Dear Author: Romance Book Reviews, Author Interviews, and Commentary

One Night with His Virgin Mistress by Sara Craven. 19 year old heroine bedsits a flat while trying to write a historical adventure romance (reads like a classic bodice ripper btw). Hero is a quazillionaire who foregoes his fortune to work as a troubleshooting engineer. The two end up living together because she was conned into bedsitting and hero takes pity on the forlorn chickie. Standard HP angst drama with a bit of a twist because what ended up being the basis of the Big Misunderstanding was not what I had expected. A couple of things to note, however, is that the heroine does read older than 19 but the age of the heroine was frequently noted to be 19 no matter how I tried to push that from my mind. The core of her emotional trauma is that men she liked didn’t like her because she wasn’t sexually experienced enough and so she tries to get the quazillionaire hero to divest her of her virginity. In this, I thought the storyline was a bit. . . offputting. I am not entirely sure why …

One thing that Julie Bindel’s piece has done is peak my interest in Harlequin Presents books. In addition, a few weeks ago, I did a piece on category romances and how I was coming to appreciate the Blazes, Harlequin Historicals, and so forth that I have been reading. A couple people suggested authors in the Harlequin Presents line and I have since started reading them.

I don’t think that I had read them since my early reading days (maybe 20 years ago). My recollection of this series were that it was peopled by really rich men and their secretaries. In the last month, I’ve read 20 Harlequin Presents. 7 of them were by Sara Craven but most of them were in the Harlequin Presents One Click Buy. It’s a program where you can buy all the HPs for one month in one big package. Incredibly, you can buy the entire 8 books at Books on Board for $9.49.

I think it’s a bit interesting to read the entire collection. I felt like I was reading an album versus a single record. The collection itself was varied, as if the editors make an attempt …