This HaBO is from Melissa, and she’s trying to find this paranormal romance:
I’ve been desperately trying to track down the first romance novel I ever read (if you don’t count Flowers in the Attic and Sweet Vally High), but I unfortunately can’t remember much.
It was 1997 or 1998, and I was taking a class about post modern analysis of myth as part of my liberal studies major.
The professor shocked us by making us read a romance novel with a peach colored cover that, and I kid you not, I’d seen on display by the checkout at the grocery store.
It was about a single mother of a son (about 10, maybe) who falls in love with a werewolf.
We snobby liberal studies majors resisted and were embarrassed to be seen reading such a thing, but I confess, I read it in one night. And yes, my roommates did tease me mercilessly.
The professor told us to get over ourselves and compared the structure of the book to the writings of Aristotle. And then we hung our heads in shame.
Anyway, I’m not sure that’s enough to go on, but I’d love to find the book and read it again.
Man, I would have loved to have been assigned a romance novel in college.
I don’t know what the book is but three cheers for your professor
Can’t quite pull it up, but can confirm that college profs will typically respond to emails from former students, so you could try to reach out that way!
I respect internet anonymity, so I won’t be offended if the requester doesn’t answer (because, yes, this is tangentially identifiable info about you), but curiosity compels me to ask: what was the professor’s name?
Just to help the investigation (and I’m curious if this will be solved) but I don’t remember a big paranormal romance or urban fantasy field in the late 90’s. IIRC, I think I had to comb through the sci-fi fantasy shelves. There weren’t many authors big enough to get into a grocery store, then. Early werewolf books (maybe- I probably haven’t read these in years/decades) Susan Krinard, Maggie Shayne, Christine Feehan, Laurel K. Hamilton.
Sorry. I’ve done several purges in that time frame. I’ll keep thinking of really early names.
If the book was being sold on supermarket shelves near the check out, would that suggest a Harlequin-type imprint or a mass market paperback?
definitely interested!
I’m also interested in this book. I’m assuming the comparisons were made to Aristotle based on his idea of “soul mates”, but I’m interested in how this book differs from all the other romances out there. Can you tell us anything else about the story? When and where it takes place?
I am very curious
As to Harlequin-type books, Look at the Silhouette Shadows imprint ( I had to google it b/c the memory is fuzzy). I remember them b/c they were, for the time and for category romances, super off-the-wall. Like vampires, witches, werewolves off-the-wall.
Also, if the book was a category, you can really limit your search. Those turn over pretty quick at the grocery store. A new set each month and, from my time at a bookstore, the covers were ripped off and they were dumpstered.
I have become ridiculously obsessed with finding this. In the meantime I am expanding my horizons by learning about these actual books:
Falling For the Billionaire Wolf and His Baby
Piece of Tail
Her Viking Wolves
How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf
and of course, Bite Me
If it was a decade later, I’d say it was one of Michele Bardsley’s Broken Heart, Oklahoma books. But those were all published after 2005. Also too early to be a Lora Leigh. Michele Hauf wrote for Harlequin Nocturnes (still might, for all I know), but again, that seems too early for the heyday of paranormal romances.
I think it might be the Michele Bardsley thing, possibly Must Love Lycans?
mid 90s gave us the More Than Men series maybe by Harliquin, but I dont remember this book. they were paranorma, but broader in scope- leprachans, mermen, imortal vikings etc.
Any chance it could be one of this trilogy by Rebecca Flanders? Not sure if the plot details fit closely enough but the timing is right.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/193415.Secret_of_the_Wolf
via GIPHY
I well remember the shopping-for-romance-books-in-the-grocery-line days and I personally very much doubt that is a Harlequin-type book. I think it is much more likely to be a mass market book, especially given the peach cover which doesn’t fit in with Harlequin’s branding.
I think it was probably a Zebra paranormal, and it must have been a best-seller because they only put top sellers in the supermarket line. That info hasn’t helped me find it, but I did notice that American Werewolf in Paris came out in 1997.
I know Susan Krinard did a lot of old werewolf books. Could it be one by her? Or maybe Nancy Gideon?
There are so many aspects of this that should make it easy to find, but there’s no comprehensive place to search and I can’t believe how hard it is to find original publication dates. “Single mother of a son” would really narrow it down if we could identify werewolf romances published before 1999. There were not a lot of paranormals back then. It was all time travel, ghosts, and angsty vampires who wanted to be human again. I remember combing the shelves of my UBS for shifter and SFR books.
I’m taking this one personally for some reason. 🙂 Probably because it’s a paranormal. I wonder if the hero was a skinwalker/skin-changer rather than a straight up werewolf. That kind of magical shifter might fit better with the paranormals of the time.