I first read some Mills & Boon romances in may late teens. I was a young, stay at home mum to be pretty bored and poor too. I didn’t read masses of these books. I remember dark Latin lovers, girls marrying their rapists in two cases. It was the late 1970s. Perhaps that was par for the course. I was captured by science fiction and fantasy so I read a lot of that in the intervening years. As I reflect back on this I wish I had kept reading romance. It might have helped me in a lot of ways such as relationships, self esteem and sex. But alas I had a preference for outerspace and other worlds not as useful for those more personal issues.
My reading did expand into paranormal romance, historical romance and science fiction romance, probably in my late thirties. Outlander (Crossttich here) combined all three of my favourite things, a bit of SF& F with the time travel and Scottish romance, with a fine touch of the paranormal elements. My romance drug of choice was: Scottish historicals (and English too), Regency romance and paranormal romance with lashings of urban fantasy. I must say I came across Warrior’s Woman by Johanna Lindsey. I was so excited as this book was SF romance. Not very politically correct these days but I still love it and I don’t care. Suck it up detractors. Challen rivals Jamie Fraser and Darcy in my mind.
It wasn’t until I was published with Escape Publishing (Harlequin’s Australian Digital Imprint) that I started reading contemporary romance fiction again. (I’ve even tried to write some, but I want to put a ghost or a vampire in there). Mostly this was to explore what was on offer with Escape but to learn about the genre too. I read some amazing stuff that gave me a love for contemporary romance that I hadn’t had before.
Here are some of the books I read:
A Man Like Mike by Sami Lee
Bound by his Ring by Nicole Flockton
A Basic Renovation by Sandra Antonelli
What Love Sounds Like by Alissa Callen
Finding Elizabeth by Louise Forster
The Lies We Tell by Elizabeth Dunk
Rescue Heat by Nina Hamilton
Short Soup by Colleen Kwan
Grease Monkey Jive and Floored by Ainslie Paton
You can find these titles here.
They were all so good. Do I sound surprised? Not so much surprised by the quality just that I really liked reading these contemporary romances that didn’t contain any weird stuff. This was new to me.
Then we come to the PhD and I’m focusing on contemporary romance (either written in the 1970s or in the present) and maybe that’s a bit weird, you know. Yet, it’s an genre I don’t know well and I am curious…about the past…about the present…
To put boundaries on what I’m reading I am containing the genre to Mills & Boon category romances and like products. But I don’t forget that there’s so much more out there.
The sobering thought for me is that I’ll never be as knowledgeable as the avid readers of romance. I can read what I can and examine it with certain parameters in mind, but I can’t duplicate 20 to 30 years of avid romance reading. I’m lucky that I know a couple of these knowledgeable readers and they are so helpful but they keep me humble.
Donna Maree Hanson, Author, Phd in Creative Writing 