Help A Bitch Out

HaBO: It Glistens!

Sally writes in with a HaBO PERFECT for Crazysauce day!

I’ve held back on this for a long time because I’m embarrassed by my memory, but I’m getting that desperate. I’m looking for the very first romance novel I ever read, which opened the floodgates to at least a thousand more books read over the past 30 years.  The details in my mind are so very sketchy and my internet searches have come up with zip, so I’m hoping the resourceful readers of SBTB can help me out.

The book was a historical (smuggled from my mothers box of historical paperbacks). Since I was prolly 12 or 13 at the time the book could’ve been written anytime in the 70s—and that was a LONG time ago, I know.

I’m 99% certain the title had ‘rapture’ in it, like Love’s Enduring Rapture, et al.

I’m about 80% certain the heroine had long black hair

There was some kind of ship, tho I’m not sure about the pirate meme.

What is 100% emblazoned in my mind even at my advanced age is a scene where a man is looking through a spyglass and sees a woman’s vajayjay glistening in the sun.

And that’s all it took to hook me for a lifetime for romance readers.

Does anyone remember this book??

One always remembers the first time… one read about a glistening hoohaw in EXTREME CLOSE UP. Someone recall this gleaming wonderment?

 

Categorized:

Help a Bitch Out

Comments are Closed

  1. Damn!  Have no idea what the book is, but that is some kind of powerful spyglass!

  2. Michael says:

    And some kind of serious, heavy duty glistening going on.

  3. ChrisL says:

    Who knew vajazzling existed back then?

    Do not recognize the book though, sorry :/

  4. velocireader says:

    glistening in the sun? could be painful!

  5. Bit says:

    It’s always the first one that you remember, right?  Ugh, mine was also pilfered from my mother’s collection of historicals, except this one involved a captive woman and a native american dude…sadly, nary a glistening hoohaw in sight.

  6. tikaanidog says:

    No idea what the book is (dang, that’s quite thestrong spyglass!), but yes, it’s your first one you remember most. I was around 13 years old home ‘sick’ from school, and snagged one of my moms series books (early-mid 80’s silhouette romance, with the purple framing around the front). He was a recluse and avoided public places, she was somewhat famous. I can’t remember how she got to his place (and stayed there for a while) but the scene that got to me that I still remember 28 years (!) later was him going to the airport as she was leaving, shouting out to her to please not leave, and her thinking “well, you couldn’t get much more public than that!”. It was the perfect hook for me – I’ve been reading romance ever since! Wish I could remember the name of the book or author. She had one or two other books in the same publishing line that were just as emotionally gripping as this one…

  7. SJ says:

    Don’t know it, but it sounds hilarious. Vajayjays glistening in the sun…

    I rarely read romance now, but I remember the first one I read, too. Something about some girl named Danielle, and it was in France, and some guy was a knight. Good times.

  8. vicki says:

    Don’t remember any dazzling vajayjays, sorry. OTOH, my first romance was Bride of Pendorric by Victoria Holt, courtesy of my piano teacher when I was 10 – had to hide it in my music books. Thank you, Miss Roberts. Hope there’s lots of romance wherever you are.

    And let me know when you figure out which book this is.

  9. Gillian says:

    “The Snow Leopard”. 1978. Yes, I was sucked in by a Mills and Boon classic, which (for some OUTRAGEOUS reason), was in my school library. My excuse was that I was studying the genre in the hope of writing one.

    You know, there’s a manuscript I really must finish…

    BTW, the “character input” thing here is asking me to enter “Wife92”- is there something about this site I should know???

  10. DreadPirateRachel says:

    Well, that just gives a whole new and disturbingly literal meaning to “glittery magic hooha.”

  11. jayhjay says:

    Ugh, I can’t think of glittering vag without thinking of Jennifer Love Hewitt going on about it in George Lopez when she pimped her book.

  12. sweetsiouxsie says:

    I read “Candy” in 1967 when I was a senior in high school. Yikes!! I had never read anything like that before! I had such a strong reaction to it that I went home sick from school the next day. Oh, I had a bad sunburn too.

  13. Daisy says:

    I like to think that this book is the same one as Pam’s HaBO query, with the brother off busy taking it in the gloryhole for the team, thus leaving the sister’s hooha free to glisten lonely in the sun for the pirate to espy.

