“We met and we talked and it was epic, but then the sun came up and reality set in”

In a desperate bid to attract a new and spend-thrifty readership to Bewildered Heart this is the obligatory Twilight essay. In a self-destructive move to alienate this new-found readership, allow your new bookmarked blog to write the following. Stephenie Meyer is an appalling writer, Twilight is a hateful novel and pale, socially-awkward teenagers don't attract women. Meyer's prose is inept, pedantic and largely redundant. Her characters are insipid nobodies and three or four of them should have been merged into one. Her narrative arcs are dull, bloated and predictable. The relationships portrayed in her novels are lifeless and unrealistic. Some of her descriptions of locations are evocative, though there are no links to prove it.

Despite this, although surely because of this, the four episodes of her Twilight saga are among the most successful books of all time and the film franchise based upon these books has earned more money than it is politely acceptable to share socially. If this isn't a compelling reason for everyone to write their own bog-standard, trashy romance novel, what is? What's stopping you? Dignity? 

The Twilight Saga Episode 1: Twilight weighs in at a hefty four-hundred and fifty pages. It's a tome. The story doesn't kick in until page three hundred, after a pointless and infuriating baseball game, and the half-hearted injection of antagonism is tacked on and quickly wasted. The bulk of the book is spent dealing with a potentially curious story involving a teenage girl, Bella, who falls in love with a vampire, Edward, and must deal with the dangers of vampirism, heightened by the melodrama of teenage first love, with the usual issues of disapproving, protective parents and a disapproving, spiteful student body.

Thankfully the vampire doesn't feast on human blood, the girl's father is largely absent and indifferent to her actions and everyone at school is super-nice. Any potential has gone. Phew! That was close. Something dramatic almost happened. The striking problem for the vampires of Twilight is how unlike conventional vampires they are. So unlike them, in fact, Meyer shouldn't have bothered. True Blood, Moonlight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer have already covered this ground, and on the medium of television, where everything makes more sense.

There are supernatural romances published every week that wallow in this tripe, and yet the massive appeal of Twilight over all the others like it remains baffling. What went right? Thank goodness Bewildered Heart has merely tasked itself with discovering what goes wrong with Harlequin novels, otherwise the question currently dogging literary agents would also be dogging us, and Blogspot just could not survive that volume of traffic.

Twilight is over twice the length of a standard Mills & Boon. However, any editor worth their salt would have been able to cut two hundred pages without harming what little plot there is. In that case, what stops Twilight from being prime Harlequin fodder? After all, the publishers have introduced a new sub-genre to cater for this claptrap, where werewolves, demons and vampires are de-clawed, unhorned, de-fanged and introduced to a nice urban lady with emotional problems and curly hair. Alternatively, lady-vampires (fempires?) and witches meet dark and sexy men who arouse in them more than just murder! Yikes. New titles include Wild Wolf (Wilf?), Demon's Seduction and Shadow of a Vampire. Get them while they're hot. Although please be advised that by hot we are not referring to the temperature of the books, we are using hot in the way kids do, to mean attractive and sexy. You will not be burned. Available in Adobe Reader!

As for resolution and conflict, besides the obvious, there's the immediate problem of vampires, werewolves and witches being lousy at domestic chores. A quick roll in the hay (or whatever it is vampires roll in) is not enough for Mills & Boon lovers. Sure, eternal love is possible for these characters, but everyone knows every marriage ends in divorce, except for those that death interrupts the inevitable breakdown of. Therefore eternal love is impossible. That's scientific fact.

Now, while Mills & Boon have a colourful history of inexplicable sexism, great efforts have been made over the decades to healthily respect the kind of foolish characters who have to exist for romance literature to work, and so recently most of the misogyny has become unintentional and largely consequential of the narrative structure. However, in Twilight the misogyny swaggers back onto centre-stage and tells the little woman to obey. Bella faints when Edward kisses her, the perfection of his perfect perfectness too much for her to handle. Bella really is a limp insult to girls everywhere, until you realise that teenage girls actually do faint once placed inside a room with the actor who plays Edward Cullen, thus proving the point of Meyer's books that all women are pathetic.

When Twilight finally ends the reader is left facing the unappetizing prospect of a further three books, each as door-stoppery as the previous. By the time the whole sordid affair is over our anaemic lovers have settled down to an eternity of wedded bliss. The fourth entry, Breaking Dawn, ends appropriately with Bella washing up while Edward dries and they have a cute conversation about the weather forecast and how if it is overcast they could drive to a coast and have lunch. Please note that this probably isn't how the book ends.

If Mills & Boon have guidelines, which they do, for a standard novel then they are traditional of the entire romance genre. Despite the ever-increasing gamut of sub-genres it remains difficult to find two books which differ in anything other than surface details. Stephenie Meyer's Twilight would never have been accepted by Mills & Boon because Mills & Boon have standards. Until the mighty and wise publishing house introduce a Teen section then our idiotic reading choices and teenagers' idiotic reading choices will have to remain on separate shelves.

