Comments on: Kiss and Tell

By: Caroline

Caroline — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 23:16:36 +0000

Can I quote your article?

By: Peter

Peter — Sat, 31 Mar 2012 15:21:20 +0000

Interesting take on the subject, is it ok if I quote you on my article?

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By: chris booklover

chris booklover — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 19:06:47 +0000

It’s a bit surprising that no one has mentioned Bertrice Small. In several of her early novels (published 25 to 30 years ago) the heroine is sold into the harem of a man who may or may not be the eventual hero. Unlike Tiffany Clare, Small describes the heroine’s sexual experiences in detail, even if her owner is not the hero.

It’s an interesting comparison, for it shows how much romance novels have changed over the past two or three decades. Tiffany Clare is not adhering to an established double standard – in fact, in the less PC days of the 1980′s it was far easier for authors to describe sex outside the hero-heroine relationship. I doubt very much if Small’s earlier novels could be published in unaltered form today.

By: Em

Em — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 02:52:13 +0000

I read Surrender of a Lady purely by chance– before any reviews or discussions came to my attention–and I really didn’t care for this book at all. It was not necessarily because of the harem setting, as there have been other books which touch on this milieu. (I can’t think of the details right now, but there are several historical accounts of a Frenchwoman who rose to great power in the Ottoman Empire via the harem by giving birth to the eventual ruler of the Empire, and by being better at palace intrigue than her rivals.)
However, it was the harem/plot that in the end made this a rather distasteful romance for me. I couldn’t get past the initial sheer brutality of her sale into slavery, and the coercion that followed. And the fact that it was intended as pure sexual slavery made it even worse. Her relationship with the hero, IMO, was totally overshadowed by this reality.
I felt that the author absolutely HAD to gloss over her subsequent sexual experiences in the years before she once again encounters the hero, because not to do so would have created a fairly unpleasant picture of what was essentially a “white slave trade” of the time. Her past sexual experiences don’t really fall into the old “double standard “paradigm, since she was forced into all this by her feckless husband, slave traders, and a harem owner who is basically a pimp.

By: Xina

Xina — Wed, 10 Nov 2010 18:18:51 +0000

I have read nearly all of Susan Johnson’s older books and she opens a great number of them with the hero having sex with a woman who is not the heroine. And in a few of her books she writes the hero with antihero woman after he has met and slept with the heroine. I don’t mind the scenes with the women before heroine, but the scenes with other women after the hero has walked away didn’t always work for me, although there were exceptions. At any rate, the love scenes with the hero and heroine were more highlighted.

By: dick

dick — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 15:58:47 +0000

@chris booklover:
Mmm. I don’t think I’ve read any of Susan Johnson’s books, but as I’ve not the most trustworthy of memories, I could very well be incorrect in naming Jordan.

By: roseisa

roseisa — Tue, 09 Nov 2010 04:25:13 +0000

I have “Surrender of a Lady” on my TBR pile. The premise of being sold into slavery and living in a harem caught my interest.

Lynn wrote “As I got further into the book, I saw that the author’s choice to reserve sex scene details for the hero and heroine’s relationship could also serve another purpose. By showing only this relationship in great detail, the author may not be adhering to a cultural double standard but instead showing readers that this is the relationship that actually matters. The heroine and hero may each have a past, but it is their relationship with each other that will actually have the greatest importance in their lives, and the explicit details of every past encounter just aren’t needed.”

I do not care for detailed encounters of either the h/h’s past lovers – information is necessary when the past relationship(s) explain characteristics of either party.

A romance, historical or contemporary is about the h/h’s relationship and it sounds from Lynn’s write up that Tiffany Clare hit the nail on the head with this debut in an exotic setting.