the ask@AAR: What’s your secret guilty pleasure romance?
I hate the term “guilty pleasure.” (“A guilty pleasure is something that we enjoy, but we know we’re either not supposed to like, or that liking it says something negative about us,” said Sami Schalk, an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.) I believe that joy is joy and as long as what you love doesn’t actually hurt others, you go. But, in the absence of another term, I’m using it albeit resentfully.
Almost all of us have one (or twenty) romance you adore but might be embarrassed by if other people found out you love it. Or it’s a book you think others would tell you is a BAD BOOK. For whatever reason, this is a story you’d call a guilty pleasure.
Susan Sizemore’s The Price of Innocence is one of mine. The setup for that romance is bad news but… I love that book. I also regularly reread Beverley Kendall’s A Taste of Desire which has a hero I’d loathe in real life but, here, Thomas and his high handed treatment of Amelia works for me. And even though their relationship is all kinds of f*cked up, I somehow find the dynamic between Shane and Laura great fun in Beth Kery’s Sweet Restraint.
How about you? What’s your favorite “guilty pleasure” or, as I think I’ll start calling it, subversive indulgence?
Enslaved by Virginia Henley and Lily by Patricia Gaffney
I love angsty ‘we can’t be together’ romances. My favourite of these is The Cavendish Face’ – cousins fall in love (legal in the UK) and then they are told they are brother and sister…set just before and then the years after WW1, high society London. Have a battered 2nd hand copy I found in a charity shop years ago and have read it so many times I don’t need to anymore!
You may laugh: Sometimes I just need a Betty Neels.
No, I most certainly won’t laugh! Adored those tall Dutch doctors who drove wonderful cars and took the heroines out for gorgeous meals!!
I’ve never read a Neels. What’s a good one to try?
I read all of them and gave the lot to a charity shop a few years ago but after looking online to help me here are a few I recall with great fondness: Philomena’s Miracle; Saturday’s Child; A Promise of Happiness; Caroline’s Waterloo; A Girl to Love.
I just hoover up damaged heroes, especially ex-military types. I have just discovered Annabelle Costa. And anything by Bernard Cornwell. I am still hopelessly in love with Richard Sharpe.
Love your use of the term “hoover up.” It’s great. :)
Whitney my Love I re read it once a year I love it though I know it’s not perfect and Lily by Patricia Gaffney .
It’s interesting that Lisa F mentioned Janet Louise Roberts/aka/Jeanette Radcliffe. As a very elderly romance reader, I still remember happily grabbing all her releases in the early 70’s. Her books represented a guilty pleasure indeed because, although they were usually quite schlocky as far as plot was concerned, more importantly they were quite racy in those days, compared to everything else that was available for romance readers. I still have a PB that she published in 1971 titled Love Song, an extremely badly disguised novel about Maria Callas/ Aristotle Onassis/ and Jackie O. I enjoyed it because even then I was an opera freak, and re-reading it in view of what happened to that trio historically makes it even more a guilty pleasure.
Em – opera freak: for the duration of lockdown, Vienna Opera is putting a free video of an opera on every day, at normal opera Time in Vienna. You might enjoy that: https://www.staatsoperlive.com/calendar
Have been re reading Nalini Singh’s Psy-changeling series. Can’t decide if I want a bear or a leopard.
My guilty pleasures are MC romances and secret babies. Joanna Wilde and Susan Fanetti for the motorcycle clubs and Alison Fraser and A. L. Jackson for secret baby.
I’m not so much with the secret baby, but I like a manly guy who is taking care of kids by himself, or working in childcare. Any kind of role where a macho guy is switching traditional gender roles is of interest to me. A former SEAL who now runs a cleaning service, a cop who babysits his little niece, an ex-jock who decorates homes…love that stuff!!
The closest I come to a guilty pleasure is A Duke to Remember (Season for Scandal #2) by Kelly Bowen due to its farcical amount of instalust, i.e. it is as if they have never met anyone of the opposite sex before.
