I received this letter from Barbara, who is looking for books to share with her daughter:
Hi! I vividly remember my first romance book experience — I swiped one of my mother's Harlequin romances shortly before I turned 12 and there was no holding me back from the genre after that glorious and eye-opening introduction to Greek millionaires and the shy British virgins they woo, etc! Now my daughter will be turning 12 in a few months (gasp! how did THAT happen?) and I'm trying to figure out what to gently suggest to her to bring her over to the romance-reading side of things…
She reads at a high school level (at least that is what her teachers tell me) but she's not ready for anything too explicit sex-wise as she's still rather mortified by the whole idea. I give her another year until that becomes a compelling factor in reading choices…she loves mysteries, history and mythology. She is not a huge fan of the vampire genre (holy crap is there a lot of vampire-y YA stuff out there!) and is more of a Buffy kind of gal versus Bella. She's also not quite to the age where lots of angst is appealing. We found the Goddess series by Aimee Carter from Harlequin Teen and she's devoured those…
So, I'm just wondering if anyone might have any other suggestions for her?
Thanks so much.
I confess, I'm completely at a loss, here. Not too much angst and more Buffy and asskicking than doormat and Bella. Ok: I had just typed up a whole list of ideas and then realized they were all too old for this reader in terms of age and comfort. DAMMIT. My recommendation-fu deserts me at this time!
Do you have ideas? I'm going to keep hitting my head with my laptop until I can come up with something. Or you'll post the idea that's flying around the outside of my brain that I can't grab and I'll start yelling.
