Ruufles

This has been the case on the last two books I happened to pick up. Let's take the tagline on Mary Balogh's The Gilded Web which reads...

"She entered a web of secrets, seduction, and a passion that broke every rule..."

It's utter bullshit and has nothing at all to do with what actually happens in the book. There are no secrets in this book. Not even characters keeping their feelings secret. In fact the opposite is the case, people in this book are straight up honest and open about what they are feeling and doing. There is also no passion, and no seduction for most of the book - the plot revolves around the fact the main couple are engaged but have no feelings at all for ea

I would say I’m about low to medium A2 level since that is where I am in my Edito textbook. To give a rough idea of where I’m at, I’ve just started getting my head around the imperfect tense but at the moment it still feels a bit new and strange. I know it when I see it though, so that’s good.

Anyway – I see Harry Potter recommended a lot for A2 level readers, but I’ll be honest I find it an exhausting slog to try and get through, frustration quickly follows and I cast the book aside.

But recently I’ve been having great success reading Harlequin/Mills & Boon romances in French. Specifically books by English speaking authors that have been translated into French. I don't know if it

So it usually goes like this - heroine has a romantic dream, to find the love of her life, to settle down forever and have tons of babies and spend her whole life loving with her whole heart and being loved likewise in return by her family.

Then the 'hero' comes along - usually some sexy, powerful tycoon - and he snaps his fingers and demands a 'no strings' fling with a solid expiry date. 'I don't do relationships' he haughtily informs her, 'I don't do love' and oh by the way I'll date other women on the side for my public image demands it.

What does she do? She crushes her own romantic dream and agrees because, I dunno, he 'oozes sex' or whatever. Then she spends the whole book plasteri

When I first started reading historical romance, and I first saw a dress described as 'a confection of pink lace' or whatever, I smiled and thought 'oh that's clever'. After that, I started seeing dresses described as a 'confection' in almost every single damn historical romance I read. At first I was 'huh, that word again' but now I am 'urgh that fucking word again!' ALWAYS with dresses, never anything else.

Then it happened again - with 'buttery soft leather'. This seemed the go-to phrase for all descriptions of plane and car interiors in all modern/millionaire romances. The heroine cannot sit upon leather seats without musing how it is 'buttery soft'.

You ever have somebody point o

I know, I know! That title right? It's the kind of hilariously descriptive fluff that typically fronts a quick, cheap and often not-great read from beloved publishers Mills & Boon (Harlequin). I went in with very low expectations, and come out utterly floored by how great this book was.

The Deal - Straight up, I love Mills & Boon for being short fun reads chock full of tropes. So in the spirit of things I'll just get right to what you want to know – the tropes!

Office romance

Bosshole MMC

Struggling/poor secretary FMC

Virgin FMC

One-weekend stand

P...p...pregnancy (I mean of course)

He's a total dick, followed by...

GROVELLING (my personal fave trope of all time)

I'm laughing so hard right now, but from a place of love of course. So I'm reading a typical Mills & Boon romance titled The Virgin's Sicilian Protector, and in the first few pages we meet our male lead. Ho boy, this dude is a busy boy! He is:

An ex SAS soldier who had to pack it in because he was shot in the head (I mean he lived, obviously).

The owner of an international chain of Italian delis called 'Toni's' (his name isn't Toni).

A property mogul pushing multi billion dollar deals.

A private detective on the hunt for the killer of his best friend's sister's murderer.

A bodyguard to the rich and famous.

Super wealthy in his own right.

As the list of his accomplishments, p

Your honour - I just DNFed Vicious by L.J. Shen and I submit to the jury evidence of some of the worst crimes against fashion I have ever read.

The defendant is one Emilia LeBlanc. A 26 year-old struggling artiste and seriously 'quirky' not-like-other-girls girl with lavender/purple coloured hair and peacock blue eyes. She's boho, she's a hipster and she also got an obsession with cherry blossom trees because she's a weeaboo as well I suppose.

