Sunday, February 27, 2011

Heartreads

Heartreads, the February Read It 2011 theme was a little more approachable. However, my experience with the romance genre is that its fraught with danger. There are great reads, and there are absolute duds, and cover art and back of book blurbs are of little use in telling one from the other.  Luckily, I was in charge of stacking chairs at an Ultimo Library panel discussion: "Sex, Love & Passion: the Appeal of the Romance Novel", so had the opportunity to collect recommendations from the panelists as to the best authors to in contemporary, humorous and paranormal romance, and broaden my reading horizons.
I started with contemporary romance, with Jennifer Crusie's Maybe This Time and Fast Women, Susan Elizabeth Phillips Ain't She Sweet and Rachel Gibson's I'm Not In The Mood For Love. All four were set in the US and followed the romantic adventures of women in their mid 30s. They were light, easy reads, entertaining and amusing. Judging from these particular novels (admittedly a small sample), I think that Crusie and Phillips are the stronger writers. I'd have no trouble recommending all three writers to romance readers though, as long as the readers are comfortable with (not particularly graphic) sex scenes and a heavy peppering of fashion/shoe/porcelain brand names that in a movie would have to be interpreted as product placement.
Next I tried MaryJanice Davidson's Undead and Unwed and Undead and Unemployed, that fall where the realms of romance, humour and vampire novels cross in a Venn diagram: Betsy Taylor rises from the dead to find that not only is she the queen of the vampires, but her evil step mother has stolen her shoe collection. Again, this was set in the US and a light, amusing and entertaining read with plenty of fashion product placement and slightly more graphic sex scenes. I think this would be more likely to appeal as a chic-lit/vampire crossover than to readers of straight romance.
Finally, I took a stronger step in the direction of paranormal romance, reading Nalini Singh's  Slave to Sensation and Mine to Possess , books 1 & 4 in the Psy-Changling series. Set in a slightly alternative future, where humans co-exist with the Changling and mentally gifted but emotionally repressed Psy races, these books are part paranormal romance (Psy and human women fall in love with men who shift to panther or leopard form), and part sci-fi mystery. I know that some readers enjoy these for the romance and pretty graphic sex, but I found myself equally interested in the back story of the power struggle between the three races.
I don't think that I'm ready for a diet consisting solely of romance reading, but I've enjoyed my enforced month of (sort of, if you count the undead) happily ever after.

1 comment:

  1. I just love your writing, so I've nominated you for the Liebster award. There is no obligation to accept it - I just wanted you to know I enjoy your blog.

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