"Here we are in the middle of the desert and you still can't tell me you love me"

Victoria Hislop does not write Mills & Boon books. We know this because her novels are not published by Mills & Boon. Without such a smoking gun, however, we may have been unsure. Her best-selling debut, The Island, offered holiday romance with a little history. Her follow-up was faithful to the formula which had served her well originally. The Return is not a sequel, as the title suggests, but instead about a return. A more suitable title might have been The Plot Contrivance. However, it was wisely decided that The Return had more selling potential and mass appeal. Shows what we know.

In The Return, a unhappily married thirty-something who loves to dance travels with her best friend to Spain, for a holiday of dance and learning about character. Once they arrive, they dance, and oh, to dance. They learn of Flamenco, and other sultry struts. The heroine, Sonia, meets an ageing barista who tells her the story of the town and what life was like during the Civil War. Sadly the holiday comes to an end, and Sonia heads home, to her bitter marriage and her misery. Her friend, meanwhile, decides to live in Spain, as she has nothing keeping her in England (besides a daughter). But can Sonia? She has responsibilities, such as her sham marriage to an older alcoholic, her job which she hates and her father who only wants what is best for his daughter and obviously decided years ago the best didn't include any biographical information.

Sonia then chooses to return, yes, like the title, to visit her friend, but mainly to find the barista and hear the epic tale of his café and the rest of Granada's history. At this point the book takes a turn, as for the next three hundred pages we learn of the Civil War and the love story of a young Flamenco dancer and her guitar-playing lover.

The insane and completely unbelievable narrative contrivances that bring these elements together have to be read to be disbelieved. It's gobsmackingly bad writing, pat, inept and insulting to the reader. The Return counts as light holiday romance fare, but not Mills & Boon. Here's why. It's a Mills & Boon historical romance book-ended by a Mills & Boon modern romance. While Hislop's stories may not contain the standard happy endings considered vital to the genre, they do contain other necessary ingredients, and are equally terrible.

Needless to write, The Return is downright wretched and worth avoiding, but it does contain evocative passages of Spain and the occasional action sequence for the younger reader's flagging interest. There seems a confusion on Hislop's part over what she intends her novel to be. Mills & Boon books are rarely this confused, and never this ambitious. You cannot shoehorn a sweeping historical epic into your little paperback about an idiot struggling to realise her husband is a dolt. If it's a lesson learned you're after then you can't have been paying attention.

The distance between home and second hand books and charity shops is embarrassingly vast. The local library is closed for refurbishment. The second closest is also closed for refurbishment because of society's continuing battle against literacy and due to this, and because of a general distaste towards romance fiction, the reading of love stories has dried up since the unfortunate blunder that was Victoria Hislop's The Return. Despite this lax attitude towards research, our Bewildered Heart has refused to leave the subject alone, and often, as we stare at happy couples while they chat in their kitchens, we think grand thoughts of where to take this much derided of genres. Because the nearest cinema is many miles away and film-watching can be expensive, there have been limited opportunities to see the many recent Hollywood romantic comedies. Except Atonement, which was hilarious. The recent batch of insipid claptrap includes such ideas as proposing on a Leap Year Day, for luck, being a male Maid of Honour for the woman you love, being dressed twenty-seven times, marrying Ryan Reynolds and Ashton Kutcher's playful hunkiness excusing the need for plotting.

When you take apart these films, and with them, Mills & Boon novels, you'll find underneath the terribly-conceived love story, is an actual story, not involving love. Hollywood has confused the word story with the word gimmick, but we allow this because we so desperately need a reason to put Kate Hudson in incredulous situations. The emotional journey of your protagonist has to link with your story-line, but that doesn't mean you need your love-story to be your story. After all, having two people who are perfect for each other figure out they're perfect for each other isn't much of a story. You need robots exploding on the top of the Statue of Liberty! or the theft of gasoline trucks from Peru while robots fight on the top of the Statue of Peru!

Now, Bewildered Heart doesn't know much about story-telling, besides our rather arrogant proclamations that we know a lot about story-telling, but the point we are able to gather from reading articles on writing is that the beats must be conducive, linked consistently by a well-structured plot, with the main propulsion of the story aiding the advancements of the emotional epiphanies of the characters.

While in the past, on this very column, no less, we have speculated that a romance novel must be about romance, we now reach a different conclusion that this isn't always the case. Far from it. We can write a dramatic novel telling the twisting yarn of robots fighting on the top of explosions as long as the romantic subplot is embedded and doesn't feel tacked on or redundant, as it does in Hollywood movies.

The will-they-won't-they issues aren't as interesting as can-they-can't-they, especially as the author must establish in Chapter One that they want to and the reader demands that in the end they will. Is the psychological more compelling than the physical? This is prose, after all. We're not making an action film about robots fighting at the end of the world. When we do there will be a new blog.

No, according to our manifesto we're telling a love story. And yet we're not really. We're telling a ripping yarn, a romp, an adventure, with a love sub-plot that deems all matters irrelevant by the climax. Will the reader care that our protagonists didn't manage to find the hidden jewel of Peru and almost got killed by fighting robots? No, of course they won't. What's important is that they found each other. Aw yeah! And they survived the robot apocalypse. Man, that chapter got crazy.

