|

the ask@AAR: What’s your secret guilty pleasure romance?

I hate the term “guilty pleasure.” (“A guilty pleasure is something that we enjoy, but we know we’re either not supposed to like, or that liking it says something negative about us,” said Sami Schalk, an assistant professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.) I believe that joy is joy and as long as what you love doesn’t actually hurt others, you go. But, in the absence of another term, I’m using it albeit resentfully.

Almost all of us have one (or twenty) romance you adore but might be embarrassed by if other people found out you love it. Or it’s a book you think others would tell you is a BAD BOOK. For whatever reason, this is a story you’d call a guilty pleasure.

Susan Sizemore’s The Price of Innocence is one of mine. The setup for that romance is bad news but… I love that book. I also regularly reread Beverley Kendall’s A Taste of Desire which has a hero I’d loathe in real life but, here, Thomas and his high handed treatment of Amelia works for me. And even though their relationship is all kinds of f*cked up, I somehow find the dynamic between Shane and Laura great fun in Beth Kery’s Sweet Restraint.

How about you? What’s your favorite “guilty pleasure” or, as I think I’ll start calling it, subversive indulgence?

Subscribe
Notify of
guest

54 Comments
newest
oldest most voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments