Welcome back to the Utterly Unscientific Summer Saturday Series Sex Survey! I gotta be honest, I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to continue this project a few weeks ago. I was trapped in the sexist, racist, slut-shaming, heroine-blaming, alpha-hell of 1970s contemporary category romance and, uh, I’d rather lost my objectivity and
Despite issues with sexism, racism, lack of consent and other problematic elements of older romances, there’s something I like about them that I have been struggling to articulate. While reading this week’s 2U5S book, Brand of Possession by Carole Mortimer, I think I figured it out. This is not Mortimer’s best book by any stretch
When I started this project a month or so ago, Jenny Haddon said this 1980 Sara Craven book was the first Harlequin to include “full docking procedures” (Haddon’s term, which I adore). However, Possession, the 1979 Violet Winspear Harlequin Presents I reviewed two weeks ago, included married sex. Possession may have been published after this
This morning I’m thrilled to bring you a guest post by Willaful, one of my very favorite romance bloggers and a long-time category romance reader. Her post is on 1983 Harlequin Presents SIROCCO by Anne Mather. We’re skipping ahead a bit in time because this post builds on some of what we discussed last week:
Possession, a 1979 Harlequin Presents by Charlotte Lamb, is similar in some ways and different in others from last’s week’s 1979 Harlequin Romance, Sea Lightning. We still have an overbearing hero with a little too much confidence in his personal allure. He is in a position of authority over the heroine (actually her boss…again). He’s
So if you read yesterday’s post on my Utterly Unscientific Summer Saturday Series Sex Survey, you know that today I’m going to be writing about Sea Lightning by Linda Harrel, a Harlequin Romance published in 1980, but originally put out by Mills & Boon in 1979. One note: when I say Harlequin Romance, I’m referring
It’s Memorial Day weekend here in the States which means the traditional start to the summer season is upon us at least culturally if not meteorologically. I haven’t done so many essay-type posts lately, mostly because I’ve been trying to concentrate on improving my photos and recipes, but I sort of miss doing those more