“Oh, good grief.” Shannon groaned. “I'm a cliché now?”

Our pursuit of love consumes us, and yet we spend more time gathering food and working jobs so we can pay for all we need to pursue love, and buy food. Life goes on, it would seem, regardless, and increasingly our idealistic notions of perfect love are confined to the escapist excitement we find in books, on film and somehow stuck inside mobile phones. How is this accomplished and is everyone doing it? Perfection is the apex of an opaque element. Yet perfection is achievable through personal definition. If a female character is fully-developed then her ideal husband is possible and ripe for creation. In guides on finding your ideal partner candidates are told to narrow their perimeters, to become more specific and less easy-going slut. It's an interesting tactic, the summary being that once you know exactly the type you seek you are more likely to find that special desirable someone.

In the Hilary Duff-starring Perfect Man, The our titular character is portrayed by Chris Noth, he of Mr. Big fame. For those not acquainted with Sex and the City, or those able to day-dream without Hollywood's assistance, the perfect man they conjure up will rarely resemble Chris Noth, and he will never do the Times Crossword in pen. In pen, man? How brazen and self-assured! What a risk-taker! So domestic and yet adventurous. Maybe there are quite a few people who would be into bringing over a bottle of wine and dressing up as a New York Times crossword and having Chris Noth scrawl all over them with his pen... If we are to take the film at its word the Perfect Man also manages a restaurant and allows teenage girls to wander his luxurious apartment. Of course, the perfect man doesn't feature in Perfect Man, The because Perfect Man, The isn't a perfectly-written feature film.

Throughout the rich, romantic canon of Mills & Boon novels, the perfect man has many constants. As we have seen, there are lumberjacks and cops and doctors and builders and PR-gurus. Something suggests the last one is the odd man out. Women clearly like their men practical, physical and capable of fixing things around the house. They do not go weak at the knees or dilated of the pupils over feeble intellectuals who hire help in. If there's one thing romantics and bloggers regrettably learn, it is that women would rather do the help. Thus, we conclude that Mills & Boon's are no longer the fairytale scenarios of yesteryear. Gallant knights and charming princes have no modern equivalents. A mysterious biker in one such book was quickly stripped of his enigma and revealed as a hands-on property renovator with Daddy issues. These stories aren't for the Twilight-obsessed youth who prefer their boys brooding, dark and clad in leather. If we see a man brooding and clad in leather nowadays we direct him to Soho and pity his parents. No, a happy-ever-after-ending requires a man capable of commitment, supportive of his wife's ambitions and willing to get in under the sink with a wrench to stop that tap from leaking.

Mills & Boon is obsessed with sheiks and Mediterranean tycoons. Both are old-fashioned staples of the romance world, and they are often portrayed as cruel, sexist tyrants who the heroine must teach a lesson in respect, before she submits to marriage and a lifetime of whatever happens once you're married to a Middle Eastern sheik. Surely this isn't the fantasised set-up for a lifetime of wedded bliss, although sheiks remain very popular among readers. There is the other-worldly exotic element, the ladies do love foreigners, but from a narrative point of view the selling point is the challenge. After all, if the perfect man appears on page one what's a girl to do for two-hundred pages, besides swoon?

Authors struggle so hard to give their heroes a flaw the assembly line of dreamy men appear as Hugh Jackman in a variety of disguises. Hugh Jackman has a beard, Hugh Jackman has trouble counting to seven, Hugh Jackman has a tower sticking out of his head, Hugh Jackman cannot commit to a woman, Hugh Jackman doesn't care about your problems, Hugh Jackman has metal claws shooting from his knuckles and so on. In Finding Nick, the finding part is quickly solved, leaving the Nick element to make up the rest of the story. Nick (Italian-American Hugh Jackman) has a few hang-ups, both emotional and physical, but beneath it all there stands the perfect man for our heroine, a feisty and determined journalist named Shannon. A journalist, you ask? How can journalists fall in love when none of them have souls? Hush now, anonymous cynic, you haven't heard the worst of it yet. When even the author's name is a heavy-handed sexual euphemism you know what to expect from the sweaty book you hold in your manicured hands. Janis Reams Hudson (Heh heh) writes lines such as, 'It had been years since he'd had the privilege of touching a woman's breasts.' Once she has written enough lines as good as this one she links them arbitrarily by a barely-discernible plot and then sends it to her Mills & Boon publishers, who, apparently, don't even bother to check for typos.

While Shannon cruises through the book with no evident flaws (besides being a journalist), the object of her affection seems burdened with enough for both of them. Nick Carlucci may be a hunky Italian with a great body, tanned skin and thick black hair, but years ago he was a firefighter and 9/11 hero, celebrated for his bravery in rescuing survivors, though he was unable to save his brother and father, who perished in the towers. Five years later Nick has limped away from New York and alcoholism to settle, unnoticed, with his aunt in the small Texas town of Tribute. He works as a janitor in a staid, sexy and solitary existence, hoping a beautiful woman will turn up out the blue to test if his manhood still works. It is then that Shannon, a beautiful woman, shows up, seeking Nick for an interview. She is compiling a book dealing with the continuing fall-out of September 11th and the psychological devastation it has wrought on the bereaved. Despite their instant attraction and a laughably inexplicable bond that links them, Nick refuses to be interviewed, but does sleep with Shannon and proceed to fall in love with her. Shannon finds this deal amicable and all the sex finally persuades Nick to reveal his inner demons to her, which helps him overcome his hang-ups, leading to a happy reconciliation in New York. Nick is a changed man and doesn't have to live in Texas anymore. Yay! Shannon remains a journalist. Boo!

It is unclear if Nick and Shannon are perfect for one another. The banter between them during their dates causes embarrassment, awkward silences and the need to end every other sentence with, 'Honest,' or 'I'm kidding!' Hudson's treatment of 9/11 isn't sensationalist and her book is far too lightweight and superficial to offend anyone. Still, this hardly does justice to the myriad of issues plaguing poor Nick, who shoulders his mighty burdens with a shrug and impish grin. For all of the author's attempts to suggest perfection, her writing betrays her, and yet, by the book's climax as Shannon and Nick kiss and hug, we leave them in a happy state of exoneration from grief. Shannon has saved Nick from his guilt and although he was unable to save her from her career, they will be happy for a few months. Check Word Count. Move on. So, what have we learnt from all this, besides someone should write a Mills & Boon with the lead characters Janis and Hudson? Well, we learned we won't be reading anymore Janis Reams Hudson books. We learned there isn't a subject matter that 9/11 can't add undeserved emotional weight to, and finally we have learnt that one can mix business and pleasure, rendering the only obstacle that stood between Nick and Shannon mute for future generations. Anything else? No, that's all we learned. Now go to sleep.

"They say they want romance, they say they want true love"

Some people say, 'Romance is dead,' but it remains more likely that romance was murdered, and its body hidden where the world will never find it. Now, Bewildered Heart has said out loud, to no one in particular, and written on these very pages, again to no one in particular, that a Mills & Boon novel practically writes itself. After all, the story structure is set in stone and all a writer must do is fill in the small gaps between obvious plot points. Every story should be personal, ideally. The main character should, at some point, wage everything they have on the outcome of their journey. Otherwise the story lacks dramatic weight and the reader will think, 'Isn't there someone more compelling I could be reading about?' Naturally, any reader who asks that question won't be leafing the pages of a Mills & Boon at the time. Mills & Boon fans are never so discerning.

Still, as our parents taught us, even idiots deserve some form of entertainment, and with this in mind, we set our structure out, thus: Our protagonist is a strong, independent woman whose goal is to meet the man of her dreams and become subservient to him for the rest of his life. You go, girl! Before she can become subservient to a man, however, she must learn subservience, because that kinda thing isn't taught in schools anymore. Thanks a bunch, liberals! There is a journey worth telling in there someplace. The deft skill used to master these sorts of stories is to burden your character with a hang-up, a hang-up being an emotional problem that forbids someone happiness, or more likely, the feeling that they deserve contentment.

A powerful emotional hang-up might be dignity. Therefore, the plot must revolve around a girl who suffers such a blow to her self-respect she is ready to fall in love with a brawny jerk who thinks feelings are a feminist myth. This idea, sadly, is too derivative of Katherine Heigl movies to work as an original concept, and we certainly don't want to appear derivative. Otherwise, a suitable obstacle on the path toward marriage is hope. Hope especially afflicts the youthful, who believe life is full of opportunities, happiness and wonder, and there is plenty of time to experience everything the world has in store for them.

Say, a bright-eyed woman goes to college and gets a corporate job and meets people and learns the effects of capitalism and rents a small flat with a heartless bitch who really isn't her friend, but saves a little money to get on the housing market, while along the way getting successively screwed over by a series of tactless and moronic men so she begins to drink after work in order to feel something, just anything, increasingly seeking distraction from the drudgery and pain through shopping and cocktails, all the time looking up at the city lights for a role model who isn't Carrie Bradshaw... Once she has done this and stared her thirty-year birthday in its smirking face she has succeeded in ridding herself of hope and will be able to marry, have children and move to suburbia. This must be what Mernit refers to as 'Joyful Defeat', if we assume Mernit misuses the word 'joyful'.

Authors should be advised to avoid plots that concern careers, as everyone has a career and when they are asked what they do for a living they answer, but deep down they know that what they do for money isn't as important as what they will do once they have it. A Mills & Boon book concerning work sounds tedious and dispassionate and, why, without passion, what are we? English? Now our aspiring novelist has built up many emotional hang-ups why tie them to a job, unless the job is symptomatic of the girl's troubles? For instance, she could be an environmental lawyer, beginning to see her idealism and hard work is for nothing.

