Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Bitchery reader Amy asks for recommendations, oh well-read Bitchery:

[T]he reason for my bothering you is to ask you and all other sisters and brothers of SB for help. I am a great lover of Laura Kinsale, esp. Seize the Fire. Yes, I am a fangirl of the” angsty”, “gut-wrenching” intense romance school, and I would appreciate it very much if you could help me to find more treasures in this particular school of romance.

So - angsty romance - bring it on! What’s your pleasure?

Bitchery reader Jessica has a rather odd request in her search for romances to read. In fact, when she first emailed me, I said that I didn’t think what she was looking for was precisely a romance. I’m as much curious about your opinion on that as much as on whether there’s a book that might meet her criteria.

Jessica wrote:

I just get a little bored with the predictability of most romances.  Boy and girl meet, are horribly attracted to each other on first sight, but deny it/are torn apart/decide to be attracted to someone else for a while/are in some other complicated situation/etc., lots of stuff happens, boy and girl end up together.  You ALWAYS know from the very first page (or chapter, at any rate) who will ending up doinking whom.

So, maybe The Bitchery can help me out.  Any suggestions for books where the hero/heroine DOESN’T end up with the first attractive, named character of the opposite sex they see and get moist for?  And it’s not because said named character is a ginormous asshole/the villain/secretly their sibling/etc.  I’m looking for a little healthy surprise here.

It happens to people all the time.  You meet someone and you think they’re just the best thing since BEFORE sliced bread but after a period of time (a date, a few weeks, a month, whatever) you realize that maybe they’re not for you.  They’re not BAD or anything, but it’s just not as right as you had hoped.  But this other person you met at the same party/event/etc. or shortly afterwards or before, or somewhere along the line is finding a place in your heart.

And I would debate that it COULD still be a romance.  The hero or heroine is just not who you would expect. I guess it’s [more the idea of] surprise.  I want to NOT be hammered over the head from the very beginning with “these two are going to do the dirty!” I still can’t think of any novels I know of that have the type of plot I’m looking for.  But, last night my DH, reminded me of the movie, “While You Were Sleeping.” That’s almost exactly the plot I’m looking for.  Still definitely a romance, but the first “hero” she gets excited about is not the hero she ends up with.

I’ve read a few books like this, and it’s a delicate balance for a writer to sustain. On one hand, you don’t want the reader getting all invested in a hero who isn’t going to be The One, but you also don’t want to lose the respect of the reader if the heroine falls for the wrong dude or chases someone that the reader KNOWS isn’t right for him.

While I’m a very big fan of friends-to-lovers plotlines (*sigh*) that’s not quite what Jessica is looking for, but it’s also not merely a triangle “Which one will she choose” romance either. But I’ve read romances where the heroine has, for example, a lifelong crush on Dude A, but then realizes that Dude B is The One - and sometimes the reader knows it all along, while other times the reader figures it out along with the heroine.

What’s your take? Got any books to recommend?

As a corollary, I want to collect the recommendations from the conversation below about STDs in romance, and compile a list of romances that feature heroes or heroines with major health issues.

In the comments, Darlene Marshall recommended, “a Harlequin Super Romance called A Man Like Mac by Fay Robinson.  The hero is a paraplegic and in a wheelchair.  The novel deals sensitively with sexuality, incontinence, self esteem and other issues related to the hero being disabled.”

Jennie recommended, “Catherine Anderson writes books with heroines with major health issues & has had heroines with blindness, in wheelchairs, having panic attacks, etc.  It’s a little icky sweet at times, but the romance is usually handled well.”

Got any more?

Edited to add: There is, of course, the mega list at AAR. 

Yesterday, in the discussion of ranting and whether romance readers are disrespectful, Teddy Pig made an interesting comment: I wonder with all the male writers that have been found writing romance under a female pen name why has someone not reviewed their books in this light.

This got me thinking: what romance authors are men using women’s pen names? Is there a definitive list? Off the top of my head, I can think of Laura London, which was the spousal-powerhouse duo of Tom and Sharon Curtis, and Leigh Greenwood, which is the pen name of Harold Lowry. I’ve found an article on men in category romance, which mentions both Lowry and Jim McBride, and another article from Writer’s Digest that focuses on those two gentlemen as well. What smaller blurbs I’ve found in my cursory search usually focus on the question, as asked in a letter to RT from publisher Carol Stacy, “Since romance novels are generally written from a woman’s perspective the question is can a man REALLY capture the female perspective? Over the many years I have been in this business it seems that readers always know when a romance novel is written by a man.”

I honestly think that men certainly can write romance, and that readers may not really be able to tell the difference, but that a man might is remarkable purely from a standpoint of established sex/gender expectations. It’s remarkable when a man writes from a female perspective - consider the hooplah that surrounded Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone, which was told from the perspective of a female protagonist. A man! Writing a woman’s point of view! And doing it well! Oh, the shock! And awe!

In A Natural History of the Romance Novel, Pamela Regis discusses the fact that women are taught in school to read the experiences of a male protagonist as representative of humankind in general, therefore including women within that representation. Men, on the other hand, are not taught to read the experiences of a female protagonist as representative of their own experience, and when it does happen that a male writes a female protagonist accurately, it’s remarkable.

But what about romance? I’m really curious - not from a “I’m going to review their books and see if I can tell the difference” perspective but from a “how many are there and how’d you like them?” perspective. What male writers of romance do you know of, and what titles have you read? A list! Let us compile it!

UPDATED: Teddy Pig left a pretty good list in the comments, and Laura Vivanco also has one on her site (which I am sorry I missed!). Are there more?

UPDATED AGAIN: Ancillary thought: I cannot tell you the number of times I have searched eBay and other sites for a US-compatible DVD or even VHS of Hugh Jackman’s Aussie film Paperback Hero wherein Jackman plays a truck driving romance writer? Seriously. I want to see this film so bad, and I can’t find a copy that will definitely play on my DVD player, nor can I find a Torrent. Woe! WOE!

Updated AGAIN AGAIN: Sorry for the mis-link. Not sure why I had a Wiki article about first born redemption, but I fixed it. My bad. 

Candy and I, we realize the one area of our romance education that is most lacking is the Inspirational category. I’ve read a secret baby - ok, it wasn’t a secret baby but it was close - and two sheikh-esque (now that is a fun word to say) and have dabbled in other genres as much as possible. But the Inspirational romance, I have not read.

Part of my hesitation is that I’m not Christian, so I personally wouldn’t be too inspired, if that is the goal, to dedicate my life to Jesus Christ. And as far as I know there aren’t too many Jewish inspirationals - though I could be wrong.

Be that as it may, both Candy and I think it’s time we dipped our reading toes in the river of Inspirational romance, and who else to ask but our incredibly well-read readership. Got a recommendation? Or two?