Smart Bitches, Trashy Books

The Top Ten Signs You’re Reading a Very Bad Romance Novel

Book: Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels

It was in the proposal. It's not in the book. But you get to enjoy it anyway!

1. The prancing black stallion changes suddenly into a docile grey gelding in the space of three pages.
   
   Don't laugh - it's happened. Bribe us with trinkets and we'll tell you which book.
   
   Why is this the most egregious sign that you're reading bad romance? Because this is a sign that someone thinks you, as a romance reader, are dumb as a box of hair. Or dirt. Or dirty hair. Maybe it was bad editing, bad writing, bad transcription, or just bad luck, but if an error that big flies past the number of eyes required to write, edit, and revise a novel, then someone was slacking, and the reader suffers the insult in the end. Up with that shit we will not put.
2. A virgin mother gives birth to a secret baby, and the baby's name isn't Jesus.
   
   Another book that For Real Got Published, Like Damn. It was a Harlequin, and Candy read it years ago, and wishes she could remember the title. The hero didn't actually penetrate the heroine, though he did spooge on her, and apparently, his swimmers were regular Olympic champs.
   
   Anyway, we're not sure what is up with the secret baby phenomenon, yet it continues apace. Not to say that it's impossible to do well, but it's very, very difficult. Women who choose to run away to Buttfuck, Nowhere when they find out they're about to become a single mother instead of arranging for alimony or engaging in a dialogue with the father aren't brave; they need a hard crack upside the head and some good, stern lectures on common sense and planning for the future.
   
   But really, bitching about secret baby plots aside, this item is more a warning about the tendency some romance authors have for slapping together a bunch of hackneyed themes. Does your book feature a werewolf amnesiac cowboy? Does the vampire boardroom mistress long for a Navy SEAL sheikh? Get away from the book by any means you can. Or, if you've been unfortunate enough to pay money for it already, fling it against the wall. It'll make a really satisfying thwack! when it hits. Just make sure no pets or toddlers are in the way.
   
   Number 2.5: There's a widow who is still a virgin, despite being married to Lord Humperslut for years and years.
   
   How is this possible? Well, sit back and we'll tell you. The heroine married Humperslut just before he started introducing his bloodstream to metric tons of opium, and his penis was lost shortly thereafter in a tragic riding accident. His young bride is sworn to secrecy lest his reputation suffer, leaving her to misery and, of course, sexual unfulfillment.
   
   OK, fine, we're exaggerating a little — but only a little. Yet again, the Sacred Virginity of the Heroine rears its ugly maidenhead, and the heroine's validity as a woman is tied up in the sanctity of her love canal. Virgin widows may have been novel plot devices back in the day, but Romancelandia is lousy with those beasts. We say it's time to put this particular cash cow out to pasture.
3. Emotionally and possibly sexually abusive Alpha Male hero? Limp dishrag heroine who falls in love with him anyway? A plot that either forces them together or forces him to save her from death or serious injury, causing Love to Blossom in his Cold Dead Heart?
   
   That's a trifecta of crap right there. We are both partial to the strong and emotionally stunted Alpha hero, but there comes a point where either serious groveling is needed, or an asskicking of said male is required. Yet the heroine never gives it to him, forcing us to throw the book as hard as we can against a wall to do our best to administer a jarring shock to the bonehead.
4. The Regency bluestocking heroine can't stop saying "OK," the hero gets the date for the Battle of Waterloo wrong, somebody mentions Darwin's theory of natural selection about 50 years before Charlie-boy publishes On the Origin of the Species, and all the non-English phrases in the book are either gibberish or sound like they'd gone through several drunken rounds of translation and re-translation in Babelfish.
   
