Guilty Pleasure Reading, or, Yet Another Way My Kindle Saves Me From Embarassment

I’ve mentioned previously that I’m usually not a big fan of Category Romances. So many of them seem to rely heavily on the alphahole hero and doormat heroine, plus there’s always some sort of over the top situation involved, such as amnesia, secret babies, or mistresses. I have to admit, though, that I LOVE the titles. They crack me up! I honestly believe that Harlequin has a title generator somewhere, and they toss in the words “Greek, Sicilian, Italian, Sheikh, mistress, baby, amnesia, Secretary, Boss, Wife, Doctor,” see what comes out, and smack it on the book as a title. My current favorite has to be The Sheikh Surgeon’s Proposal, although The Tycoon’s Pregnant Mistress is a close second.  But with that first title you get two goodies in one – an exotic hero AND a doctor! Hellooooo, money!!! Not very PC, but who cares? At least you don’t have toddler beauty princesses getting screamed at by their psycho mothers! And after seeing that on TV, category romances seem really, really classy.

Seriously, when it comes to pure escapism, you just can’t beat a category romance. They’re short, usually less than 200 pages, and they’re definitely better for your brain than reality TV! Ok, I may be exaggerating somewhat, but reading is definitely more active for your brain cells than sitting and staring at the tube. Plus, if you have an e-reader, smart phone, or computer, you can download these suckers and no one will have to know that you’re not really reading War and Peace. Unless you’re at my house, where I’ve written the entire text of War and Peace in the dust on my shelves. I’m kidding, of course. I don’t have THAT much dust in my house. I only have enough dust to write the text of The Little Prince, not some weighty Russian tome. Sheesh!

But there are several category romances I’ve read recently that have truly been outstanding. They’re well written, with enjoyable heroes and heroines, and I freely admit that I will be reading more of these excellent authors. Check out some of my favorites!

Janice Kay Johnson’s Beauty & the Beasts I wrote a guest review of this Harlequin Presents Treasury a few months ago on DearAuthor.com, and it is my favorite bar none. It was written in the nineties, but other than a brief reference to a pay phone in school (like THOSE exist anymore!), it could have been written yesterday. Vet Eric Bergstrom woos former child actress Madeline Hunter by helping out with the local cat shelter she volunteers at. There are no outlandish plots in this book – just two reasonable adults falling in love, which is delightful. And the “beasts” mentioned in the title refer to both the cats and Bergstrom’s pain-in-the-butt tween son, which made me laugh. Loved this book, and it encouraged me to read other category romances.

Kelly Hunter’s Wife for a Week This book has to be the funniest category romance I’ve read. Hallie Bennett is working at a shoe store to earn money for tuition, when in walks Nick Cooper with his mother. Nick needs someone to pose as his wife for week, and at his mother’s instigation he offers Hallie an obscene amount of money to pose as his wife on his trip to Hong Kong. I mean, seriously, don’t we ALL need a fake wife for a week? I could use one, especially if she dusts. While not into dusting, Hallie does agree to Nick’s plan, as long as any displays of affection are limited to public spheres. Of course, this wouldn’t be a Harlequin Presents if there weren’t some smexy times! The first night when Hallie builds a “Great Wall of China” out of pillows on the bed and tells Nick she’s the Emperor’s finest troops and he’s the Mongol Horde will have you howling with laughter. This book was a hoot, and both characters were charmers. I absolutely loved it!

Kate Hewitt’s The Man Who Could Never Love This is an angst-filled romance, but the heroine actually has a backbone, and you’ll root for her to win the hero’s heart. The hero, Vittorio Ralfino, is an Italian count. Now, I see Italian counts every day at the Walmart, so I wasn’t as impressed with this as you might think. Just so you know. Anyway, he coldly decides that for business purposes and to ensure an heir, he will marry neighbor Anamaria Viale. What makes this romance so much fun is how much trouble she causes for him. He arrogantly assumes that since she’s plain, in her thirties, and unmarried, she’ll fall willingly into his arms, but that is most certainly not the case. Watching the snooty vintner fall in love with the woman he marries purely for convenience’s sake is a lot of fun.

Kim Lawrence’s Beauty and the Greek I really enjoy Ms. Lawrence’s style – she takes longer to develop the story, so at times the resolution of her novels feels a bit rushed, but I like the extra time pushing the hero and heroine together in this romance. Theo Kyriakis’s brother Andreas is engaged to a gold digger from whom Theo barely managed to escape a few years prior. When Theo realizes that Andreas’ mousy secretary Beth is in love with his brother, he convinces her to undergo a drastic makeover to snare her boss’s attention and distract him from his fiancée. It works, but Beth’s such a stunner that Theo’s the one ensnared. Like the other books I’ve mentioned, the major selling point of this book is the heroine Beth. She doesn’t shy away from telling Theo what she really thinks, and it’s great fun to see the sparks fly. Plus, any fantasy with a trip to a Greek island equals winning, right?

