Warning: this piece has spoilers about three contemporary romances: Sabrina Darby’s Entry Level Mistress, Joan Kilby’s Maybe this Time, and Sarah Mayberry’s Suddenly You
Last month, I read a contemporary romance by Sabrina Darby that, despite its slightly sexist title–Entry Level Mistress–I was enjoying. Then, in the last few chapters of the novel, a plot twist ruined the book for me. The heroine, a smart, independent 21 year old with a successful career as an artist ahead of her, gets pregnant by her billionaire 31 year old boyfriend and, with very little thought, decides to have the baby.
Now, before you scroll down to the comment section and share your passionately held views on abortion, please, for my sake, read a bit further. (more…)
Series romances with contemporary settings appear to be going strong. Harlequin releases plenty of them every month and readers (including me) eagerly snatch them up. However, single title contemporaries are a little harder to find. Anyone who reads romance sites and blogs or who spends any time at all following romance readers on Twitter has seen plenty of moaning about the dearth of single title contemporaries. I started to wonder why this is, and that in turn has made me wonder if contemporaries might not be a more narrowly defined subgenre than one might think at first glance.
For my generation, there is a very public way to declare a serious relationship. It’s not a class ring or letter jacket. The question “Have you been pinned?” died long ago.
I’ve got my cranky pants on today.
