the Wayback on Wednesday: The 2000 Annual Readers’ Poll
(originally published on February 15, 2000)
Here’s the link to this page which has not just the romance novels our readers picked–over 20 years ago!–as the best romance novels of the year( 1991), but also lists the best characters and the year’s worsts.
We know you’d love for us to do this again and maybe, someday, we will. It will take funding and manpower but I believe anything is possible. Until then, enjoy this!
Best Romance Novels
- Favorite Romance of the Year :– The Lady’s Tutor by Robin Schone
- Honorable Mentions :– Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips , The Proposition by Judith Ivory
- Favorite Funny :– Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
- Most-Hanky Read :– Wicked by Jill Barnett
- Most Luscious Love Story :– The Lady’s Tutor by Robin Schone
- Favorite Cabin or Road Romance :– Ransom by Julie Garwood
- Honorable Mentions :– Body Guard by Suzanne Brockmann , Secrets of the Night by Jo Beverley
- Favorite Medieval Romance :– Ransom by Julie Garwood
- Favorite Regency Romance :– Fair Game by Diane Farr
- Favorite European Historical Romance :– How to Marry a Marquis by Julia Quinn
- Favorite American or Western Historical Romance :– A Rogue in Texas by Lorraine Heath
- Honorable Mention :– Breathless by Laura Lee Guhrke
- Favorite Contemporary Romance :– Lady Be Good by Susan Elizabeth Phillips
- Honorable Mention :– Heartthrob by Suzanne Brockmann
- Favorite Romantic Suspense :– Loyalty In Death by J.D. Robb
- Honorable Mention :– All the Queen’s Men by Linda Howard
- Favorite “Other” Romance :– Loyalty In Death by J.D. Robb
- Honorable Mention :– Dark Prince by Christine Feehan
And, if you need a boost, there’s always this:
Just out of curiosity, I scanned the most recent Top 100 list for these titles and authors to compare.
Ransom by Garwood is the only title in common (Garwood has variously appeared on the Top 100 lists over the years but not necessarily for this title. But in 2000 (for Top 1999) and 2018 (for Top 100), this title appears in both lists.)
The In Death series by Robb also consistently appears in Top 100 lists, including 2018, but with Naked in Death. And SEP (Phillips), Quinn and Howard appear in 2018’s Top 100 list but for other titles. SEP had 7 titles, Quinn had 4 (3 from Bridgerton series) and Howard with 2 titles.
None of the rest of these authors appear at all in the most recent Top100. Ivory and Brockmann’s absence really surprise me. (Brockmann in particular because, like her books or not, she profoundly impacted the market for m/m romances with Jules Cassidy from her Troubleshooters series. Also IMHO, Guhrke has always been underrated, and I’ve not personally heard of Schone or Farr, so that may be why they are missing more recently.
Beverley, Barnett, Feehan, and Heath ???? All names that regularly get recommended. YMMV.
I think Brockmann had the steepest rise and fall off the charts. I don’t know if it’s because hers are all contemporary and historical and fantasy seem to have better staying power or if hers were too “of the moment” and now don’t ring as true for newer readers. But you see people like Jayne Ann Krentz and Lisa Kleypas who started long before she did still hitting the best sellers and people’s lists. It’s funny because the authors you list in the last sentence are all authors as have read a few books by but are all kind of in the “fine” category for me but not anything special. None of them are in my top 100.
Romantic suspense seems to me to be on the decline right now and fantasy seems to be more popular and maybe have taken some of its popularity. Perhaps that’s why Brockmann has faded in polls. I read a few of hers and thought they were fine but not much beyond that, though I do remember liking the character of Jules. I think nblibgirl is right that Brockmann did a lot to pave the way for m/m romance.
That poll, the last one, has suspicious results. AAR got blown up at by Twitter and I think they worked on that poll to make it less like the older ones.
I loved Ransom back then. I loved a lot of Julie Garwood’s books. I tried to read either Ransom or The Bride a few years ago, and unfortunately, it didn’t hold up well for me. I can still read some of Linda Howard’s older titles, but I do roll my eyes a bit. Good memories though.
Julie Garwood’s The Bride was one of the first romance novels I read and it got me obsessed with romance. But rereading most of my favorite books by her now is more of a nostalgic thing. I do still enjoy them, but it’s lost a bit of the shine from when I first read them. Same with McNaught’s books.
eek, I remember filling these out, and it’s shocking to realize it’s been twenty years. I don’t have a connection to most of these titles. Robb, Brockmann, Heath, Quinn have never been authors I followed but I remember when they were very popular. SEP’s Lady Be Good has some very funny moments and I think still one of her best.
I think Lady Be Good holds up as the best SEP I have read as well.
Breathless is absolutely amazing, one of my all-time keepers (and little did I know, when I first read it at age 17 or so, that I’d have the same career as the heroine one day!)
I tend to really like Gurhke and would buy this in a heartbeat except that the ebook is 16.00!!!!
Judith Ivory is on my all time favorite authors list, and I wish she were still writing books. The Proposition is my favorite of hers, and I have read it countless times.