I love the The Bronze Horseman by Paullina Simmons. Reread it multiple times even Alexander’s character is very problematic
Janet Louise Robards’ Scarlet Poppies. It’s very glossy early 80s romance about a fashion designer who marries a greek shipping magnate. It’s corny and chintzy but also very dumb and compelling. And Robards’ least rapey book IMO.
I love how “least rapey book” is a compliment that makes perfect sense on a romance site. :)
Lol!!
Sadly with a lot of those big late 70’s early 80’s books (Judith Krantz etc all) “least rapey” is a very useful term, lol.
@KesterGayle and @Chrissreader- If it makes you feel any better, on-page rape is definitely a no-no when publishing KDP erotica. That’s not to say dubcon doesn’t slip through the cracks, but there are *some* taboos that aren’t acceptable. I’m not sure what the rules are on KDP romance.
On a side note, this reminds me of what the great Beverly Jenkins said at an interview once when the topic of the old bodice-rippers came up. She said something like, “But what about the women who *want* to have a ravishment fantasy?”
OK this is my biggest guilty pleasure, worse than even my occasional Kristen Ashley book crack. Laurann Dohner (formerly of Ellora’s Cave) writes a series about “New Species” and for some reason they are the guiltiest of my guilty pleasures. The series can be hit or miss- I actually loathe the second book the hero is just a relentless jerk but over all I am drawn to re-read them when my brain just doesn’t want anything but fun junk food. There’s some world building and humor and you see things change and evolve as the books go on. It’s all about “mates” and how the big alpha guys will do anything for their women when the find the “one.” If it were real life they would terrify me with their obsessive and smothering behavior but somehow in book form I can kick back and enjoy all the very racy stories.
Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark can be like that and I LOVE THEM.
You know I immediately ran to google them right? Lol
OH MY. The early ones are FABULOUS. I love A Hunger LIke No Other and Dark Desires After Dusk but so many of them are just such a good time. She is one of the best sexy/funny writers around.
Sci-fi romance. Generally fated-mates and big alph guys don’t do a whole lot for me, but that all goes out the window here. Ruby Dixon’s Ice Planet Barbarians…really anything Ruby Dixon writes. Truthfully, I skip over a lot of the sex scenes because I prefer a little less detail, but I still read them like crazy when I need a “guilty pleasure” type of book. I’ve read 2 this week. :)
I like stuff from Linnea Sinclair and Michelle Diener also, with a little more emphasis on the plot and world building and less sex/romantic stuff. I’m always on the look out for all kinds of good sci-fi romance.
I love a good alien romance but have gotten a bit more choosy as many of them are not well written. One I did love recently is Strange Love by Ann Aguirre. Here the alien is completely alien (like think of the movie Alien) but he’s also a sweet beta guy and he only accidentally kidnaps the heroine. Loved it.
My other sort of auto-buy guilty reads are Suzanne Wright’s wolf books and her Las Vegas ones with demons. Guilty only in that the books are all pretty interchangeable and there’s always at least one, often more than one, jealous woman who’s lurking around making trouble for the “cool girl” heroines. Alpha heroes, mates for life, villainous villains, it’s all here, but so am I with each new book.
“Happy Snak” by Nicole Kimberling was a fun SF romance from the sorely missed Samhain Publishing. It’s about a human woman who runs a concession stand on a space station only to unwittingly become the guardian for a recently deceased alien’s spirit. The central romance, if I recall correctly, is between her and a human male, but the aliens’ relationships with each other are explored as well.
Try Val Roberts, Valmont Contingency and series. Very good SCI fi romance, if you liked Michelle Diener
If you look at some of the tv shows people (men) watch, feeling guilty about reading a romance novel is pretty laughable. Ever seen South Park? Married With Children? Some of the comic book based shows? Those shows tend to be sexist, full of juvenile humor, and pretty lame story-wise. That does not mean they aren’t enjoyable, even I have laughed at Al and Peg Bundy’s antics late at night. And Cartman on South Park is a drug addict just waiting for his first fix. And he’s also hilarious.
