When Romance Mimic Real Life

Ever had a book intersect with your real life in an unexpected way? Meg has:

Random idea for reader interaction: How have the romance novels you’re
reading intersected with your life?

An example: I’m finishing up my senior (undergrad) thesis, which deals with
British children’s literature and colonial India. One chapter discusses the
Indian Mutiny and British response to it. Last night, I was trying to take a
break from my thesis and turn off my brain some. I opened the new book I
downloaded onto my computer’s Kindle app, Wild Desire by Lori Brighton.
Started reading and enjoying it, not minding that it was set in colonial
India until I got to the start of chapter 5. The main characters, who are
British and American, have just been told to run because

“Apparently, the British Army deemed it appropriate to use cow and pig
grease on the rifles, which, of course, upset the locals,” Leo said, as if
that explained everything. “British are slaughtering the Indians. Indians
are slaughtering the British. Men, women, children.”

It’s the start of the Indian Mutiny! I had to stop reading, since I
couldn’t stand any more Mutiny after writing on it all day. I look forward
to starting the book again in April AFTER my thesis is turned in.

So that’s awfully long-winded, but I just thought the intersection of novel
and real-life was too great to ignore and I’d be interested in seeing how
else this has happened to people.

There’s no doubt that romance readers have personal relationships with their books for a variety of reasons. Unfortunately this has never happened to me. I’d much prefer it if romance novels intersected with my real life. For example, I remember watching the movie Radio Days on the day Baby Jessica fell down a well, and being freaked out by the whole thing because Jessica came out of the well ok, but there’s a scene in the movie where a child falls down a well and doesn’t survive.

What about you? Has a romance lined up with your real life in an unexpected way?

Categorized:

Random Musings

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  1. DianeN says:

    @Darlene Marshall—I once picked up a book in which the hero had my son’s first name and his last name was a variant of ours! Needless to say, I did not buy that book…

  2. Liz says:

    this happened to me last year.  I had just finished a course on victimology for my MS when I started reading a book by Brenda Novak in which the heroine was a victim advocate.  Unfortunately, a lot of the details in the book were wrong, and it made me so frustrated.

    Even better is that a couple of hours ago I applied for a job as a victim advocate, and am now thinking about this book again. =)

    Also, when I was in high school, I started reading a book that took place in Buffalo, NY, and as I was reading I learned that I was accepted to Buffalo State College.

  3. Kat88 says:

    De-lurking to post because this happened to me a couple of weeks ago in truly WTF style.

    I was procrastinating from editing my (non-fiction) ms by planning out a Mills & Boon-esque novel, only to tab over onto my facebook to find a uni friend announcing that she had just produced the most out-there plot point of my novel, the Secret Baby, and her RL version was as least as OTT as my fictional one. 

    It was startling, to say the least

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