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

Bitchery reader Gillian writes

OK, maybe you hate these vague questions (I’ve worked at a bookstore and I know I hated them), but I have to ask..

Around Christmas, I was in Barnes & Noble and saw a romance novel. I didn’t buy it (it was right before Xmas, I was swamped, I knew if I bought it, I’d go home and read it and I had a million things to do) and I stupidly also didn’t write down the title or author. It may have been a category romance, but I can’t say for sure. The cover photo was a man, with a woman (standing on a porch?) in jeans and a t-shirt looking at him from behind. I do remember that she had a (spunky!) short haircut, because I am SO SICK of flowing tresses. The plot was something like he returned home, she was the tomboy girl next door all grown up. As I write this, I’m thinking, this plot is so tired, but at the time, it sounded like a good book and I have been wishing I bought it ever since. Do you have ANY idea what book I could be talking about? It was on one of the center displays, with multiple copies, which makes me think it was more than just another category romance.

Anyone got a clue which book this is? 

John Lennon once wrote a love letter to his first wife, Cynthia, in which he said, “I love you.... I love you like guitars.”

*sigh*

Gets me every time.

Elizabeth has a similarly musical love scene in her quest to find a lost book, and hopes you can help:

I was hoping the Bitchery could help me identify one of the first romance novels I ever read.  It involves a woman who is kidnapped by a pirate who mistakenly believes her to be wealthy.  When she first meets him, she nearly faints from hunger because he has a loaf of warm bread in his pocket and she’s overcome by the scent of it.  After she’s been kidnapped, one of the crewmen is injured or ill, and she sends another man to collect crewman A’s ration of grog.  Crewman B is about to be whipped (?) for trying to take more than his allotment.  She confesses her responsibility, and this (of course) gets the crew on her side.  There’s a subplot involving the first mate, who falls in love with a Scandinavian woman.  This Scandinavian woman looks down on the heroine because she’s the captain’s mistress by this point, and the crew all insist that the captain has to marry her so she can keep her head up.

The heroine’s meditations on sex are probably the most distinctive thing about the book (the plot is generic and the characterizations are thin).  Basically, she imagines a different instrument playing in her head every time - sometimes the sex makes her think of trumpets, sometimes drums, sometimes flutes...you get the idea.  I’m not sure if she winds up with the whole orchestra by the end of the book, or if it never gets better than a string quartet.

If anyone knows what book this is, I’d be incredibly grateful for the help.

Anyone got an idea which book this is? And really, is there a more lovely expression than, “I love you, I love you like guitars?” I’m all warm and fuzzy from the memorable dialogue discussion, and that just keeps the soft-focus glow going and going. 

If you know about my introduction to the romance genre, you know it is based entirely on jealousy, and petty larceny. So it’s with some embarrassment that I post this HaBO from Jenn, who says the romance she’s looking for was swiped from her before she could finish it.

Bitchery reader Noelle asks:

I really loved this book and even lent it to my grandmother because at the time the twist was so unique. She passed away before my 11yr old was born so I read it 92-94ish. It’s a historical and to me it had a Horatio Hornblower feel to it. I can’t remember any names though. The heroine is the Post Mistress of Bath who loves her job and uses it to give gainful employment to the youth of Bath that might not otherwise have had a chance at a decent future. (awww)

Her father hates that she works and wants to be independent so he blackmails a succession of losers to try and seduce her into marriage. She always seems to uncover what her father’s hold is over the men and quickly finds a way to dismiss them until the dashing Navy Captain arrives.

He’s very well connected, rich, attractive and she just can’t figure out what in the world her father could possibly have on this man that’s ten times the man of any of the others. From what she gathers, it’s something bad, very very bad. And the hero is relentless in his pursuit. No matter what she does he won’t back down. And slowly she’s starting to fall for him. Oh and they all play cards A LOT, like every night.

Eventually as they both realize they have feelings for each other she uncovers his deep dark secret. Dun...dun....DUN...He can’t read! He can navigate a ship sure, but he uses a secretary to write all his correspondence. It turns out that he’s dyslexic. She begins to try and teach him with flash cards of course cause they all love the card games. And of course, she teaches him while they’re in bed and the first word he learns is breast. But then her father decides he doesn’t want them together and comes to town and tries to expose his secret at, you guessed it, a card party by introducing a new card game that uses words instead of numbers. But apparently she manages to teach him a few more words besides, breast, lips and vulva because he makes it through the game and at some point they live HEA. That ring a bell with anyone?

Dirty card games to help with dyslexia? Oh yeah, baby. Learning disabilities were never so much fun. 

Bitchery reader “Smelly Feet” writes:

I found it in my highschool library in the early 2000s and I think it was published in the early to mid nineties. I remember a lot about the storyline but no names, though I’m reasonably certain the word Red is in the title. It’s a modern day young adult novel about a young teenage girl who lives in a farmhouse but whose family aren’t farmers. She has many brothers and sisters and they all look rather alike so she gets annoyed that people keep asking which sibling she is.

She meets a slightly older teenage boy who’s moved to town to live with a relative and is working in the general store. He gives her a bag of cookies, saying it’s a special. She thinks he likes her older sister but he’s obviously desperately trying to get her attention, usually by borrowing without permission things he thinks would impress her.

The main plot is that she finds a very old paved trail out the back of her family’s property that might have been an old road and she decides to clear it. It goes very far and she eventually starts camping out when it gets too far to go back each night. She finds a field with a horse that once belonged to a friend of hers who moved away, and later while camping she’s confronted by a bear? Or a wolf? I think she doesn’t check in so the boy comes looking for her, getting himself horribly lost. And I forget why but for some reason she springs the horse from it’s field.
Eventually she finishes the trail and she agrees to date the boy if he stops being so crazy.

That’s a lot of detail- I’d be surprised if someone didn’t come up with this one. But how come this girl didn’t have sixteen bodrillion mosquito bites sleeping out on a partially cleared road by herself?