  14. Is it a bad that the first thing I thought of were the vampires from Twilight? I’m pretty sure it is.

  15. Joanna S. says:

    Since he’s a (possible) pirate, maybe her vajayjay actually functions as the lighthouse (you know, ye olde budget cuts!). At which point he should stop gazing through the spyglass and steer his damn ship away from the rocks!!

  16. I’m intrigued. I’d love to know the name of the book with the blindng vajayjay.

    Hugs,
    Tambra Kendall
    Daughters of Avalon Publishing

  17. AllyJS says:

    My first romance novel was “Defiant Captive”, one of my Meme’s books. Unfortunately I asked a cousin for the pronounciation of the name “Deidre”, she tattled on me and I never saw the book again.

    Don’t know the book but I do hope someone does

  18. Pam says:

    Could it be Rapture’s Tempest by Bobbi Smith? It was realeased in 1985 and again in 2008.

    Here’s the book’s description:
    When her new stepfather tried to visit her bedchamber, Delight de Vries knew she had no choice but to leave St. Louis and her mother behind. So she cut her dark curls, bound her breasts, and hired on as a cabin boy for Captain James Westlake. Her disguise fooled the crew, but Delight could hardly keep from betraying herself: the gentleness in the captain’s eyes and the strange yearning she felt when she saw his muscled body were almost more than she could bear.

    He’d been a bit liberal with the scotch that evening, so when his cabin boy tossed aside a flannel nightshirt to reveal ivory skin and womanly curves, James decided his questions could wait ’til morning. Her innocent surrender touched his heart even as her siren’s body begged him to engulf her in his passion, to bring her to the peak of…RAPTURE’S TEMPEST

  19. Pam says:

    Here is a few more:

    With Rapture Bound Author: Mary Kay Simmons 1978
    From lavish plantations to plundered seas… — As once she had longed for marriage, now Caroline longed to be free… of cruelty, of shameful barter. — But escape brought no freedom – only villainous ruffians, a struggle for survival on a remote island, and captivity by the proud Captain Domino who would not release her for any reason on earth! — Yet where was the love she sought if not in the arms of Domino! And what, after all, was love… if not the wild, rapturous yearning she learned to feel for him alone!

    Rapture’s Mistress Author: Gimone Hall 1978
    ONE MAN,
    Edmond Beau Clair, took beautiful young Lily Ledoux’s innocence on a wedding night she would never forget, by as she might…

    ONE MAN,
    Joe Beau Clair, ruthless and handsome, won Lily’s heart in a night of love that taught her how great was passion’s pleasure, how burning her need…

    ONE MAN.
    Archer Snow, brilliant and cultured, claimed Lily’s body and soul, in a marriage that turned first into a nightmare mockery, then into a hellish captivity…

    But no one man could long hold this ravishing creature on a quest that led her from a lush Caribbean plantation…to the most notorious quarter of New Orleans… to the heights of fame and fortune on the stage—and the depths of danger and degradation in the power of desire….

    Stolen Rapture Author: Lydia Lancaster 1978
    Here comes the bride across the seas from England. Eighteen, beautiful—the image of purity and virtue, all that the young heir to a plantation could wish for in a wife. Except that her reputation has preceded her. All London knows her as a dissolute woman, a gambler, a spoiled heiress who consorts openly with wastrels. No, Mistress Amberly is not what she seems. She isn’t even Vivian Amberly, but a poor cousin sent against her will to marry a man she’s never seen—a jealous, ardent, angry man but a man she might love.

  20. Sally says:

    Wow, I will check out these titles and get back to you. I hope one of them glistens! LOL

  21. Carmie says:

    i’m pretty sure it’s not rapture’s tempest though there’s a fire but no glistening hoohoo. if i remember right i was 10 when i read my first romance, i was ticked off because there was a blizzard and i ran out of library books and couldn’t go get more, so i stole one from mom’s stack. Tell Me Lies by Claudia Dain. i think i picked it cause the cover was purty. nothing like a girl pretending to be a prostitute and a man pretending to prentend being a pirate on a hoe hunt right?

Comments are closed.

By posting a comment, you consent to have your personally identifiable information collected and used in accordance with our privacy policy.

↑ Back to Top