It was like, “Wow! I like this SO MUCH BETTER!” I was shocked when, little by little, books were being written where the man was NOT an asshole. If I had a penny for every description that included “arrogant”, “autocratic”, “wealthy”, and “domineering”, I could buy one of their mansions. That the men were assholes for most of the book, well, that was still considered normal. But back then, in the 70s, there were glamorous descriptions of far-away places and all those languages, and people doing interesting things. Harlequin has not only jumped the shark, it has kicked it onto the shore where it gasps vainly for breath while people hack it open with rusty butter knives. It’s funny because one would think that romance novels have nothing to offer the intellect. As I was already reading/writing/speaking Spanish, it was no problem to pick up the tidbits of all these other languages. ZARCO contained some words from Portuguese as that was his nationality. They were very good about including words from French, Italian, Greek – depending on the man’s background. Most of the Harlequin Presents were by Commonwealth authors: Australia, New Zealand, Canada, in addition to the many English authors even from South Africa. It was ON! I read so many books by English and Canadian authors that I started to sound different from my friends. Man, I could go through two or three books on a Saturday or Sunday and keep up with my reading from the school library. She had the early Pyramid series of books – first editions! Then I happened upon a Bantam series book at school, THE CRUEL COUNT, which I “took”. I also went through her stash of Barbara Cartlands.

So I went through my parent’s closet – they had bookshelves in their closet – and one by one, pulled them down and read practically everything mom had, specifically the Harlequin Presents® and a handful of basic Harlequins®.

What’s worse – I was all like, “yeah, whatever”. Let the plain women be nurses because they could not hope for better. Zarco told the heroine that she was too beautiful to be a nurse. I know I was reading a ton of books that year from my school library. Maybe, the year that I read it, my mind was finally ready. I read it again to see what made this one different than the others I had tried to read. Before, I had tried, but could not connect with the text. Next thing I knew, I was halfway through (which wasn’t much considering how lean these books were). One evening, I just picked it up and started reading. I started reading romance novels in the mid-70s, starting with this tiny tome-ette. Women’s Lib completely missed this boat.įirst romance I ever read: BRIDE OF ZARCO, Margaret Rome

1970s: No such thing as political correctness.

Savage surrender by charlotte lamb