I received an email from Shawny about a problem she had that's rather common — and a similar problem her uncle had that is both hilarious and sad:
Can I make a topic suggestion? Books that sound like one thing, but are actually another? Or maybe books with identical or very similar titles? I've read 2 books called A Kiss at Midnight this year, one was a fairy tale, one was vampire angst. Fortunately, I'm a fan of both, but not everyone is.
Another example – my retired banker uncle recently planned a trip to Savannah. Someone suggested he read Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which is set in Savannah. So he got online, but instead of buying Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, bought Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evie. I believe the latter is set in Oregon.
He read the whole thing, acknowledged later that there had been more sex in the book than he had expected, and spent the entire book wondering when the setting was going to shift to Savannah, and how this book got shortlisted for a Pulitzer.
He finished it, and this a man who maybe reads 2 novels a year, so that's saying something. You're far more likely to find old copies of The Economist on his bedside table than a book…unless it's maybe a collection of Churchill's letters to Roosevelt during WWII. Yeah, he's that kind of uncle.
True story.
Punny homage titles are pretty familiar to most of us by now, with books like What an Earl Wants being used twice now. And it can be pretty easy to tell the difference between two books when you see the covers,but it's a little harder to differentiate if you're looking at a tiny line of text on a digital reader screen – which is where a lot of my accidental buying mistakes happen. Thank heavens for Amazon's very relaxed digital book return policy.
Has this happened to you? Have you bought a book by mistake because of a similar title? Does seeing titles reused confuse you at all?
And here's the REAL question: What do you think is the most commonly re-used romance title?
There are a lot of plays on movie or song titles in the romance title world. Even within Julia Quinn’s repertoire alone there are several examples: To Sir Phillip, With Love (To Sir, With Love), Ten Things I Love About You (Ten Things I Hate About You), The Viscount Who Loved Me (The Spy Who Loved Me), It’s In His Kiss (from the song of the same title).
In general most romance titles seem to be pulled from the same pool of words, as though the publishers just draw a bunch of random words from the same hat and slap them together.
I once put “Life of Pi” on my wish list, and my father bought me “The History of Pi,” insisting it’s what I’d asked for. The first is a novel (well-loved, although not by me…I didn’t much care for it), and the latter is just what it sounds like – a history of the mathematical use of Pi. (3.14etc.) I tried to read it; I really did, but I’m not at ALL a mathematician, so it was lost on me.
Jasper Fforde’s wonderful dystopian novel Shades of Grey came out two years before the dreadful 50 Shades of Grey.
Much Ado About has been used by a slew of authors in numerous variations: Much Ado About You by Eloisa James, Much Ado About Vampires by Katie MacAlister, Much Ado About Magic by Patricia Rice (and also Much Ado About Magic by Shanna Swendson), Much Ado About Marriage by Karen Hawkins and Much Ado About Rogues by Kasey Michaels. Jacquie Rodgers has a whole series of Much Ado About… Those are just the romance novels with Much Ado in the title, there are more beyond that in other genres.
This was exactly how I discovered Narnia. I was in a horse phase and checking out every book I found in the library with “horse” in the title, which got me A Horse and His Boy.
I got into Nancy Drew in a similar way, only it was when I was in a witches/magic phase (thanks to the daily reruns of Bewitched on TV) and checking out every book in the library with “witch” or “magic” in the title. There was a Nancy Drew mystery called The Witch Tree Symbol that turned out to have nothing to do with witches. It was about the Amish and the hex symbols on the barns in Pennsylvania Dutch country. If that hadn’t sidetracked me into Nancy Drew and mysteries in general, I would have found Narnia sooner because not long after “Keene” on the library shelves would have been “Lewis,” and then I’d have found The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Nthing the ridiculous number of dukes, earls, etcetera in titles. “Cowboy” and “billionaire” are also popular in certain circles, and a lot of contemporaries seem to operate on the “The (adjective) (stereotypically male job)‘s (adjective) (stereotypically female descriptor)” formula.
It’s actually kind of a fun game, trying to figure out how many modifiers you can tack onto each part. My personal best is The Greek Cowboy Billionaire Tycoon’s Secret Virgin Mistress’s Lost Baby.
@DPR:
I was going to “like” your comment, but it has EXACTLY 50 likes and I do believe that is a sign from the universe.
Go forth with thy time travel justice and eradicate teh evil!
This just happened to me with a review on Goodreads. I had reviewed a recent read on Amazon and went to cross-post at Goodreads; I did a quick title search and clicked, pasted and posted—then the larger image of the cover came up, and sure enough, same title, wrong book. Quick delete, but I’m really glad I caught it. Otherwise my review could have confused some folks.
“To [verb] a [noble title]” titles always confuse me. Especially dukes. Too many.
My two first romance novel encounters resulted from mix-ups like these! Purchased “Lady Knight” by Evangelynn Stratton by accident instead of “Lady Knight” by Tamora Pierce. Instead of a girl power medieval fantasy geared toward middle school girls, I got a heroine named “Rose Petal”.
My second romance (which I actually loved) was “Hot Shot” by SE Phillips. From the few lines I read about it I thought it was a Silicon Valley tech thriller, a la Michael Crichton… was pretty confused when a book with a white rowboat surrounded by fuchsia flowers on the cover showed up. It’s funny how your pre-conceptions change how you read something. In my mind “Hot Shot” is a whole other category from SE Phillip’s other books, because it’s imbued with all the high stakes and techno-jargon of the thriller I thought it was going to be!
This is why every romance author should either a) use a kick-ass, original portmanteau or b) get the publishers to do it.
Because *nobody* reading this has commented, “Yeah, I bought ‘Pregnesia,’ but it turned out to NOT be the most-awesome pregnant amnesiac romance ever.”
This is another reason why I will never own an e-reader.
Thank you Robert Palmer. 🙂