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

Michelle Buonfiglio and her Bellas and her man titty are moving to Lifetime.com in late June. She’ll have weekly features and AuthorViews as well as on-camera broadband interviews. I’m thinking that the success of Nora Roberts’ movies peaked Lifetime’s interest in romance. Congratulations to MB.

I was a bit flummoxed to read a post on columnist, Michelle Buonfiglio’s blog today.
there is a scene that could be read by the uninitiated romance fiction reader as flat-out rape.
That is the line from the post entitled “You Know She Wanted It”.

The post itself is about controversial debut book by Anna Campbell, Claiming the Courtesan, whose story from Avon lacks both a virgin and a widow. Robin is offering up a guest review this afternoon which captures the deep psychological underpinnings of a complicated and uncomfortable romance between a man just on the grip of insanity and a woman trying to regain hers.

In Claiming the Courtesan, there is a scene in which the hero forces himself on the heroine.
His brows contracted, and fool that she was, she read sorrow rather than fury in his face. “Well, if I must take you as a thief, then I shall be a thief.”

He pushed her legs apart, moved between them and thrust inside her.
There is no romance, no joy in this act. It is the only way that Justin believes that he can dominate Verity and in his feverish mind, make her his again. That …