I Confess

I’m going to let you in on a secret. I sniff disdainfully about romance novels, but sometimes I buy these books by Amanda Quick. I can’t bring myself to link to them and forever join my name with hers, but y’all, I can’t even pretend that I buy them ironically. I love them like I love my cat. The saddest part is that the author is really Jayne Ann Krentz, and she can’t even bring herself to put her name on them. 

These are not just romance novels, they are historical romance novels. So the sexy parts have a lot of fancy skirts and cravats getting in the way and they call each other things like “diamonds of the first water,” which means super-hot. All the women are eccentric and wear glasses and the men are all manly and hot with scars. I’m thinking Jayne maybe wore glasses during her formative years and dreamed of a manly man with scars who could see past her ocular imperfections. Oh, and I’m forced to admit that the people in these books have powers, too. Like psychic powers. A few years ago, this would have been the embarrassing part, but after all the supernatural books out now, it’s more surprising when Bob’s not a werewolf.

I had some credit at the used book store the other day and found one that I hadn’t read, named something Klassy like The Mistress or The Affair. I bought it, of course, but I slipped it between copies of Beyond the Chocolate War and Beezus and Ramona and looked meaningfully at my mother when I checked out so the clerk would think it belonged to her. I’m sorry, Mom.