So read about your sexy mafia thugs, your ruthless rakes, your merciless Doms if they make you happy. At least it’s not Al Bundy with his hand shoved down his pants!
Ooh! I love me some “South Park.” Also adore comedian Doug Stanhope, who at times seems like a living embodiment of a South Park character. (His routines are definitely NSFW. Don’t say you haven’t been warned!) Those are the kinds of things one simply doesn’t admit in polite society. But I wouldn’t call them “guilty pleasures” so much as “closeted pleasures.”
Also on the list for me are hurt/comfort stories. I’m not a nurturing person in real life, but I love reading the whole nurturing thing for some reason. And… big vain secret, I tend to reread my own work, sometimes out of necessity to avoid creating continuity errors but also just to revisit some of the characters I created long, long ago…
For those who suspect DiscoDollyDeb is the shallowest woman on the planet, your suspicions are about to be confirmed:
Even we romance readers are not immune to the eye-rolling “How could you possibly read and enjoy something like that?” reaction when someone expresses a likeness for a sub-genre/trope/hero-type/plot element that we don’t care for or can’t fathom. I love the angsty emotional roller-coaster that is the basic Harlequin Presents plot: intelligent, self-aware (often virgin) heroines, billionaire/royal alpha heroes, euphemistically-described sexy-times, unplanned pregnancies, secret babies, arranged marriages, angsty misunderstandings, heart-rending drama, final joyous reconciliations, and baby-filled epilogues…oh yes! But I’ve received my share of “How can you read that retrogressive crap?” right in the comment section of Romancelandia.
I also like dark/crime/mob/mafia/underworld romances, full of seemingly-irredeemable heroes (soi-disant), heroines who offer themselves in exchange for a male relative’s betrayals/gambling debts or are taken in revenge, forced marriages, and problematic consent and female agency. Ditto my comment about HPs.
But probably my biggest guilty pleasure is how often (outside of my favorite auto-buy authors) I am swayed to try a book by whether I like the cover—or, more specifically, the cover model. I have an alternate-universe reverse-harem of favorite cover models. If I see one of them on a cover, I’m much more likely to at least “look inside” or download a sample of the book. It’s a hit-or-miss proposition, however. I recently had to DNF Erika Wilde’s NO INHIBITIONS, despite its hot bdsm-lite cover featuring my favorite cover model and alternate-universe boyfriend, Zack Salaun (“King of the soulful/sexy/scruffy/hot look”—copyright: DiscoDollyDeb). It was a badly-written book full of massive amounts of clunky exposition and tell-not-show—and wasted an interesting premise along with its diverting cover. Conversely, last week I loved the sexy-but-tender cover of Marley Valentine’s m/m romance, WITHOUT YOU. (I was familiar with both cover models, although neither is in my pantheon.) I was completely unfamiliar with Valentine, but I grabbed the book from KU and discovered a beautiful, emotionally-nuanced, slow-burn romance about grief and recovering from loss. It’s one of my favorite reads of 2020 so far; plus I now have a new-to-me author with a big back-list to explore…and I wouldn’t have tried the book in the first place without the siren call of that cover.
tl;dr: we all have things we like that others tell us we should be guilty about.
<3
If I could upvote/smiley face your comment a hundred times over I would. I think we all have things that we enjoy in a fantasy sense that we can’t rationally explain or defend. And that’s all good. As Nancy Friday pointed out many years ago, just because women fantasize about certain things it doesn’t mean they actually want to live them. Sometimes you just have to give yourself a break.
