Great day in the morning! We’re in People Magazine.
While the article doesn’t appear to be on their website, in the 3 August issue, featuring a very messy-headed Robert Pattinson and “his messy love life” on the cover, on page 46, there’s BOSOMS! And a list of our very favorite romances.
Here, a PDF for your viewing pleasure! People magazine, page 46.
People (the magazine, not the plural noun) had asked us for a list of our very favorite romances, and that list was, of course, a LOT longer when we sent it in. Five of our choices made the list:
One of the best romances ever: unabashed and hilarious, fun and moving. Minerva’s jerkwad ex-boyfriend bets his friend Cal that he can’t get Min to sleep with him in a month. If you love stories with bickering, blistering attraction, this will keep you reading long after you meant to turn off the light.
The premise sounds like something dreamed up in the fevered fantasies of a bad 80s screenwriter: a white ninja rescues a shy, proper seamstress from a life of drudgery. The execution, however, is flawless. Few people write with the elegance and beauty of Laura Kinsale, and this book’s emotional intensity will have you reaching for a box of tissues.
During the course of this book, the heroine tells the hero “In my dictionary, romance is not maudlin, treacly sentiment. It is a curry, spiced with excitement and humor and a healthy dollop of cynicism.” Few romance novels fit this description better than Lord of Scoundrels. This book reliably converts non-romance readers over to the dark side. Male or female; math professor or classicist; computer programmer or chef: all are helpless to resist the razor-sharp banter and explosive chemistry between Jessica and Sebastian.
People often sniff at Harlequins, known in the industry as “category” romances, but behind the covers, they can pack a marvelous story in a very short space. This one is a great example: a new twist on the Cinderella myth that’s set in Australia. It’s a perfect afternoon beach read.
This is the first of an ongoing series by Nora Roberts writing as Robb.Set in NYC in the 2020s, there’s mystery, suspense, and hot, hot action of many kinds. Eve and Roarke form one of the best couples in romance today.
But there were more on the original list, which began: Seven of our favorite romances? When People asked us that question, the wailing and gnashing of the teeth began. Not only is narrowing the list down almost impossible, Sarah and Candy have divergent reading tastes and don’t always agree on what’s good. The books they do agree on have a distressing tendency to be out-of-print and very hard to find (The Windflower by Laura London, for example). We finally agreed on a few limiting criteria: nothing that’s been out of print for more than ten years, and the selection must attempt to reflect the variety in the genre. So here’s The Smart Bitches’ Top Seven Romances That Aren’t Impossible to Find.
(The Immortals After Dark series) If you pack one of these in your beach bag, bring a fan, because holy hot steaming demons: this series is smart, savvy, and so freaking spicy. Few do hot sexy tension like Cole.
So many amazing romances are being released from digital publishers. This powerful story from Samhain Publishing features a hero and heroine scarred in different ways who have to relearn everything they thought they knew about sex and love. It comes out in print in February.
Shana Abe writes lyrically and beautifully, and her Drakon series (The Smoke Thief, The Dream Thief, Queen of Dragons, The Treasure Keeper) about a race of Dragon people with the ability to change form are no exception.
Obviously, when you have no limits in bandwidth, you can keep going for pages about your favorite books! But with column inches, space is tight like, well, you know where I was going with that.
SO! How about a giveaway? To celebrate I will give a set of each of the above books, including a bound galley of Butterfly Tattoo, to one random commenter in the next 24 hours. All you have to do is pick your one favorite, without question, ultimate recommendation for the Best Romance Novel Ever in your opinion. See? Easy, right? Riiiiight.