   The occasional mistake is one thing. Consistent and complete lack of research is another. And for the love of God, authors, is it that difficult to hand your manuscript to a native speaker of the foreign tongue you're attempting to mangle and ask them "Look, would somebody actually say something like this in your language, or did I just inadvertently reveal my hero's latent homosexual tendencies by having him address the heroine by the masculine form of 'my darling' throughout the book?"
5. The book, which started out as a perfectly normal romantic suspense novel, or historical romance, or any other formula set in a reasonably realistic, non-magical universe, suddenly throws down supernatural elements like talking animals or ghostly ancestors more than halfway through the book--all because the hero needs to find a way to rescue the heroine, find the treasure and/or solve the mystery.
   
   Yeah, that's right. The plot has been run over by a tank driven by a grizzled old dude named Rusty, and Rusty has "DEUS" tattooed in big, black letters on his chest. When you see signs of Rusty and his big-ass Ex Machina, you run. You run like hell, little girl.
6. The book you're reading makes you wonder if Lemony Snicket would sue if you decide to refer to it exclusively as "A Series of Unfortunate Big Misunderstandings."
   
   Oh, you know the one we're talking about. It's the one in which the hero sees the heroine sneaking off to meet HIS miscreant brothers, who like whorehouses and brandy. Even though the hero himself indulged in such vices until he met the Power of her Magic Virginal Va-hoo-jay, he chooses to believe his True Love is a swamp-crotched whore based solely on seeing her in the presence of his brothers. And of course, the heroine and said brothers were planning a surprise birthday party for the hero at the request of his invalid mother who wants nothing more than his happiness.
   
   We don't want his happiness. We want him to wake up and stop being such a dillhole.
7. Absolutely revolting sexual imagery that makes you both cross your legs and lose your appetite.
   
   When purple prose goes beyond mere purple and becomes downright disgusting, it's a sign you're reading bad romance. A hero who bursts like a ripe melon. A virgin heroine whose breasts begin lactating at the first moment of interaction with the hero's lips. Nipples that wink--just remember: the hero's nubbins should never be more coquettish than the heroine. Sex scenes between the two protagonists shouldn't ever make you want to Google the nearest nunnery to enquire about membership.
8. A contemporary heroine who has a stellar career and home life that are described as fulfilling, but upon meeting the hero she ends that life without a moment of acknowledgment or regret.
   
   The idea that fulfillment for women can only be found in the haven of domestic bliss is archaic, annoying, and downright insulting to any woman who reads romance in between student loan repayments.
9. The "back to natural basics" plotline that removes the hero and heroine from the Big City and relocates them to the purity and downhome simplicity of small town, rural life.
   
   In case you missed it, everything that has been invented since the Industrial Revolution is bad, impure, and sending us all straight to hell. So move to Appalachia, ASAP!
10. Rape
    
    Yeah, this is a controversial one. Lots of readers dig rapist heroes and defend them to the death--or at least, to the extent that they can spend time on the Internet without the boss noticing that they've spent the last four hours of the workday engaged in a massive balls-out flamewar on a romance novel forum instead of running cycle counts like they were supposed to. Like the incognito infant, the rapist hero is almost impossible to pull off, and his redemption is usually contingent in him groveling for forgiveness and tormenting himself for a good portion of the book. Generally speaking for the two of us, though, we get a massive case of the squicks when we read about forced sexual encounters in which the heroine's "No" is interpreted as, "Oh, I haven't made you want it bad enough yet, huh?"
11. Super Extra Bonus Item! (Yes. Smart Bitches? Go all the way up to 11): Inaccurate and staggeringly insensitive depictions of indigenous minorities.
    
    If the heroine is a noble Caucasian maiden and the hero is a member of an indigenous Native American tribal people, AND the title contains the words "half-breed," "savage" or both, then you’ve got the makings of a really, really bad romance. Apocalyptically bad, even. In fact, if these romances could ride horses, they could probably substitute for War and Plague all by their little selves. If the plot of that romance involves the heroine taming the hero's wild ways while he teaches her to listen to the music of the rhythm of the night wind, and he’s not referring in any way to flatulence or El DeBarge, then you’ve definitely embarked on a bad romance.

Read these at your own risk, and please don't say we haven't warned you. Because not only have we warned you, we've probably read them already and are still sobbing with sweet, savage regret.