@chrisreader: Love the Nancy Friday reference! I was 14/15 when MY SECRET GARDEN was published. I still have my much-thumbed, dig-eared copy. I don’t think she’s given near enough credit for how much she opened the door for women writing about women’s sexual experience for a primarily female readership. A couple of years later, it was Erica Jong’s FEAR OF FLYING and a year later Rosemary Roger’s SWEET SAVAGE LOVE—where the floodgates were well and truly opened. I’m sorry few people seem to remember Nancy Friday (who died a few years ago, iirc) and the contribution she made to women being about to read and write about sex from a woman’s perspective.
Sweet Savage Love was my gateway into the idea that sex should and could be hot for women.
I agree completely about Nancy Friday. Her name used to be uttered alongside Betty Friedan’s but I never hear her mentioned these days. I think she was truly groundbreaking for saying to women “it’s ok to be interested in this, think about this, it doesn’t mean you are disturbed. Many women fantasize about X.” I think it’s one reason why I do tend to cut romance and women authors in general a lot of slack (as opposed to male authors and authors of other genres) when it comes to “questionable” fantasies or even the use of old “gender stereotypes”. I think a lot of romance readers use the genre as escape and pure fantasy in a very healthy way. I don’t want to police people’s reading especially over silly things. I think men have always gotten a hard pass with their fantasy reading whether it’s James Bond with his harem of women or Penthouse/Playboy or whatever, whereas romance novels have been this genre of absolute ridicule for a lot of (traditionally) women. I got laughed at ringing up my novel at Barnes and Noble one time by a guy on the register and I remember thinking I really doubt he does this to guys coming up with the most outrageous fantasy novels.
Oof! How unprofessional for a clerk to laugh at you for your reading choice! Shame on him!
As for giving women more slack than men, I’m afraid I have to disagree with that. I’m not saying women haven’t historically had trouble entering the literary market and being taken seriously, but nowadays, a woman can write pretty much any explicit material without being subject to the same heavy criticism as a man would receive for writing the same thing. Imagine, for example, if a man had written “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Would a male author receive anything but scorn from the mainstream? I’m not saying Ms. James didn’t get her fair share of criticism, but it was more along the line of sniggering tones like, “Tee hee, a middle aged woman wrote a dirty book. Lol, mommy porn!” And, in an odd fashion, the lack of seriousness with which she was treated, perhaps because she is a woman, has opened the door for many women to dip their toes into racy material- whether as readers or writers. I believe a male writer, in contrast, would garner lots of censure as in, “What a dirty misogynist pig!” if he attracted attention at all.
On that note, I read an interesting article from 2016 the other day entitled “Men Reading the Erotic,” and this line popped out to me, “It’s more socially acceptable for men to have casual sex but it’s not so usual for men to be encouraged to explore the emotional aspects of sex. The reverse tends to be true for women.” Like you said, a man could probably go to the bookstore and buy James Bond or some high fantasy story without ridicule. But can you imagine the reaction he would receive purchasing a romantic or erotic novel? None of this is to downplay your negative experience, by the way. I just imagine it would have been even more difficult culturally for a man to purchase the novel you did.
I know there are a couple of male commenters at AAR. Any thoughts on this?
I read a lot of actual James Bond books growing up and the sex in them is beyond perfunctory. I think the idea of men taking women’s pleasure anywhere nearly as seriously as they take their own is rarely found in spy/thrillers.
“I think the idea of men taking women’s pleasure anywhere nearly as seriously as they take their own is rarely found in spy/thrillers.” Probably so. I can’t remember who said it, but someone said the difference between a spy/thriller and a romantic suspense is whose point of view the story is told from. If the story is from the man’s point of view, it’s a thriller. But if the story is from the woman’s point of view, it’s a romantic suspense. Obviously, that’s a simplified way of looking at it, but it seems to capture the trend.
Dolly & Chrisreader; I had a copy as well, and agree with what you say about her playing a big part in telling women not to be ashamed of their fantasies.
The books of fantasies edited by Nancy Friday were also a revelation for a late teens male reader. I still have all four paperbacks, though My Secret Garden (1973 or 1974) is the most decrepit.
