine has suffered and how he added to her pain with his reckless actions is realistically depicted. So it's believable that by the end he has a rather more enlightened view than was perhaps usual at the time and it's believable that the heroine loves him and might be happy with him. But as a reader you aren't bludgeoned over the head with it and IMO it doesn't feel as if the novel tries to force you to forgive him right with the heroine. It's left to your own judgment. It's one of her strongest books because of that ambivalence IMO; but she probably wouldn't write something like that today anymore.

OTOH, I prefer something like that to stuff like "The Devil in Winter". I like Kleypas, but that fan favourite doesn't work for me exactly because she tries to sweep bad actions of the hero under the rug. Look, in an earlier book he abducted a woman and threatened her with rape. Telling me now that he really has a heart of gold and wouldn't have ever gone through with it and we should all forget it happened? Nope. I feel that is super condescending to the reader. It's not that the subject matter can't be dealt with in a romance novel. It's that you need to treat it seriously once you introduce it. Perhaps a redemption arc was possible, but you need to work a lot harder at it IMO. And it's a shame because Kleypas in her better moments actually does serious pretty well.

[chonies]

I love stuff like these conversations. I have a comfort-read favorite in The Tryst by Lynda Trent. I mean, this book has everything--identical twins, a curse of madness, an accidental heir, dowries and shit, and a high-spirited main female lead, all in the late 16th century (Stefon voice). It was from 1987, and I picked it up at a Friends of the Library sale probably around 1992, so at the time, I read it as a wormhole version of Sweet Valley High, and the worst author-inflicted 'crime' in the novel was that the main character was named Jessica*. As a nerd, I knew that she couldn't have been named Jessica because the name hadn't really been invented yet, because it was actually contemporaneously invented by Shakespeare--a mild inaccuracy, but I wondered if this was a nod by the author.

Anyway, reading it now, there are some small spots that stand out in 21st century. There's one scene that's not rape-rape, but I wonder how other people see it. It's kind of like that slap-slap-kiss from older romcoms, but then again, I get kind of weirded out if there is no clearly articulated consent. Secondly, and this is just in the background, but still: there is some discussion about investing in ships that are crossing to the Americas, and someone wonders about seeing a man with red skin, such as are rumored to live there. It's a really minor part of the story, like perhaps 4 sentences in a 350 pp novel, but the idea about plundering the Americas just takes me out of the story. It's nothing the author did that was wrong--it was more that the world changed, I think.

*I am not a historian, and the Renaissance is kind of a weak spot for me.

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One plot that I've always struggled with is the heroine who does non-traditional things, but she is based on women who actually did those things. I'm torn between appreciating that unseen history is being revealed, but also knowing that there's probably going to be some ugly behavior the heroine will have to face. It also makes it less likely that I will read if it's a plot that I dislike, such as spies, archaeology, locations I find boring, and women who only have men as friends.

[chonies]

Ha! I love your list--relevant for multiple timelines, too. I was personally victimized by most of my archaeology classes in grad school, so pretty much anything beyond a mention of archaeology is just too much for me. That said, I love paleopathology and looking at bones and stuff, but I also know this is not without ethical issues of multiple sizes, but that's a topic for another time. Wait! No, there's a Silhouette that I loved called Moriah's Mutiny, and the MC was an archaeologist, but it was basically a plot device. She was an archaeologist (read: book-loving nerd who was passionate about her career) and her sisters were glamorous models and actresses or something. Apart from one scene where she went to a museum, it was pretty minimal.

I do appreciate the hidden history stuff if there's some discussion of how it works. There was an Alyssa Cole novella where she explains her research in an endnote, and the character monologues briefly about her life. But yeah, otherwise if someone just blithely skips through a wildly unconventional life in an almost anachronistic way, I get irritated.

[Carolinian]

I'm listening to a Stephanie Laurens and omg she uses the word "laved" which got me eyerolling so hard. And then in the couple's second sexual encounter he plucks an orchid (they are in a conservatory) and puts it in her pubic hair where it stays through a mind blowing bout of cunnilingus. Also, why so many euphemisms? Shaft, rod, tool... can't you just say cock or prick, both of which were used in the early 19th c? So this may be my only SL which is too bad because she's prolific.

I am enjoying Eloisa James and Cat Sebastian. Sebastian writes protagonists that are outside the usual (straight, white) regency romance- I've read one gay pairing, and one straight pairing where both might be described in modern terms as autistic. She also has written a lesbian couple and an interracial gay couple, though I haven't read those yet. I find I prefer historical romance where the author includes some, well, social history- whether it's Almack's, steam engines, or wearing corsets.

Helen Hoang has a couple of modern romances with protagonists of Asian descent who have Aspergers. Lovely writing. Also she compares a character's looks to Daniel Henney, who I'd never heard of and man, he's easy on the eyes.


ETA: I don't know how a writer can manage to be both torrid and tedious, but Stephanie Laurens manages it.

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One of my new hobbies at work is to read the one star reviews on Goodreads and see how they stack up to books I like, or books that get good reviews in the journals and whatnot. The really detailed ones make me laugh so hard. One reviewer used gifs, quotes, italics, bold font, and CAPS LOCK in her review of Anna and the French Kiss, and it made my day.

I read Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell and hated it so much that I refuse to read anything else by her.

I have so many #ownvoices romances checked out right now, I don't know where to start!

[chonies]

We share the same hobby! I love the one star reviews, especially of otherwise 5 star books. I haven’t read Kiss Quotient yet and while I know it’s pretty much universally beloved, one colleague hated it for a few straightforward reasons. These persuaded me that I would not be interested in reading, but maybe I’m wrong.

I can’t with Rainbow Rowell. I really tried with Fangirl and i really wanted Landline to work but I just couldn’t finish it.

ETA: I forgot about “laved” and I laughed through Carolinian’s description. In my head, it always sounds so over the top, a little camp and a lot Masterpiece Theatre.