This is by no means a comprehensive list, by the way, just names that immediately came to mind.
I’ve babbled about this piecemeal many times before and in many different locations, but what the hey, I’ll babble about it again in this Official Blog Entry: My start to romance novel reading was very, very rocky.
It didn’t help that the very first romance novel I cared to try was Desire’s Blossom by Cassie Edwards. Ugh, blech, shudder, etc. Even at the tender age of 10 I knew it was easily one of the worst books I’d ever read.
But this didn’t stop me from going through my sister’s extensive collection of romance novels. I was a bookworm, my book-buying budget was limited, and during Christmas vacation I’d run out of reading material right quick, and I could re-read Roald Dahl, the Three Investigators, the Chronicles of Narnia and Hercule Poirot mysteries only so many times before I went barking mad for something new.
(Aside: in Malaysia, the Christmas break is the longest since it signifies the end of the school year--see, our school years coincide with the calendar year, which is why the American system confused the hell out of me when I first moved here.)
Anyway, this desperation for new reading material meant I kept mining my sister’s romance novels for books to read. Read some Laurie McBain novels, HATED them but finished them anyway because I was so desperate. Ditto Barbara Cartland. Read several other historicals by authors whose names I’ve forgotten, and didn’t like them either. Read more than my fair share of old Mills and Boon novels by Penny Jordan, Charlotte Lamb, Carole Mortimer and the like, most of which I detested as well, though a few were tolerable.
These books did not help my impression of romance novels; I hated the prose style, I hated how stupid the heroines were, and most of all, I hated how badly the heroes treated the heroines. I’d oftentimes skip through the book, trying to look for the sexy parts, but alas these were few and far between. For about six years I thought of romance novels as the bottom of the barrell, since the the ones I’d read easily represented some of the most consistently bad writing I’d encountered in my short life.
The first romance novel I liked (but didn’t love) was Special Gifts by Anne Stuart. My dad’s secretary bought me several category romances for my birthday, most of which were incredibly bad, but Special Gifts gave me pause. The writing wasn’t too bad, the heroine didn’t annoy me (though even back then I snorted at the idea of a 29-year-old virgin), the hero was kind of yummy, the suspense side-plot didn’t insult me, and dude, the people engaged in ORAL SEX. Whoo! I re-read this book several times, and each time it actually got a bit better. And I’m not just talking about the bit featuring the oral sex.
When I was 16 years old, Judith McNaught showed me the light. Judith and Something Wonderful. (I’m very, very glad I didn’t pick up Whitney, My Love first.) Judith showed me that asshole heroes are palatable to me as long as they grovel at the end, and that sex in historical romances wasn’t always rape. I haven’t looked back since; in quick succession I found Lisa Kleypas, Patricia Gaffney, Laura Kinsale, Loretta Chase, Mary Jo Putney, Barbara Samuel, Teresa Medeiros, Jo Beverley and Sharon and Tom Curtis, among others. McNaught got me started, but these other authors were what moved me well and truly into the Dark Side. Other authors I tried in this same time period (Linda Howard, Johanna Lindsey, Iris Johansen, Linda Howard, and Linda Howard--OK, there were a few others but I can’t remember their names) reinforced my old opinion that romance novels embodied some craptastically awful writing, but since I was finding more authors I enjoyed reading than not, my opinion of romance novels was completely changed.
Which brings me to these questions Angie asked on her blog:
“Here’s my question for readers: Are there any authors that you think every romance reader should have at least tried to read? Any authors that instill such a sense of nostalgia in you, that you can’t imagine anyone having NOT read them?”
I don’t think there’s an author that every reader should have tried at least once. Personally, I love Laura Kinsale, but I certainly don’t think everyone needs to have read at least one of her books, though I certainly have her name right on top of my list of highly-recommended romance authors. I do think people should check out new authors regularly, unless she specializes in a sub-genre that you KNOW you won’t be able to enjoy. (I’m staying well clear of Danielle Steele, and I don’t care how much of an uninformed snob that makes me.) There aren’t any authors who instill nostalgia in me that I’d actually recommend, because in my opinion, these nostalgic authors almost without exception produced bad, bad, bad, BAD books. But there are authors who are so ubiquitous, so incredibly famous that I have a hard time believing somebody who’s been reading romances for more than a couple of years haven’t tried them yet. Nora Roberts is one, and Linda Howard is another. Hell, I don’t even like Linda Howard novels and I ended up reading about ten of them. Desperation for new reading material is an ugly, ugly thing.
Not that I have that problem now, heh.