There yet appears to be a Harlequin with this basic outline, so for now it seems to be the most viable option to move on with. We have developed our character (Heigl in a wig, and without the perkiness) and have given her a career and a journey toward a destination worth reaching. For the sake of dramatic intensity, a writer should always attempt to make such a journey as challenging as possible for their protagonist. The heroes and heroines of Mills & Boon are not regularly required to surmount difficult or exhausting trials and tribulations to earn their happy ending. This is a large problem for the stories of the series. Is it possible to set such a great challenge for a protagonist that the formulaic and predictable ending already agreed upon by author and reader can seem distant and even improbable? After all, is it not imperative to the plot-line that we, the reader, doubt the outcome and are compelled to read on to discover if everything will work out? Surely the fact that we know everything will end happily should not have to matter. Would such a huge overcoming of impossible odds render the giddy joys of eternal love all the more wonderful and satisfying?

When writing a Mills & Boon the author would be best served not fighting against the restrictions they are working within, but embrace them as disciplinary tools. For example, say you have a girl, a twenty-something virginal type, who is looking for the love of her life. We accept that in the first chapter she meets this man, and by chapter fifteen they have poured their hearts into each other and become one, forever. You cannot keep these characters apart, physically, as Hollywood might, by war or e-mails, and each chapter should bring these characters closer to what they have known all along, they are perfect for each other and in love.

The challenge might seem under-whelming, but in fact the challenge is over-whelming if only for the reason you have to stretch out a five hundred word short story into a fifty thousand word novel. However, this is the trap lesser writers have fallen into and you, dear author, are not a lesser writer. So let us begin by constructing an entire story around an ending, a happy ending of life-affirming love, and with an emotional journey suggested by this, we build the development of our heroine into accepting and embracing this love. After all, a Mills & Boon is about love, not the politics of relationships, as the two can be so easily confused. Therefore, the obstacles we throw in the path of our beautiful girl in search of love should all be related to love. Her goal shall not shift and her life will not be reevaluated, because her love is pure and her will is strong. Katherine Heigl in a wig and without the perkiness wants love and if you cannot maintain loyalty to this idealistic pursuit what good are you? And, jeez, if she can't find her perfect man, what chance do the rest of us have?

"She knew this because just his voice made her nipples go all happy"

When placed inside a library with time to kill there is only one course of action for a Bewildered Heart, and that is to find a Mills & Boon with a suitably idiotic blurb and sit cross-legged, so as to avoid further social embarrassment, reading until the day is through and you can return to brighter and more productive activities, such as writing about Mills & Boon on t'internet. This week has been a week of such mindless entertainment. Having briefly browsed the literary fiction section, so as to appear intelligent, you make the choice to settle down with some light erotica only to realise you have become that person you see in public libraries who scares and repulses you, leading you to avoid said library from then on.

To make matters worse, Bewildered Heart has managed to forget the title, author and character names of the novel we so enjoyed and have no way to find them out. To counter, allow us to make up those details now. In The Rugged Hero's Beautiful Blonde Chick, the lead female (the titular blonde chick) is a twenty-year-old beauty who has recently reinvented herself from sexy geek to sexy sexpot, achieved by swapping glasses for contacts. There's a tip for you uglies out there. This girl, let's doth thee Roxie, works in public relations. Now, it is easy to read this brief character biography and think, 'Ugh, what a disgrace to humanity.' You'd be right, of course, and you would also be correct in pointing out that there has already been a book concerning a guy who works in PR. Thankfully Roxie's career in what amounts to advertising in this book, because the author clearly didn't know what PR stood for, has nothing to do with the story. Phew!

Roxie's reinvention aspires to avoid the pitfalls of being young and unbelievably sexy. She wants to be taken seriously by her office filled with morons and prefers to be seen as a twenty-something with experience and knowledge, because twenty-somethings are so grounded and self-aware, and people in public relations have to be knowledgeable and experienced. Hah, book no one could remember anything about. You're funny. Meanwhile, a tree surgeon (Hasn't there already been a lumberjack type? Shush) working in the car park catches Roxie's eye. Let's call this chap Hank. He's thirty, gorgeous and owns his own house, despite not having much of a career. He's also serious about love, not wanting to waste his time with dead-end relationships no matter how sexy the girl is. You know, he's your typical man, who likes romance, women's feelings and marriage.

Despite his supposed maturity, Hank isn't immune from enjoying the view of Roxie's ass and breasts and legs. No sooner has the reader thought, 'This is predictable,' than a spanner is thrown into the works. Roxie's step-brother's best friend was this one and same Hank, ten years older than her and still wanting different things from life. But does Hank remember Roxie as the childish brat-kid he once rescued from a swimming pool? No. And for the next one-hundred and fifty pages (which amounts to three days in narrative terms) Roxie and Hank have sex in a variety of positions with Hank's penis receiving positive descriptions and Roxie's vagina almost constant attention. Absolutely nothing happens in these pages despite mild descriptions of fellatio and thrusting. There's more character development in a pop song and this entire epic sequence could have easily been edited out.

