{"id":79,"date":"2008-08-02T10:07:25","date_gmt":"2008-08-02T15:07:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/mojo\/?p=79"},"modified":"2025-07-31T22:09:16","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T03:09:16","slug":"my-guilty-pleasure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/blog\/my-guilty-pleasure\/","title":{"rendered":"My guilty pleasure"},"content":{"rendered":"

My first full-on real-life romance novel was Shanna<\/em><\/a> by Kathleen Woodiwiss. Naturally, it\u2019s on my keeper shelf right next to The Wolf and the Dove<\/em><\/a>. I have the ones with the original covers, though they are far from mint. The namby pamby covers on the ones with the links are meh. Unlike most of my contemporaries whose first (or close to it) romance experience was Woodiwiss, mine wasn\u2019t with The Flame and the Flower<\/em><\/a> or Ashes in the Wind<\/em><\/a>, neither of which I cared for.<\/p>\n

But she\u2019s not my guilty pleasure.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s Carole Mortimer<\/a> of Harlequin Presents circa 1979 through, oh, I guess around 1986.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

No, really. I was still impressionable, Kathleen Woodiwiss<\/a> and Rosemary Rogers<\/a> and Bertrice Small<\/a> and Valerie Sherwood<\/a> and Johanna Lindsey<\/a> notwithstanding. They were historical and well, that didn\u2019t apply<\/em><\/strong>. Plus, I had to work<\/em><\/strong> at reading those novels. They obliged me to look up all the $50 words they used that I didn\u2019t understand and forced me to soak up all that historical detail. I did very well on my vocabulary tests and in history class because of them.<\/p>\n

So forget the 5 queens of \u201980s bodice rippers<\/a> (and hey, Romancelandia, don\u2019t froth at the mouth at that because that\u2019s when they were, indeed, bodice rippers) and their propensities toward, well, bodice ripping, it\u2019s from Carole I got my taste for the forced seduction, the almost-asshole alpha (\u2019cause you know in the end they get redeemed by the ingenue and you read the whole book just to get to the redemption), and the May-December romance. I mean, really. Was there ever a Carole Mortimer novel that didn\u2019t<\/em><\/strong> feature a 36-year-old hero and an 18-year-old heroine?<\/p>\n

I have never been successfully or completely deconditioned or reprogrammed. Blame her. It\u2019s not my fault.<\/p>\n

Really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My first full-on real-life romance novel was Shanna by Kathleen Woodiwiss. Naturally, it\u2019s on my keeper shelf right next to The Wolf and the Dove. I have the ones with the original covers, though they are far from mint. The namby pamby covers on the ones with the links are meh. Unlike most of my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[539,579,532,540],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-genres","category-nostalgia","category-reading","category-romance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17115,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions\/17115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moriahjovan.com\/talesofdunham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}