Exhibit A – LeBlanc is seen on her way to work at a bar wearing a bibbed sailor dress covered in smiley faces.

Exhibit B – LeBlanc starts her first day at work as a PA in a law firm wearing a red and white ladybird dress with bright

Sorry if this is a weird one guys, but...

I am in the middle of arranging my father's headstone. He was fluent in French, lived on and off in France and in general was a complete Francophile. As a family we decided we wanted to have 'In memory of ...' written in French on his headstone.

Which would be more appropriate as an epithet? 'À la mémoire de ...' or 'En la mémoire de ...'? Is one more suited to a headstone than another? Any input on this would be greatly appreciated.

Merci mes amis pour votre aide xx

Now that libraries and secondhand bookshops are starting to open up here in the UK I was super excited to get out there and browse some romance books in real life. To my dismay these past two weeks of concentrated looking I've been shocked to discover that romance is hard to get my hands on. My library, in a town of about 9,000 people, has no romance section, but it does have an entire wall devoted to the crime genre. Secondhand bookshops all have whole shelves devoted to crime, but no romance. I go into a huge book depo near me and there are shelves devoted to crime (again), western, horror, sci-fi but again no romance.

Now, the romance books are there of course, but they are mix

OK so this sounds really weird, but having dark souls on the switch has opened up a whole new world of relaxing, mindless farming for souls and items and an obsessive quest to clear out every area. Dark Souls has become my new Stardew Valley 😆

When I played on the PS4 I never bothered with soul farming, or upgrading more than one weapon, or bothering to clear out areas of all items/secrets. I'm married and have access to the TV for maybe an hour in the evening before my husband gets fed up and wants the telly back on, so I wasn't wasting my valuable gaming time grinding, I was tearing through areas and hitting up bosses as quick as I could!

Now I have the switch I can spend glorious lazy e

So I just got my hands on Tailspin by Sandra Brown and I was tickled pink to see the male lead is called Rye Mallett. It's just such a perfectly romance novel-esque name, and honestly I fucking love it haha.

Come at me with the best, or worst, names you have encountered on your travels through romancelandia. I'm a bit of a fan and am curious to see how creative or downright silly some authors can be with their names.

I was watching the Korean drama Boys over Flowers the other day, which is about a wealthy business heir falling for a plucky poor girl. He's grown up in extreme wealth and is powerful beyond measure, but he has a cold and distant mother and no love at home. There is a wonderful episode where he goes to spend a weekend at the poor girl's apartment where she lives with her parents and little brother; they eat a poor meal but all the while are laughing and having fun, they all pitch in to make kimchi together, eat cheap street food, and go to the public bathhouse to wash... the H is such a fish out of water, but is spellbound by the h's close, loving family life. He comes to realize he is hap

This happens to me all the time. At the start of a book I find I am really invested in the story and excited to be reading it, but at around the 30-40% mark I seem to have lost all my enthusiasm, get bored and eventually abandon it.

I finally put my finger on why. So many romance books are all premise and nothing else. The first third of the book is absolutely gripping because the author is setting up that premise, but once that setup has been put in place there is nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. We find ourselves mired in a no man's land between initial premise, sex scenes and the happy ending, and this expanse of nothingness usually constitutes the majority of the book. This

I'm sure this comes up all the time, but oh well, let's have some fun with a light-hearted moan about all the petty little things that drive us crazy in Romance books. Nothing heavy, just silly little things. I have a few to kick us off...

In medieval and early modern romance: Rushes! We're told all the time how rushes are 'freshly strewn' on the floor, how they are 'swept out' and so on. The image conjured up is people back then just had loose straw kicking about the floor of their homes. Rushes in reality were more like woven carpets. Folk had nice furniture and upholstery back then, cosy homes and beautiful things, and yes, proper floor coverings too lol.

Food-gasms. I haaaate