However, with no attempts at character development, or plot development, the selling point of the novel is the sex, and so, in essence, the story should have been cut and the novel should have begun with a couple having sex. As the book ended with this same twosome having sex, it's tricky to imagine a suitable place to finish things. Of course, as with porn, the viewer is usually the one to decide when they've had enough. If imbuing, or endowing, or enduing your novel with drama, pathos and excitement actually takes you from the gamut of emotions that Mills & Boon wallows in, then, besides contempt, what situation are you, gentle author, left in? There were a lot of commas in that sentence, as there are a lot Mills & Boon readers sentenced to comas. Oh! Snap.

When a fond romantic reads Mills & Boon books they are surely struck by how intolerable the main characters appear. Far more than real people are fairly intolerable, although strangely for the same reason, because were are often trying to read a book and they are annoying us. How about, as a twist to conventional story-telling, we write some romance fiction with likeable, funny, intelligent people who aren't emotionally-retarded? Everyone likes funny, intelligent people who aren't emotionally-retarded. Not to say we all hate emotionally-retarded idiots who have no sense of humour, but we do, don't we? We hate those kinds of people. If we see them on the street and good grief do we always seem to see them on the street we do a dramatic eye-roll, or sneer and make a snippy comment, trying to not let seeing that person ruin our day.

Why, then, should we be willing to read about their fictional romantic exploits? They never say anything funny or intelligent, oh and also, they're emotionally-retarded. To make them even more impossibly hateful, they are all incredibly attractive, to boot, both generically-handsome and genetically-handsome. Curse them. Every Mills & Boon hero looks like Barry Van Dyke, heralded for a square-jaw and little chin-dimple, much like an easy-going, non-threatening Michael Douglas with thicker, more manageable hair. In the real world (Barry Van Dyke doesn't really exist) people don't actually look like this. People are funny-looking, their beauty hidden beneath their despair and the over-compensation of their neuroses. They wear sunglasses to cover deformities and have skin issues. They're usually flabby in unfortunate areas and openly hate themselves over their appearance. Quite rightly too. It is difficult to empathize with the beautiful in the same way it is difficult to empathize with astronauts.

Stories such as The Rugged Hero's Beautiful Blonde Chick are impossible to enjoy. The tedious, empty and tirelessly superficial characters are shallow, their problems easily cast aside and their aspirations basic. No one is criticising Hank's determination to enterr a sexy twenty-year-old's heavenly warmth in a hammock. The problem with Hank is that he is an idiot named Hank. No one would want to be friends with this smug jerk, so no one can support Roxie's collapse into ever-lasting love for him. If the reader knew Hank, then they would high-five him during a homo-erotic game of handball when he boasts about banging a girl called Roxie, but that doesn't mean they recommend he marry a girl named Roxie. His latest conquest simply does not appear to be the monumental life-altering connection that the writer tells us it is.

By the same token, Roxie is a misguided dolt. She works in PR and is in love with a guy named Hank, who is old enough to be someone ten years older than her. To prove she is mature enough for a thirty-year-old man Roxie cooks for him and makes his house look pretty. Are we seriously supposed to believe their declarations of love at the story's climax when they haven't shared a single conversation over the course of the entire novel besides, 'Where are the condoms?' and 'Thanks, you're really good at that'? Or, as is more likely, do we assume they're horny cretins who have confused lust with love and have the shared emotional depth of a Mills & Boon story? Why should we care about the trivial issues of the beautiful people when they're too busy haven't amazing sex to notice them themselves?

"Keir Dullea, Gone Tomorrow"

With the quantity in volume, unambitious marketing strategy and short shelf-life of a Mills & Boon novel in mind, the lack of a breakthrough book hardly surprises. No title from the publishing house will ever be the must-read of the summer season, clutched by commuters on trains to prove they're wise to what's cool or packed into every holiday bag for beach-reading. Nope, for a Mills & Boon author to be successful, it is a matter of saturation, rather than luck and people's desperate need to belong. This isn't to say one can't dream. Who knows who reads these novels and might one day aspire to turn a emotionally-striking story they've read into a $30 million dollar Hollywood romantic comedy? Surely if top film producers are willing to shell out small fortunes for the rights to computer games, old television shows, board games, Facebook applications and Nicholas Sparks (whatever they are), why not a Mills & Boon? Valentine's Day is just a day and that was enough of an idea for a movie. A highly lucrative movie, at that. How highly lucrative? Dunno, writing down how much money Valentine's Day grossed is depressing.

This isn't to suggest that Harlequin don't produce movies, because anyone unfortunate enough to have seen one will testify that they do. Bewildered Heart can testify to having watched such a thing. In 1995 Harlequin Books published Alicia Scott's At the Midnight Hour, and in 1995 Harlequin Films produced an adaptation of said novel, starring as the historical romantic heroine, who else, but Patsy Kensit. Before the Modern Romance category introduced modernity to Mills & Boon the majority of the company's output seems filled with clones of Jane Eyre, Rebecca and Wuthering Heights. The tales of brooding and cruel land-owners in giant country estates who hide a dark secret beneath that brooding and cruel exterior. Our feisty and determined young lady must brave harsh terrain and break through the cruel, curt broodiness of this man to learn cruelty and brooding are worth putting up with when there's a giant country estate at stake.

