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

This sounds like The Last Key by Beverly Sommers, an old Harlequin Intrigue.  I may even still have a copy of it that I’d be willing to post to Tina.

Gah, not Intrigue, Harlequin American Romance.

How do you dye just the roots? Won’t that look really weird when your hair starts growing out?

Same way you touch up roots: with one of those little applicator brushes.  Or, if you’re real classy, a toothbrush.

I remember this one!  It was different because the couple both said they didn’t want to have kids (no secret babies here), and the ex-husband wanted her to stay a child bride—there was something about bobby socks.

No idea about the author or title.

Rats, I am always beaten by the time thing. Good on you jmc, but you would actually give away a Beverly Sommers?

If it is still in my possession, I will happily give away this Beverly Sommers.  Shouldn’t I?  Is she someone who no longer writes?  An early pen name for a now famous author?

Thank you!  I was really looking for the author’s name and that was the only book I could remember clearly enough to recite.  It would be cool if you wanted to send me the book, but I wouldn’t ask you to.  (I checked and it looks like I can pick up a new one for $1.29 plus shipping :))

Truly, you are welcome to my copy, assuming I haven’t already swapped it or donated it.  I don’t think I have, but lemme check my pile o’ books.  Contact me offline and I’ll confirm and post it to you.

There are a bunch of Sommers books on Paperback Swap, including the Last Key.

Let’s go look it up on Amazon…

;)

That’s weird.  I don’t remember that particular book, but when I read the description of “unconventional category romance novelist,” I immediately thought of Beverley Sommers.  “Of Cats and Kings,” “Outside In,” and “Teacher’s Pet” are some of my favorite categories ever.

KarenF--Phoebe’s Deputy and the road-tripping mother and daughter in Search For The Sky.
jmc--She hasn’t written since the early 90’s. Don’t know why.

I liked Beverly Sommers.  I remember one book she wrote where a young woman had been corresponding with a convict and when he was released he showed up on her doorstep. Can’t remember the title but it may have had the word Convictions in it.  I think it was an American also.  She wrote an early time travel (Time and Again (?)set in San Francisco.

Oh this is so freaky. I have only saved one category romance in my life. After reading these comments I had to go see who the author was—sure enough Beverly Sommers. I’d saved Getting Even all this time because it was so different than the usual. A still-married heroine and a “rumpled white knight” with (gasp!)facial hair and who’s afraid of the subway. We have to find Beverly!

Oh well. Found Beverly. AKA Joy Freeman, born 1934. Think she’s still writing at 74?

Very strange to have a few minutes to kill and google my own name for the first time and actually have things come up. Even stranger to find a group of people discussing me.

I saw the Joy Freeman reference and have no idea where that came from and can find no way to get them to change it. I’ve always used my own name and never used a pseudonym, and Harlequin found it suitably Anglo, or whatever, for me to use. No, that’s not correct, in the early days one publisher gave us names, different for each book. None was Joy Freeman, though. And somewhere there’s probably a Joy Freeman who’s pissed off at being linked with me.

If you found my books different it’s probably because I’d never read any romances before writing them, read very few when I was writing them (mostly by writer friends), and haven’t read any since writing them. I just wrote them the way I’d like them to be. I used humor because it was easier for me than really getting romantic.  I’m not really a romantic and prefer realism in books.

Anway, thanks for remembering me. It was great reading what all of you had to say. Those books disappear after one month and I hadn’t thought anyone would even remember them.

Beverly