Wanna know what I’m wearing? A ratty t-shirt with holes in the armpits, night cream, and my orthodontic retainers (yeah, that’s plural). Not very sexy, I know, but I’ve never been much of a peignoir kind of girl. I am getting ready to go to bed, after all, so why do I need to look sexy? But there are books out there that can make you feel sexy, and they don’t have to be overly cheesy. Ever since the age of nine, I’ve read myself to sleep pretty much every night. Since I shared a bedroom with my sister until I was thirteen, I got pretty cozy under my blanket with a flashlight almost every night. That’s a lot of time to read, and a lot of D-cell batteries for that flashlight. I read during the day, too, in case you were wondering; but the time I spend with a book right before sleep is a sacrosanct ritual that I hope will last for a very long time. As I’m sure yours do, my taste in books varies quite a lot, but when times are stressful, I reach for the tride and true comfort books. The ones I’ve read so many times that the paperback covers are frayed or even torn (by accident, of course) at the corners, and the paper that was once a light oatmeal color has faded almost to cardboard brown (exhibit A below). Like ice cream for the soul, my guilty pleasure, I-need-to-believe-in-a-world-with-simpler-problems books are usually in the romance genre. Much like the chick flick genre, the romance novel genre doesn’t typically hold many surprises. Then again, neither does ice cream, but we still love it, don’t we?
That’s not to say that there isn’t a line. I can be a bit of a snob, I know, but that line, for me, starts at the books with titles involving a duke, prince, princess, a Scot, or a pirate, and ends with cover art involving someone’s nipples. I don’t want my romance to be pushy and overbearing, with hard-nosed rakes intent on taking the fair maiden’s virtue for sport, only to realize that the hunter has fallen in love with the prey and will change his wicked ways. That stuff doesn’t feel authentic to me. It doesn’t have to be challenging literature, but if I’m going to have ice cream, I want it to be worth it, you know?
Maybe it’s because I’m a twenty-first century feminist, but I want my romance to be between two equally empowered, intelligent people who face their individual challenges together, and, yes, have a lot of really hot sex. I do enjoy their emotional blindness, though. Watching them feel their way around the “L” word while they get naked, all while both telling themselves it can’t happen that fast, it’s too soon. It makes the moment of realization that much sweeter. They don’t see it coming, but suddenly that person they’ve been spending all their free time with is about to leave town for good, go back to their regular lives, and they may never meet again. Or one of them is badly injured in a horrific twist of fate, and now, in addition to mortality, they are each forced to face the possibility of a future life without that other person, and they realize they can’t live without each other. Up until that moment, you find yourself thinking, “You idiot! Of course it can happen in just a few weeks! Don’t let him/her get away without saying how you feel!” Ah, if only real life were as simple as these books. (For the record, I believe that love can happen in a few weeks, but I also believe that lasting relationships require more than just good chemistry, but we’re not talking about real life here.)
The girl leaving town is met at the airport terminal by her love with a bouquet of Gerber daisies in hand–because roses are trite, and who cares about them, anyway?–and they lay it all on the line, finally saying what needs to be said, and they kiss, hug and leave the airport to find someplace to continue being in love and having really hot sex. Or if there’s a horrific accident, the guy or girl who was hurt is unconcious, or out of reach for some reason. And the other person is waiting to hear anything, even a ‘hello,’ secretly thinking the worst: that they didn’t really have something special with whosis and he/she should just move on already. Except she can’t, because she’s pregnant–dun dun dun!–and he deserves to know he’s going to be a father. Then she finds out that he was gravely injured, almost dead, and his pride wouldn’t let him even call her because he doesn’t want to burden her. A two page epilogue flashes forward a few months, maybe a year, and they’re living happily ever after, still having hot sex, only now it’s “making love.” Your heart sighs with contentment and wistful dreams of your own someday happy ending. Like I said, ice cream for the soul. The basic storylines aren’t anything we haven’t all seen before in a Sandra Bullock or Katherine Heigl movie, but there’s a reason we love them.
Every now and then, though, they’ll surprise you with provocative insight, something that makes you take the story a little closer to heart, because it rings true. Things like “The minute you started thinking that writing sex was cheap and disgusting, your mind froze up and you wrote boring dreck.” (Jennifer Crusie, Welcome to Temptation) I like to think that even virgins could identify with that notion. Sex shouldn’t be shameful or disgusting, even if it is just a one night stand, as most of these fictional couples start out. Good sex, even in the modern age of pre-marital sex, is good because the people involved respect one another on some level. They respect what they’re doing, and, even if they don’t have plans together beyond the act itself, they respect themselves and one another enough to want to enjoy each other for who they are in that moment. Does that make sense? I guess what I’m trying to say here is that for me to consider a book soul ice cream, there has to be something there for the characters beyond just pornography.
You might be asking me, who pens such tomes? Well, my favorite authors of this genre include Carly Phillips, Jennifer Crusie, Jude Deveraux, and Nora Roberts. Many are formulaic, but I refer you, once again, to the ice cream metaphor. Ice cream isn’t ice cream without the basic ingredients, people.
One whose novels are quite formulaic, but still very good, is Carly Phillips. In both of her series, the reader follows a family of three brothers, each with his own novel telling his love story. In the first series, the brothers, closely bonded after the death of their father, are being manipulated by their mother to fall in love, get married, and give her grandchildren before she dies of her mysterious ailment. In the first book, the youngest brother loses a coin toss to see which brother has to fall on the proverbial grenade, as none of them is particularly keen on giving up his bachelorhood to settle down. Each brother has his turn in his own book, and by the end you feel as much a part of the family as all of the new brides. In the second series, however, there are three brothers of a different family, in an extremely similar fictional small town in upstate New York to the first series, and they are orphans. The younger two are bound together in mutual hatred of the oldest brother because they blame him for the death of their parents. The oldest brother, once a ne’er-do-well from the wrong side of the tracks, has returned to his hometown and he’s made good, but he’s haunted by his past, and his brothers aren’t soon to let him forget about it. So, how does Ms. Phillips bond these brothers together? Can they ever repair the broken relationships? Well, how do you feel about a half sister none of them knew existed until her half sister drops the delinquent on the oldest brother’s doorstep? Things are starting to get daytime drama good, now. Because this isn’t Russian literature, of course there’s a happy ending for all the brothers, but the road they take to get there is far rockier than the first series, which shows Carly’s growth as a writer.
I sometimes wonder where my own writing will take me as I grow and learn and experience new things, have new thoughts. What will I have to say in ten years? Twenty? Who knows? But I do encourage you to find and enjoy your own ice cream for the soul, whatever genre that may be. May the page-turners be with you.
Thalia Huntley 