Sometimes there's a kid and sometimes there's an ex-wife who died mysteriously and may have been murdered. Can our plucky female lead give her heart to this insensitive bore when all clues point to the fact he murdered his first wife? Why is he so obsessed with that painting of her anyway? Is the painting haunted? No, don't be silly. Did he murder his wife? Well, you should probably be sure one way or another before you marry him. The End. At the Midnight Hour is so eerily similar to Rebecca it is almost meta-fiction parody, with At the Midnight Hour the second wife and Rebecca as Rebecca. Would that make Alicia Scott Mrs. Danvers?

It turns out, however, that the Midnight Hour's aloof and foul-tempered hero is not a killer after all and the reasons for his inhumane disposition are never explained. Some men are just cruel and distant. It's part of their charm. As noted by many Mills & Boon writers, you want your man with a little edge and mystery and what's more edgy and mysterious than a potential history of uxoricide?

Harlequin Enterprises only produced a handful of films between 1994 and 1998. Hardly enterprising, but probably for the best. Their other title was far ago in 1978, Leopard in the Snow, based upon the 1974 novel by Anne Mather. This one concerns a beautiful woman, Helen, who runs into a leopard in the snow in the English countryside. Fortunately for her the leopard has been tamed by a dashing, yet cynical, chap named Dominic Lyall. The question is, can he tame Helen? Not having read the book or seen the film, for shame!, it could be the other way around and it is Helen who has to tame Dominic, like he tamed the leopard. For example, 'Helen was relieved to find the leopard tamed, if only she could say the same for its master! Oh, did we mention that this master, Dominic, is a former racing-driver still physically and emotionally scarred from an accident years before. Because he's also that.' It's a little clunky. Dominic was played by Keir Dullea, star of 2001: A Space Odyssey and Bunny Lake is Missing, which certainly adds a little class to the proceedings. If Bewildered Heart had been in charge of the film's marketing, we would have led with his angular, yet dashing, presence. Even if we attempt to forget about Dullea for a moment, we certainly would have played down the leopard in the snow and the racing-driver stuff.

So why then do Mills & Boon authors write? Appropriately enough, it's for love. Romance novelists enjoy reading and creating stories of eternal love so much that they don't need the fame or money that comes from multimedia success. Now, when we say they love love stories, they do, but only for a month, when they move onto the next book, which is exactly the same as the previous one, but with a different name and a slightly altered appearance. These writers sound a lot like some young male weblogs we attended blogging university with.

"Holy smokes, just looking at him, she needed a cup of ice"

Since 1996 Jill Shalvis has written more than eighty-five romance novels. Using basic mathematics and a calculator, that suggests she writes six a year, each reaching the dizzying heights of fifty thousand words. In 2010 she has had a new book released for the months of February, March, April and July, with upcoming titles to be available in August, September and October. In between her writing, Jill also keeps a blog (Like Bewildered Heart! Wheeeee!) and a Twitter account (Booooo!). This insane volume would seem a capable feat to someone who was unaware of her novels. Would she not be better served writing three books a year and spending the remaining time editing those works and perhaps spending some time in the real world learning how life is for people who aren't Mills & Boon writers? Yes, Jill, others can use long sentences too. Damn! 

Roughing It With Ryan is not your average Mills & Boon novel. It is, in fact, closer to regular chick-lit, heavy with tired attempts at humour and a conversational prose style. The 'Hey, gal-pals' stuff grates immediately, but at least it isn't your typical repetitive, glossy prose of other genre examples. Suzanne Carter is not your average Mills & Boon heroine either. She carries around a little extra baggage and thickness than your usual romantic protagonist. To clarify baggage means emotional baggage and thickness means stupidity. In a slightly different regard, baggage and thickness also means she has chunky hips. Fair enough, it is just the fat issue that is unique to Suzanne. But weight (heh), there's more to her (heh) than meets the eye. Yes, Suzanne has been engaged three times and sees herself as a serial heart-breaker who 'destroys men' even though the narrator helpfully points out her previous relationships were all ended by the men, because men are jerks! Damn them!

Nothing speaks to Suzanne like gallons of ice cream. No sooner has Suzanne decided to swear off men for their own good and lose herself in eating ice cream with new bestest friend in the whole wide world (name unimportant) than she claps eyes on Ryan, a gorgeous, perfect, brilliant, loving tree surgeon. All tree surgeons are gorgeous and rugged, aren't they, working with their hands and sturdy torsos to protect nature and humanity's supply of oxygen? Chicks dig that shit, eh, gal-pals? Women adore loving, flawless men who love their partners despite their chunky appearance, insane demands, inane chatter and crises of confidence. It's as if Jill Shalvis understands women about as well as she doesn't understand men. Damn her!

