Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

HaBO: The First Romance She Ever Read

You know my theory - you never forget the first romance you ever read. Paige is looking for hers:

So I’ve recently become nostalgic for the first romance I ever read, but unfortunately, when my mom found it hidden under my bed many years ago, she confiscated it and got rid of is, so I was hoping you romance aficionados would help me out and be able to pull a title from somewhere so I could find it and read it again.

Here’s what I remember:

It was a Harlequin published sometime between 2000-2003; and I’m pretty sure it was a Blaze imprint or something of that ilk.

The plot is pretty fuzzy: It took place in a beach town, and heroine goes there to solve the mystery of a murder or kidnapping of a sister, mother, brother, uncle? It possibly took place in the aftermath of the crime Heroine used to go there as a girl and she might have had some bad memories of the town.

Hero is a policeman or security officer or some sort of investigator who is also connected to the crime.

He moved into her home after she got threatened by whoever perpetrated… read more »

HaBO: Crushing Woes and Harlequin Presents-Ish Plots

Kia writes:

I read a contemporary romance at the end of my very long first pregnancy over 6 years ago, though I’m not sure when the book was actually published.

The protagonist was a photographer, who had a troubled first marriage with an abusive husband. Financially she is struggling because she walked away from the relationship without a penny, with only her quiet beauty and dignity intact. Luckily she’s housesitting for a friend with a fabulous place by the sea. Her neighbor is a handsome, wealthy playboy. He’s emotionally unavailable because of some manipulative ex, who has tried to snare him and his seed.

Our heroine has fragile health and believes herself infertile. After breaking what she believes to be the terrific news of her miraculous conception, she is given a soul crushing speech in which the love of her life states he will pay for his issue but wants nothing to do with either of them.

She refuses the money, I want to say she rips up an obscenely large check in front of their adjoining ocean front properties, the tempestuous sea swirling in the back drop.

Valiantly she tries to hang on to her pregnancy but in the… read more »

Help a Dude Out: Looking for a Holiday Gift

From a nice gentleman named Phillip:

Basically, I’m a guy that likes a girl, we’ve been dating for a month or two, and I happened across the story of how she became known as Germaine.

Turns out, her mother was reading a romance novel in the hospital when she was born and decided to name her after a character. For Christmas this year, I want to find this book for her! However, no one knows the name of this book, not even her mother! The only facts that I know are these:

- The main character’s name is Germaine, - The main character is a nun who escapes or runs away from a convent for love. - Printed before 1987

Unfortunately this is all I have to go by right now…

Anyone remember this book? It’s shopping time (what an awesome gift).

HaBO: My Hand! My Hand!

Bitchery reader JC writes:

I want to go back to the first romance I remember enticing me.

I cannot remember the colour of the book, the names of the characters, or even the year it was set in, though it was probably written in the mid 90s. It was an historical, probably Regency. The only sure thing I can remember was the scene that sold book for me: the Hero settling in for a quiet drink in his study, self assured in his (mis-)assumptions of the Heroine, when a close friend/father figure/trusted servant unknowingly blabs the innocent truth about said Heroine’s past, and the Hero shatters the glass in his hand. He has a great self-flagellating moment while he realizes what a dick he has been, while his friend who just delivered the plot turn says something equivalent to…Dude, your hand! And the book has a wonderful description blood and glass everywhere with the Hero replying something along the lines of “My hand, who cares about my hand! I was a Dipshit.”

If any of your readers can remember a book based on this scene I would be eternally grateful and wonderfully surprised. Unfortunately, since this scene is the… read more »

HaBO: Amazon Headhunters

No, they’re not looking to hire you away for a job at Amazon.com - they’re looking for your head. Or the heroine’s head. Adrienne read a romance from the YA section and can’t remember the title - but wow, does it have some crazy plot:

I am looking for the name of a romance novel I read when i was in high school. It was in the young adult section of our library, and so its pretty tame. An american girl goes to the amazon in brazil to meet her father. Her father is the CEO of some company doing foresting or something in the amazon, but he’s an honest person although other people in the company are not, and so they’re trying to get rid of him. She flies into the jungle supposedly to meet him, and then is abandoned there by the same group that has kidnapped her father.