Me too. It’s my absolute favorite of hers and always in my top 100 list.
The Proposition isn’t my favorite Ivory novel – Untie My Heart is, But, I do miss her the most from the authors who were writing in the late 90s and early 2000s. I really felt her loss when she simply vanished from the scene.
Wow it’s been a long time since I’ve seen a “best” list where I’ve read most of the books on it. This has made me incredibly nostalgic. I remember at the time Robin Schone was considered *Super duper* racy. I had made the jump to Amazon from the time it started and I remember being so happy I was getting my romance books delivered to my home in a discreet brown cardboard box rather than facing the judgey cashiers at Borders and Barnes and Nobles. Suzanne Brockmann was in her ascendancy and I was glomming up all her old category romances second hand (back when used paperback stores existed). Good times!!
Yes, that comfort of picking and choosing in privacy after reading some reviews – in those days often genuinely helpful – then the anonymous parcel arriving! In 1999, when still in the annual loss mode here in the UK, I said to my DH we ought to buy stock in Amazon. He laughed.
I think I was buying from them their first year of national business in the US. I remember they sent out a travel mug as a thank you gift for being a customer one year. Amazon and then the Kindle revolutionized my reading life. I used to go driving from book chain to book chain trying to get every book in a series. At first I only had to wait a few days to get the paperback at my door, then I got the books instantly. It was my lifelong dream come true. I think we all wished we bought Amazon stock early on!
I’m amazed I’ve only read two, the Phillips and the Quinn. I see the Feehan is on sale. I’ve never read her. Any thoughts on her?
I loved the first few Feehan’s, 4 or 6 of the books in her her Dark series.
They were very caveman books, with helpless (feisty) heroines getting turned into vampires by their mates – but I liked them, then. Kind of like I like Harlequin Presents, because somehow they worked for me, at the time the fist two or three were published, I eagerly waited for the 4 or 5, I remember (we are not at 34, I think).
After those first few, it became super-repetitive, the caveman aspects got worse, and the stories (overarching plotlines) became an endless sameness to me. I just could not read them anymore.
I have no clue if I would still like the old ones I really liked back then.
I tried her first in the new series about Shadows – hoping that this might be different – it was worse.
If I remember correctly, the heroine is in danger from one type of thugs, gets abducted by the hero who pretends to be a different kind of thug, too, for her own good, no explanations are given to her on anything, and the thing is great love. it felt like prisoners Stockholm with extra cruelty thrown in, and the passion came out of nowhere and felt all wrong – I skimmed and skipped and truly hated it. As this series is on book 5 or so, I guess that was 5 years back. Hazy facts, strong memory of truly hating the book.
So I cannot recommend her, only give my current views.
Curious how she held up for others, if people here are still reading her or not.
Hah! Funny you should ask. I wasn’t reading romances in 1999 but when I started about five years later, Feehan was an author I checked into. Like Lieselotte, the first book in the series seemed like an ok enough read to try the sequels, but I quickly tired of them. I enjoyed the first book in the series enough to keep it, until just a few weeks ago when I reread it. Today, it reads like pages and pages of she’s in denial about being his bond mate. I didn’t finish the reread.
It’s funny how certain books just don’t hold up. I’ve been a long time fan of Jayne Ann Krentz and I started reading one of her really old ones I had never read before the other day. I think it may have been published under Stephanie James it’s so old. Oh my goodness. The “hero” was terrifying! The heroine actually ran out of her own place (well her mother’s place) to get away from him. Their first night together read more like a stalking and an assault even though he did finally get her to admit partway into it she “wanted “him too. I couldn’t finish it, and I’m not that easily upset by alpha or “un P.C.” behavior. If I had read that even back in the 80’s I would have hated it. I think the biggest problem was that it wasn’t even about some big supernatural warrior type creature. It was a contemporary and the guy was a neighbor of her parents. It was like “this is a perfectly normal way for a date to evolve”.
I’ve read them from the start, and I agree that many of the Carpathian books were very caveman. But (and ymmv) I think she’s done a much better job of having the heroines be stronger and the heroes be more “enlightened”? considerate? in the last several books. This hasn’t been the case in at least one of her other series (I don’t read all of them). But I’ve liked the Carpathians more as the world has expanded in the past few years.
I recall reading many of these but the Robin Shone is the one I remember most! And the Judith Ivory. I wonder if they would stand up to the time test if I read them again? Afraid there are too many things in the current TBR pile to do it but maybe the Shone one day. BTW, I do enjoy reading these old columns from the past so thanks, everyone at AAR, for presenting them from time to time.
Ooops! Schone. Sorry.
They’re fun, aren’t they? I think the Way Back on Wednesday will become a regular weekly feature (except for TBR week) just like The ask@AAR now is.
The Lady’s Tutor doesn’t age well – a lot of the eeeeeeevil gay trope.
Judith Ivory definitely holds up for me. Her novels, especially some of the first ones like Bliss and Dance, were a breath of fresh air.