Habo-Thon Saturday!
A Day, a Weekend, of HaBO-Lation! HaBO, or “Help a Bitch Out” is our homegrown nexus of wisdom, where any book with the most sketchy of descriptions from years-ago reading can be re-discovered with the help of the Bitchery. In short, the Bitchery knows All.
Today and tomorrow, I’ll be hosting a few HaBOs a day, so you can guess and wonder what it was folks were reading. The first one: Ocelott is looking for one of her earliest romances:
Like many of you, I picked up my very first romance when I was a kid. I was staying with my grandparents for a few days and had run out of reading material, so clearly the romance novels my grandmother had lying around were fair game. Also, my mother had told me romance novels were “gross,” which of course meant I had to read one for myself to discover the gross. I recall hiding the book under my pillow so I could read on the sly, which was particularly hilarious because my mother wasn’t around and my grandmother wouldn’t have cared.
It was a contemporary, late 80s or very early 90s, and I want to say the heroine was a journalist but could be mistaken on that one. She had black hair and since that’s all I can remember of her, clearly a stellar personality. I know the hero broke his arm near the end of the book, and when he and the heroine were about to get down to business, she expressed some concern all that naughty rocking might hurt him. His response was that he didn’t intend to use his arm, at which there might have been some eyebrow waggling. (The eyebrow waggling may have been mine, though. That degree of euphemism was delightfully scandalous!)
I’ve thought about this book many times over the years, and I’d love to return to what is no doubt a horribly tame romance so I can laugh at my giggling pre-teen self.
Anyone recognize this book?
Not a romance, but there’s a scene like that in a Dick Francis book from… oh probably the early 80’s or so. I was a mystery reader as a teen. 🙂
Most of Dick Francis’s heroes are suffering from injuries of some sort or another!
Hero at Large by Steffie Hall ? A 1987 Second Chance at Love. Steffie Hall=Janet Evanovich
The breaking his fall fits Hero At LArge (All the evanvoich romances were re-released in the past few years.)
But she (berry Knudsen) is going from job to job and winds up running a pizza parlor with three homeless old ladies.
cant remember the name of the guy for certain, but i think it might be Jake. i think i remember this one because that is boyfriend’s name
Could it be Roomful of Roses by Sandra Brown
It almost, but not quite, fits one I read that I think was called “My Hero” – she was a would be romance novelist who had nearly got married – I think twice – but always left the guys at the altar. She was following this rich fellow around because she thought he was the perfect model to base her hero on and he ends up falling in love with her. The Big Misunderstanding is when she tells him she has a slightly used wedding gown in her closet.
I can’t remember a broken arm, however. I do remember her having short dark hair and being a writer.
There is a Sally Wentworth HP called A Very Public Affair that ends with the hero having a broken arm and getting frisky. The heroine is being hounded by reporters because of her son and her friends, she is dark haired and an antique dealer.
Years ago there was an imprint – Loveswept- that I just loved. So many writers got their start there. One author was Linda Caijo (?) and she wrote this hilarious book, All’s Fair (?) about a redhead who falls for her hero who breaks his leg while trying to impress her which it does.
Could this be it?