A scientist/guide/environmentalist/hunk finds her and she tags along with him, but he hates her because of the terrible/illegal things her fathers company are doing (which kidnapped father doesnt’ know about). At one point, a boa constrictor nearly kills her, I think headhunters might show up at one point,… read more »

HaBO: A Lost Bargain

Erin asks:

I was wondering if you and the Bitchery could help me remember a book I read, probably the mid-to-late 90s. I remember I bought it in one of those cheap-o romance novel sets you could get at Waldenbooks. Two or three bound together with cellophane for about $3. Anyway, this one in particular was so cool, but I got rid of it because my mother frowned upon romances. I remember it had a silvery glittery cover, with just the title—no people on the front. It was about a woman who for some reason was seeing a therapist, and she agreed to be hypnotized. She ended up going back to her past life while under hypnosis (I want to say her past self was living in the 1800s, maybe early 1900s), and was involved with a cult of some sort that worshipped some ancient Egyptian god. It ended up that the story went back and forth between her present and past self, and the villain (the head of the cult, I think) was able to follow her to the present. So she was in danger in both lives. The hero was there to help her fight the cult,… read more »

haBO: Fumes!

Ming Qi writes:

It’s always amazing how people on this blog are able to identify obscure books on the HaBO posts, and I was wondering if you can help me figure out the title of a book I’ve been thinking about. I don’t know much about it. It is a contemporary. I read it in 2005 so it’s published before then. I don’t remember the cover well and even if I did, it might not help because I’m pretty sure it was a large-print version of the book. I think the hero and heroine are close friends/neighbors. The two things I remember the most about from the book are:

1. the hero learns that people can become attracted to each other when they are exercising together, so he exercises with the heroine to get her to be attracted to him.

2. he also learns that attraction can happen when two people mirror each other’s moves. He tries to mirror the heroine’s breathing while she was painting her nails, and I think he almost passed out because he was breathing in nail polish fumes so deeply.

I’m not sure about this, but I think he was trying to get her to… read more »

HaBO: Time Travel with Horses

Trudy writes:

There was a book that came out, maybe in the 80s or early 90s - the basic plot is: It’s a time travel. An earl, during Regency era, is attacked by someone and travels thru time to the present. He meets up with a gal from Virginia (I think) and she tries to help him solve what happened to him. They do all this research and find out he was murdered (unsolved) and was the end of his direct line to the earldom. At first he’s anxious to get back but the two fall in love. She arranges for him to get identification, his only skill is training horses so they buy a horse farm so he has something to do.

They go to England and tour his ancestral home. There’s a desk with papers hidden in a secret drawer. He discovers his cousin murdered him because he was financially desperate. Anyway, they go back to America and have a baby or she’s pregnant, when he is whisked off to some other time. The author also wrote a sequel to the story of how they meet up again in time. Does this book ring a bell… read more »

HaBO: Not So Much Fecundity Please

One of the aspects of romance that some folks LOVE and some folks loathe is the emphasis on children upon children and pregnancy as part and parcel to the happy ever after. For some people, a romance novel isn’t complete without a baby, either in the plot, or in the future, or a secret in the plot to be revealed in the future. For others, babies in romance are distinctly not-romantic (especially when one is tired to the point of blindness from taking care of one at all hours of the night) or, in the case of those going through infertility treatments or facing the inability to conceive, terribly painful.

Reader C. has asked for romance recommendations that aren’t about babies, and may even involve infertility as part of the plot- preferably a known condition that isn’t magically healed with frequent and dedicated applications of the spooge of healing from the Wang of Mighty Lovin™.

I’m hoping for some book recommendations, but I am also fairly sure it’s a lost cause. Also, I don’t want to start a shit storm.

What I would really like to find are some romances (preferably historical, but contemporary, sci-fi/fantasy, etc. are all… read more »

HaBO: Remembering a Book with Fondness

Annie writes:

I’m looking for a really special book. When I was a freshman in high school, our school library was full of old books from the sixties and seventies that no one had read or even leafed through since 1987. When I found this book, I spent 10 minutes out of my lunch period for weeks reading it, not checking it out, just a few pages then putting it back. It was about a British or American daughter of a painting restorer who, after her father died, had to travel to France to fulfill her father’s last contract. Her employer was, I think, an extremely handsome, wealthy widower with a young daughter who didn’t really want this presumptuous miss to handle his damaged works of art. He relented after a while, of course. And then fell in love with her (duh). The plot turned to some missing family jewels, and I think the widowers’ brother had something to do with their disappearance. It was a romantic, dreamy book that I remember with a lot of fondness. Please help me find it!

