Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels
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Authors: Sarah Wendell
Tags: #Family & Relationships, #Love & Romance
Copyright © 2011 by Sarah Wendell
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wendell, Sarah.
Everything I know about love I learned from romance novels / Sarah Wendell.
p. cm.
1. Love stories—History and criticism. 2. Love in literature. 3. Man-woman relationships. I. Title.
PN3448.L67W47 2011
809.3’85--dc23
2011027276
Printed and bound in the United States of America.
VP 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Smart Bitches
over the years to talk romance novels, celebrate the excellence, and bemoan the bizarre. You are made of awesome.
And to Adam, who is my romance every day.
Contents
We Know Who We Are, and We Know Our Worth
We Know More Than a Few Good Men
We Know How to Spot Real-Life Heroes and Heroines
We Know How to Ask for What We Want
We Know That Happily-Ever-After Takes Work
The Final Chapter: The Happy Ending Starts…Now
It is a truth universally acknowledged that I am bad at math. Seriously, howlingly bad. So I can’t attempt to add up the number of people to whom I owe thanks because I know beyond any doubt that I will miscount, screw up, and cause all sorts of mathematical mayhem. The fact is, an astonishing number of people were gracious enough to help me with this book, including authors, readers, editors, and mysterious publishing professionals. The communities of romance readers and writers online and off are boisterous and supportive and opinionated and wonderful. So many people from these communities contributed to this book, and I can’t begin to say how grateful, honored, and proud I am to have had so much enthusiastic assistance celebrating what the romance community already knows: that romance novels, and the women who read and write them, are amazing.
Thank you for helping me celebrate romance, and what we have collectively learned from it. You rule.
One more exuberant gesture and her bosoms would heave themselves over the edge of her gown. Elliott wondered how much more boorish behavior would make it so—and how much of a boor he was to consider enjoying it.
“You’re lying,” he said in an even tone, trying deliberately to keep his gaze on her face. He wasn’t that much of a scoundrel. Well, not entirely.
Alina’s eyes narrowed and she took a deep breath, but not deep enough, to Elliott’s disappointment.
“I should call you out for that,” she said in an equally even tone, but the calmness of her voice was itself a lie. Her cheeks were pink, her hair was askew, and her hands clenched her gown into wrinkles that, should they have appeared on his cravat, would make his valet weep, though in a dignified manner, of course. What could he say next to send her over the edge of reason?
“It won’t work,” she said.
“What won’t work?”
“Your plan.” She looked concerned, as if he couldn’t remember what they’d just been talking about. How could he follow something so plebeian as a conversation when the most striking woman he knew was one fierce movement away from—he shook himself.
“I think the plan would work admirably,” he said, desperately trying to move his brain and its accompanying lascivious thoughts away from any tracts of land south of her chin. There was no reason why his idea wouldn’t work. What engaged man wouldn’t be tremendously interested in seeing his intended’s impending revelations?
“No one would believe you, me, or us.”
“Sure they would. I’d make sure of it, and isn’t it the standard that the man pursue the woman? My interest in you will be supremely believable.” He wouldn’t even have to pretend his interest, he realized, and reminded himself again not to look down.
He was so focused on her face that he noticed for a spare fraction of a moment an odd look of sadness. “Why don’t you think it would work?”
“Because, dammit,” she muttered, and before he could react to her language, she was in his arms, her hands gently framing his cheeks to bring his face to hers, his lips to her own. He found his fingers just beneath the curves he had been trying not to look at, and he was struck to learn he didn’t need sight. Touch was much, much better: the warmth of her, the firm but soft bend of her waist, the northward curve of her breast. He’d had no idea how much better this could be than trying not to look.
But despite knowing with all certainty that her décolletage was a precarious thing, he couldn’t allow his fingers to tilt the edge of her gown in his favor. This was his intended, after all. His almost intended, anyway, and as his friend and his fiancée, her honor was about to become his responsibility…and how on earth were those her lips moving over his, an embrace and exploration that made him feel as if the top of his head were about to lift off? His hands followed the curve of her side to her back, away from temptation yet bringing it closer. She was firmly pressed against him as he deepened their kiss, touching her with his eyes closed. He really didn’t need to see anything. Touch was too much, in fact.
Suddenly she stepped back, though not out of his arms. He held his arms around her as she stared up at him, flushed and breathing a touch too fast.
“I don’t see that as a problem at all,” he said.
So what do we learn from this scene? That breasts have hypnotic powers more potent than most women realize? No, though they likely do. That men try to behave according to etiquette though that can be a struggle? No, but that’s likely true as well. That women can have sexual desire, and act on it, and take risks to grab what they want and plant a big wet one on a gentleman’s shocked but willing self? That her desires are as important as his? Yup. Definitely.
If you’re a romance fan—and I bet you are—you know that reading romances can teach you a great deal about love, sex, and relationships. In fact, romance reading has probably already taught you more than you realize. You might not be kidnapped by cross-dressing pirates and held for ransom, or find yourself outrunning a serial killer with the help of a very handsome, taciturn detective, but you will always find conflict in your relationships, whether it’s bills and debt chasing you down a dark alley, or precarious sexual fulfillment lurking in your bedroom.
But fear not. Inside those stories is everything you need to have a happy, loving relationship. From books like
Seducing a Sinner
and
Rescuing the Rake
, you can learn about tricky subjects like Valuing Your Emotions and Having Real Conversations about Sex.
Welcome to
Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels
. In this handy little book, we can celebrate all the wonderful things we’ve learned about real-life love and romance that are hidden and not-so-hidden inside the average romance novel. What, you thought all those heaving bosom covers with impossibly Technicolor eye shadow were just for visual embarrassment and titillating thrills? Nope. Romance novels are much more complex than meets the eye—and we readers of romance know that better than most.
It’s not hard to discount romance, and it’s easy to take them way, way less than seriously. After all, there is a 95 percent chance that a romance novel cover will feature a mullet. Enough said.
But romance novels are complex and emotionally driven tales of courtship. And what better way to learn about relationships and how they start, fracture, and become stronger once repaired, than to read about those relationships in many, many permutations and variations? In all the thousands of romances where the boy meets the girl, stuff happens, and they get back together, there are a million-plus possibilities of how to repair what went wrong. And we’re going to look at every one, from amnesiac twins and what they can teach us about truthfulness and identity to bank-robbing cowboys and what you can learn from them about bad boys and perhaps avoiding felony charges.
Who am I? And have I robbed a bank? No, not so much. I’m Sarah Wendell, better known as Smart Bitch Sarah from the romance novel website
Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. Smart Bitches
reviews and discusses romance novels with a readership of many thousands of readers around the world—there are more romance fans than you dare suspect, and we’re all very intelligent, fabulous dancers with minty-fresh breath, and as a bonus, we’re all quite savvy when it comes to relationships too. Reading romance, a genre focused on the emotional development and self-actualization of the heroine and hero (a fancy and academic way of saying they get their shit together and grow the hell up like damn), gives romance fans a deep, multifaceted, all-encompassing lesson on how human relationships work. Many of us find ourselves in the role of advisor to our friends as the person others turn to for help with problems.