Is there a romance that almost killed your romance mojo?

jaime · Joined: 23 Sep 2011 Posts: 358

Mine was "Whitney My Love" which came recommended to me on a list of romance must-reads when I first started reading romance. Unfortunately I had not come across reviews like this: http://gossamerobsessions.blogspot.ca/2011/10/whitney-my-love-by-judith-mcnaught.html
before I read "Whitney" and I was so disgusted and appalled that I didn't try another romance for several months. Luckily then I came across Lisa Kleypas' historical romances and Kleypas saved my poor romance mojo.

To this day I have never read anything else by McNaught because I was so repelled by this one book of hers.

Cora · Joined: 12 Mar 2008 Posts: 1088 Location: Bremen, Germany

As a teenager, I had some very bad experiences with the so-called "bodiceripper" romances of the 1980s that I didn't try the genre again for ten years or so. One of the books I had a bad experience with was Valentina by Fern Michaels (who is apparently writing women's fiction these days), the other was by Catherine Coulter, though I forgot the title.
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Mark · Joined: 22 Mar 2007 Posts: 1242

A Baronet's Wife by Laura Matthews - the "hero" (read jerk) treated the heroine so badly I was appalled. Since this was only the 4th romance author I tried (after Georgette Heyer, Barbara Metzger & Clare Darcy), I worried for a while that there might only be a few authors I would like. Almost 20 years later, I now have many many autobuy authors.

Eliza · Joined: 21 Aug 2011 Posts: 717

Pan's Wife · Joined: 01 Jul 2009 Posts: 69

Whitney My Love was definitely a wall banger for me. I remember tossing the book in the garbage instead of donating it to a library fair. I had already been exposed to some good romances so I wasn't totally turned off the genre and I had already read a couple of McNaught's other books that were quite good, so I guess I shrugged it off. There were a number of books from the late 70's or 80's with similar distasteful heros. Books like Stormfire, The Conqueror, and Love's Tender Fury come to mind. I seem to recall everything from whippings, selling the heroine into bondage and heartless cheating in the mix. I think these books are why the category is still looked down upon by the general reading public.

Ash · Joined: 11 Jul 2011 Posts: 160

I hated "Whitney My Love" as well but by then I had already read a few other McNaught books that I liked so I wasn't completely turned off by the author.

my mojo killer came in the form Lisa Kleypas's "Prince of Dreams"
an abusive, controlling emotionally retarded hero with stalkerish tendencies, Infidelity, a random time travel sequence in the middle of the book and a completely unnecessary gun scene, because really every romance novel needs one.
I didn't go near another Kleypas book for a very long time.
Now however I have a few of her books on my keeper shelf Razz

I guess it just shows that even great writers can sometimes write wallbangers

erika · Joined: 26 Mar 2007 Posts: 290

A particular romance novel hasn't almost killed my romance mojo however certain tropes like fake rakes, feisty heroines, experienced heroines and warrior heroines have almost killed my romance mojo.
I find myself reading more self-published ebooks than traditionally published books with bland plots and bland heroes.

Linda in sw va · Joined: 27 Mar 2007 Posts: 4707

Suzanne Brockman's Everyday Average Jones, the heroine made me so angry with way she handled the 'secret baby' that I never read another of SB's books again and it killed any tolerance I may have had for this kind of plot line. Just seeing the title can get me worked up again! I kept waiting for her to realize how wrong she had been to try and deprive her baby of their father and a father of his child but she never did, never apologized. He just spent the rest of the book chasing after her until she finally caved. Evil or Very Mad

Hawk O'Toole's Hostage by Sandra Brown - hero made me so angry with the rotten way he treated the heroine, worst of all when he threatened to keep her son and raise him like an Indian and that she'd never find him again. Ugh! How they could end up in an HEA is beyond me.

I just realized that my two most hated romance novels ever involved a parent possibly being deprived of their child. Nothing worse you can do to someone.

Linda
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