This was how I found Susan Elizabeth Phillips - I started reading “First Lady” in line at the… read more »

HaBO: Virgins are So High Maintenance

Bitchery reader Janie writes:

I read a book in 2000 I believe and I’ve been trying to find it since. I think it was written in the 90s, but here’s a detailed summery of it. I hope someone can help! I’ve been searching for it for close to 10 years!

I don’t know if I’m mixing my books but this girl who lived with her aunt or uncle[George?] and is given to the king to marry his son. She refuses so the king ties up her and drags her by the neck to marry her to his son by proxy because his son is still away in battle. When he comes back he is told he is married. He’s excited to goes to meet his new wife. He sees her tied up and the servants are hitting her. He was outraged and demanded an explanation. They showed him the scratches and bite marks she inflicted on them while they were getting her “ready” for him. He unties her and see the rope burns on her neck and is even madder at his father. He cut his arm or palm and put the blood on the sheets to make it look… read more »

HaBo: Stuttering Loveswept

Becky writes:

I know it was a Loveswept romance and the heroine had a stutter and was shy. The hero had a son and they were neighbors. I read this when I was just a pre-teen (stolen from my mom’s collection) and really liked it. It was one of the first romances I ever read. Can you please identify or providme with some resources that might be able to help’?

I have a theory that everyone can remember the first romance they ever read. Do you remember yours? And do you remember this one?

HaBO: Younger Man, Lost Dog

Bitchery Reader KsMom writes:

Trying to find the name or author of a Harlequin American (back when they first came out and had the silver border) about a poor, broke caterer with two kids (boy and girl, I think), and she falls for a younger guy (in college, I think) who worked at a grocery store she shopped at.

The heroine had a dog that got sick or disappeared at the end, and the hero rescued it. The heroine’s married sister was a fashionista type who didn’t want kids because they were messy. But in the end, the sister did decide that maybe kids weren’t so bad. The sister’s husband was British, maybe?

Can’t remember any of the character names or who wrote it, but it was one of my keeper books way back when. I loaned it to my mom, who packed it up and gave it away to Goodwill. Needless to say, I have NOT loaned out any more keepers since, as, if you can’t trust your MOM, who CAN you trust?

Much obliged if anybody can help me find this book, because I would SO buy it.

If you can’t trust your mom with your keepers, indeed,… read more »

HaBO: Reminiscing Over Romance

Bitchery reader Tamsin (Gosh I dig that name) writes:

I’m searching for the title and author of a book I read about ten years ago as a teen. My mother and I were discussing romance novels recently and both recalled this one but it has either been lost or trashed. As far as I remember, it would have been published in the early / mid nineties, likely as a Harlequin or Silhouette title. The book starts out with the heroine kidnapped and being held in some isolated cabin…. somewhere. Enter hero who has been sent by her family to rescue her. He may have been a hero of the clichéd Native American tracker kind, but not sure. He rescues her and they then start the journey away from wherever she has been held (if I recall correctly, a very remote, rural and I *think* snow-covered location) back to her family home.

I realize that this description is not all that detailed right now, so I offer up the very few random details I DO remember: at some point in the journey, they stopped at a diner and ate burgers. And apple pie. Also, once back at heroine’s family home,… read more »

HaBO: Pirate Assmunch Hero

Bitchery reader Kelly writes:

I was working a double (afternoon shift then night shift) and had nothing to do so I read the romance novel left in the desk drawer. I HATED it. But, I figured if something that fucking bad was published there had to be better stuff out there. In any case, I was hooked because, as you know, there was waaaaaay better stuff out there. Thank you, Julie Garwood, Laura Kinsale, yeah, and Johanna Lindsey. Go figure, the worst book I ever read is what made me a fan for life - it’s been 18 years since that fated tome. I am dying to know the title and author…this is how it went, if memory serves.

Heroine ends up on a pirate ship, wait for it…he rapes her…and when he sees the bruises he left he feels remorse. Now, that’s my kind of guy! So dreamy and sensitive. They have unforced sex, I think. They are falling for each other and something happens - she gets sent back to her father and he goes to prison. The father tells the heroine her pirate-lover is dead, she mourns and wears black.

Pirate-lover breaks out of prison and kidnaps… read more »