The 9/24 issue of Macleans takes a slightly startled look at women’s sexual health in Harlequin romance novels.The article discusses several recent novels that tackle sexual violence and sexual health…

author who writes Down Under books

Susan Napier usually does New Zealand, but she occasionally does Australia. And all her books are exceptional.

There are only a few Harlequin authors who set their books in Australia or New Zealand and I’m sure it would be possible to track your book down like this Ann. Helen Bianchin is another author who writes Down Under books

It sounds like a book I’d like to read!.

There are some gems there and even the worst ones are campy enough to make me laugh instead of making me want to throw them against the wall.

Man, I totally agree. I loved me some Anne Mather and Violet Winspear. I would love to re-read this one, but I can’t remember title or author. It was set in Australia (or maybe New Zealand?). The heroine has come back after being away at university. The hero is her uber-alpha stepbrother, and he had a super weird name like Kano, or something stranger than that even. She brings a boy home with her, which really causes some trouble. Damn, if I could remember the name, I would so buy it.

I actually also bought Blackmailed Into Bed. I thought it was much better than FFW but I gave it an unremarkable C-.

I think it’s just that modern Harlequins don’t do anything for me.When I say modern I mean the books they’ve published since the mid 1990s. They’ve changed so radically from what they used to be–and I don’t only mean the abysmal titles we get nowadays. I know society has changed and evolved but, to me, most of the new Harlequin books don’t reflect that change in a positive way. A shame too.

I’ll just keep collecting the vintage harlequins from the 70s-80s, I think. There are some gems there and even the worst ones are campy enough to make me laugh instead of making me want to throw them against the wall.

Too many great books out there waiting for me to read them without having to settle for a “stinker”.

Thanks, ladies, for the “heads-up”!

Is this Fortune book connected to that series? If so, there might be many readers who bought it to make a set, like buying every book that’s connected to the Mallory family (Johanna Lindsay) or MacGregors (Nora Roberts, when she used to write for H/S).

I know that I make extra trips to the Walmart to pick up Merline Lovelace’s “Code Name Danger” books whenever she comes out with one. She started that in 1995! And I don’t really read that many categories these days, but Code Name books? Must. Own. Don’t know why, since a few of them are in my TBR. I think it’s from my love of the first set of the “Code Name Danger” books, which were so good.