No list of category romances would be complete without a novel by the inimitable Sarah Morgan, and my favorite of hers has to be the recently released A Night of Scandal. This is the first book in the Notorious Wolfes series, and Ms. Morgan manages to set up the background of the family drama while penning a captivating romance. Nathaniel Wolfe is a Hollywood actor about to make his stage debut in Shakespeare’s Richard III when he spots someone from his past in the audience. He freezes, then makes a break for it. Katie Fields, the costume mistress, helps him retreat, but as soon as they get to her extremely modest apartment, he realizes that they’ll never be able to fight off the paparazzi from there. So the two escape to a private island, where Katie’s warm heart wins him over. Be prepared for more angst and a stubborn hero, but the end makes it all worth it. Now, you’re probably thinking, “again with the islands?” Still, when it’s 10 degrees outside, nothing beats imagining a warm, tropical paradise and a good-looking Hollywood actor who prefers a woman with real curves. Except maybe an electric blanket. That one’s tough to beat.

Review of Maggie Shayne’s The Husband She Couldn’t Remember

I mentioned on Monday that Harlequin is re-releasing books from the 1990s as part of their Treasury series, and while I don’t usually read category romance, I’ve been impressed with the quality of the writing in these books. When I saw that Maggie Shayne’s The Husband She Couldn’t Remember was available for review, I requested it, because I’ve read and enjoyed a few of her paranormal romances in the Wings in the Night series. The Husband She Couldn’t Remember is a contemporary romance with a bit of suspense in it, and while at times it’s a bit far-fetched, I consider that to be par for the course with category romance and thought that I could accept it as part of the genre. This novel pretty much reads like the plot of a soap opera, and if you enjoy that, you’ll definitely like The Husband She Couldn’t Remember. Unfortunately that’s not really my cup of tea, so while I liked the characters and felt that the pacing of the suspense was well done, I probably won’t be re-reading this book.  Unlike the other two Harlequin Treasury re-releases I’ve read, this e-book had several recurring typos and editing errors, but I think you can see past that fairly easily, even if it is annoying.

The novel begins with Ben Brand dreaming about his dead wife, Penny. Penny died two years ago in a fiery car crash that left only a crispy corpse and heartbreaking memories. What makes her death all the more tragic is that Penny had been suffering from a debilitating disease (Hillman-Waite Syndrome) that had no cure, and everyone wonders if the crash was an accident or if Penny committed suicide.  While Ben’s in El Paso, he bumps into a woman who looks exactly like Penny, but before he can question her, she runs away. Ben’s convinced that Penny is still alive and requests an exhumation of the body they buried, but before they begin to dig up the casket, the woman approaches him. It turns out that she is Penny, but she has a bad case of amnesia, and she doesn’t remember anything about her former life. She woke up from a coma in a clinic in England, and when the staff started acting suspiciously, she took off with only an address written on a scrap of paper. As Penny’s memories of her life with Ben gradually return, it becomes all the more important to discover what actually happened two years ago. Will what happened two years ago threaten her newly rekindled relationship with Ben? And why did she have to escape from the clinic that apparently cured her incurable disease?

Despite the outlandish nature of the plot, I did enjoy the characters and the romance between the hero and heroine. Both Ben and Penny are likeable characters, and the suspense behind her disappearance and sudden reappearance will keep you turning the pages. This book is the fourth in a series about the Brand family, and we meet characters from previous installments of the series, but the book can easily be read on its own.  The family definitely supports one another and welcomes Penny back with open arms, and I liked the interaction between the brothers and their spouses. Also, Penny and Ben were childhood sweethearts, and you get to learn about their sweet romance through flashbacks as Penny starts to recall her past.

I’m not usually a fan of amnesia plots, because they just strike me as too ridiculous. Unless a character’s suffered from a serious head injury, I have a hard time accepting them, and amnesia seems to be a frequent plot device in category romance. However, Ms. Shayne provided an interesting reason for Penny’s memory loss that I was able to accept, albeit grudgingly.

I enjoyed the book until we learn the truth concerning Penny’s disappearance two years ago, which pushed the plot too far into outlandish territory for my tastes. It completely changed the way I viewed Penny’s character and not in a good way. Ben has a very similar reaction to learning the truth, but eventually forgives Penny, which I found to be a plausible response to man mourning his lost love, so kudos to the author there. However, the villain is way over the top crazy, and I was unable to accept that this complete loon had somehow found the cure for a progressive disease that had been incurable.

Generally speaking, this book reinforced my prejudices against category romance, which is a shame, because I’ve read several recently that are quite good. There are definitely aspects of the novel that I enjoyed, namely the romance between the h/h and the pacing of the suspense aspects of the plot, but the outlandish nature of the book was just too much for this reader.