@DiscoDollyDeb- You could always use the late great Quentin Crisp’s line “I am DEEPLY shallow.” :)
I am not likely to pursue reading mafia romances, but I am definitely down for some gangster stories and gangster erotica. Do you like gangster stories outside of romance? If so, I recommend Elmore Leonard’s “Bandits,” which is a lot of fun. “The Godfather” goes without saying, but I also enjoyed Mark Winegardner’s authorized sequel “The Godfather Returns.” Although I must say I was disappointed with some of his teasing. If you are going to decide Fredo is bisexual, how dare you fade to black on the gay scenes but not the straight ones. Boo hiss! Not that I think anybody was clamoring for an explicit play by play of him banging those two cocktail waitresses at a time, but that’s not in the sequel either. And Mr. Winegardner calls himself a writer…
Currently reading “Chances” by Jackie Collins. She’s got to be the mistress of cliff hangers. Fair warning, it contains a lot more rape and dubcon than I expected.
A lot of Anne Stuart novels are guilty pleasures for me. Despite problematic characters and plots with internal logic issues and behaviors that can drive me nuts her books are often compulsively readable,
Me too. I know Adrian from Reckless is an asshat and skirts into icky behaviour but oh how I love him. Same with Peter from Cold As Ice.
Yes she’s one of those authors who can write heroes who do stuff I wouldn’t want to have to defend. She can go too far for me (into sociopath-land) with a couple of them. But I will happily read most of the Rohan’s and a bunch of her other ones,
Sort of agree on Stuart. But I don’t feel blinded by the negative aspects of her writing and I wouldn’t likely defend the sexism of her characters and her implicit endorsement of sexism at times. I often see from her writing that she is at war with herself and knows better too, especially in her later books.
Another vote from me; I enjoy her books but if I saw one of her heroes coming towards me IRL, I’d run in the opposite direction!
I should not like Elizabeth Lowell’s Eden Burning for a lot of reasons. But I doooooooo.
I’ve never read her. I might try the one that’s one sale today. It looks to share some of the same themes as Eden Burning.
There are a few older Lowell’s I can’t give up either – the least offensive one being Outlaw (that hero is actually a doll really). The others in that series are real idiots and some of the women are absolute martyrs (a Lowell specialty) yet I will occasionally journey back to The Rocking M Ranch and reread them all.
I would definitely agree with Schalk’s definition that a guilty pleasure is something we enjoy while generally knowing better, as in, its socially unacceptable to proclaim enjoyment of it, or that its socially or personally harmful but we still might enjoy it. I know this sometimes happens with pollsters who catch people on the phone and may not get an accurate account of approval/disapproval of an issue if the person questioned does not want to admit aloud or even to themselves to liking something or even a particular politician because they fear being judged. A guilty pleasure is captured perfectly by the word “guilt.” For me, I want to know if I can explain adequately and honestly – to myself and to others – why I enjoy something, and if I can’t, then it’s a guilty pleasure. In my own life I might have to say that reading romances is a guilty pleasure because I work in an industry that still mostly feels contempt for the genre. I felt that Cherish Reid’s Hearts on Hold represented so well the dilemma of an English teacher who secretly loves romances. It’s frustrating sometimes because I do have words to express why romances are appealing and important, and yet, I still feel impacted at times by the stigma, struggle to explain to non-romance readers why the genre should have as much status as any genre fiction, and do still too often hide my love for them from people.
I wouldn’t characterize any specific book I’ve read as a guilty pleasure though because I tend to be honest in my reviews of what I like and don’t like and why.
Warrior’s Woman by Johanna Lindsey. I haven’t reread it in 10 years, but read it several times from 1996 to 2010.
Most of the works of Shelly Laurenston (aka G. A. Aiken) are extremely unPC, with unabashedly violent characters, but they are also very funny.
I think Warrior’s Woman and Gentle Rogue were the only two Lindsays that survived my big purge of her works so many years ago. Like you, it’s been a while since I pulled them out but I didn’t want to let them go.