I received this book for review from the Publisher through NetGalley.

Review of Stephanie Bond’s Irresistible?

Harlequin has begun re-releasing some of its “Presents” lines from the 1990s in ebook form under the name Harlequin Treasury, and I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how well these books hold up 16 years later. Generally I tend to steer clear of category romances, because many times the hero’s presented as an alpha male when he’s actually just a jerk, but I’ve read a couple of these re-releases and that hasn’t always been the case. Last month I did a guest review of Janice Kay Johnson’s Beauty & the Beasts for DearAuthor.com  and really enjoyed the book, so I requested a couple of other Harlequin Treasury books from authors I recognized.  In the case of Stephanie Bond’s Irresistible? I knew the book was going to be a winner when I saw that it was set in Atlanta. Like most Harlequin Presents books, this was a short read, but it had some hilarious moments that reminded me of the film Some Like It Hot and you just can’t go wrong there, can you?

The novel begins with artist Ellie Sutherland losing her job to budget cuts. She’s been working at a federally funded arts center in order to pay the bills and generate some commissions for her paintings, but the funding is decreasing and they can’t afford to keep her. Her bad day gets even worse when she’s jostled by an uptight yuppie in a coffee shop at lunch, spilling her drink all over her skirt. When she gets back to her soon-to-be gone job, she discovers an ad calling for volunteers for a scientific study. Since she needs the money, she decides to give it a try, but she manages to announce to her entire office her lack of a love life while answering the basic interview questions on the phone. Clearly, Ellie is having a rough day.

The plot thickens when Ellie presents herself at the clinical study and learns that they are conducting a trial to see if oral pheromones have any effect on a woman’s ability to attract male interest.  She decides to participate in the trial, and lo and behold the first day she takes the pills she notices an overwhelming difference in the amount and quality of male attention she receives. She’s also excited because she’s received a commission to do a portrait of the newest partner for a local law firm. Unfortunately, said partner turns out to be none other than Mark Blackwell, obnoxious yuppie from the coffee shop. Sparks definitely fly between the two, but disaster seems to follow Ellie wherever she goes. The two gradually learn that neither is exactly what s/he appears, and despite Mark’s best efforts to keep Ellie at a distance, he finds himself attracted to the carefree artist.

This is a fun, lighthearted romance that’s full of slapstick moments that can be blamed equally on hero and heroine. Mark’s decision to invite Ellie as his date to the family picnic in order to horrify his mother into leaving his love life alone is hardly flattering to Ellie, but it sets up some hilarious situations. And Ellie’s decision to paint Mark in the nude, while clearly a bad decision to the reader, helps create a resolution to their romance that’s "well hung."

For me Ellie’s character was the real selling point of the novel. She’s a bit flighty at times, but she’s goodhearted and very likeable. You can definitely relate to her doubts about Mark’s attraction to her, since she’s taking the pheromones from the clinical study, but to the reader it’s clear that Ellie’s loyalty and personality are the real attraction. Mark is an appealing hero as well, since he starts out looking like a yuppie jerk but soon reveals himself to be something more complex. Despite his allergic reaction to cats, he shows a softer side when he takes in Ellie’s pregnant cat Esmerelda and helps nurse her and Ellie back to health. Both hero and heroine are engaging, and you’ll enjoy rooting for them.

The one criticism I have of the novel is that Ellie’s roommate, Manny, is little better than a stock figure. He’s a transvestite who performs in an Atlanta club, and the Some Like It Hot moment I referred to earlier takes place when Mark mistakenly sets up a double date with his boss and Ellie’s roommate, little realizing that “Molly” is the same person as Ellie’s roommate Manny he met a few days earlier. Manny’s character reminded me a lot of the character of Jack in the TV show Will & Grace. He’s outrageously flamboyant, bordering on campy, which would be fine if this were camp, but I think we’re supposed to take him seriously. Given the lack of nuance in his character, he fell a little flat and seemed like the stereotypical gay friend telling the heroine, “You go, girl!” or something equally hideous. However, given the original publication date of 1997 and the fact that the author is referred to as "newcomer Stephanie Bond” in the Letter to the Reader, I’m inclined to be a little lenient. I do like how the hero seems perfectly comfortable with Manny/Molly once he learns the truth, only getting upset about how his straitlaced boss will react if he learns of the deception. Also, Mark’s willingness to switch clothes with Manny in the bathroom so he can fix the situation is pretty darn funny. Frankly, Manny’s character is really the only thing that dates this book, and that’s pretty impressive.

Overall I feel this book was a fun read, and it certainly piques my interest in Ms. Bond’s subsequent books, especially since she favors Atlanta locales. I suspect many authors would love to be able to point to an early novel that, while flawed, is an engaging and fun read.

I received this book for review from the publisher through NetGalley.