For a Mills & Boon novel Roughing It with Ryan offers numerous supporting characters, none of whom encroach on the central story-line of Suzanne's dithering. In fact, her decision to become a caterer and realise her love for Ryan has little to do with the plot and more to do with the dwindling amount of words left for Shalvis to write. This is frustrating for even the most hearty consumer of such romantic material. The problem, as always, stems from the lack of stakes to the story. Suzanne doesn't want a relationship because she can't handle the pain of a romance gone bad, until she meets the perfect man and decides to spend the rest of her life with him. Suzanne doesn't want to be a caterer until she suddenly decides she actually does and then becomes a caterer. The End. This isn't a story. Nothing in such a scenario implies drama. Damn you, Jill Shalvis!

"There are other places to kiss..."

Public Mistress, Private Affair has a title that could easily be switched and retain its meaning. Public Affair, Private Mistress. See? Still meaningless. Maggie Cox writes Mills & Boon novels. Her previous attempts include The Millionaire Boss's Baby, The Spanish Billionaire's Christmas Bride (Themed! Eep) and The Spaniard's Marriage Demand. They all sound awful, don't they? Then again, Bewildered Heart has no predilections for wealthy Spaniards. Give us a homeless Belgian any day. This effort involves a PR guru named Nash. He hides a dark secret behind his smouldering good looks, tanned, fit body and silky, sexy voice. He is, in fact, from the mean streets of Stockholm. Nash must keep this potentially devastating personal embarrassment under wraps, in order to maintain his reputation as a brilliant PR guru who didn't grow up on the mean streets of Stockholm. 

Thankfully work proves a distraction as now he has been hired to reinvent an actress, Freya Carpenter, who is frayed, proving her name is as apt as Nash's. Since Freya's notorious divorce from a bastard named James Frazier, she has seen her name dragged through the mud, with charges of drug-taking, drink-drinking and general bitch-being. Why journalists accept James' word when it is apparent no one accepts James' word never gets clarified by the narrative. Freya has been left loveless, penniless, with her career in tatters. More worryingly though, her divorce has left her incapable of trusting a man or falling in love again. Despite these setbacks and her two years in the wilderness and semi-reclusion, she remains incredibly attractive with piercing eyes, ivory skin and lips that make you forget every thought you've ever had. It's difficult to believe such a vivacious actress could be so broken by threats and lies. Well, Nash, start believing it! 

The instantly enchanted pair jet off to Nash's secret hide-away in the South of France. There Freya can catch the sun, forget her history and let the media machine do its work, restoring her honour in the eyes of her audience and those scrupulous Hollywood casting agents. Most importantly, as this is a romance novel, is for Freya to finally begin to believe the public relations man of her dreams is Nash and he stands in front of her, wearing revealing swimming trunks and eating grapes he soaked in olive oil his-very-self. So debonair and classy! Once she confronts her feelings about him, perhaps she can marry him in a hastily-arranged marriage that is in no way a ploy to refute those slanderous accusations of her being a shameless hussy with no acting talent. When Nash smiles dimples appear in his cheeks. He's so gorgeous, with his mysterious Scandinavian looks. Yet Freya is not ready to fall in love even though she's already fallen in love. Cripes! Can these two somehow manage to work things out without ruining their best laid PR plans that aren't dramatically connected to their burgeoning love. 

It is important to raise stakes in story-telling. If it all comes down to a college dissertation or an easily contradicted and inconsequential lie the emotional melodrama that Mills & Boon demands lacks credibility and weight. All the hand-wringing and will-they-won't-they tension is lost when there's nothing stopping them from not. The emotional hang-ups of the characters, from bad divorces or tough childhoods in the ghettos of Stockholm, are never properly fleshed out to be believable enough to warrant one hundred and eighty pages of 'We can't do this... yet.' If it's supposed to keep the passion alighted so when they finally get together it is all the more poignant and fulfilling the structure is not matched by the author's emotional pacing. Nothing is keeping them apart besides a writer struggling with a formula. 

Invariably, the plot ends with the two leads (often the only two characters in the entire story) admitting they have always loved each other. Fine, everyone enjoys a happy ending. Before that, however, at least one sex scene must be shoe-horned in and that sex scene must be between the two romantic leads. Their mutual passion for each other's exquisite beauty needs sating with that experience then leading them to realise they are destined for one another. However, the sex is rarely tied into the journey of the characters, therefore trivialising the sex. In MacKenzie's Promise and Learning Curves the female lead is a virgin, saving herself for the right man. Both sleep with their perfect man, but long before they are in acknowledged love. Freya hasn't spoken to anyone besides family members since her divorce, so sleeping with Nash appears to be a huge step forward for her and a meaningful gesture towards Nash. It doesn't feel that way to the reader, it feels like a contractual obligation of the author. 

The couple have usually broken up by the morning. Someone has said something idiotic and unbelievable. Otherwise someone has said something bland and non-committal and the other party has reacted in an idiotic and unbelievable manner. The time apart is spent wishing they weren't apart and pretty soon they have reconciled, locked in an embrace that will last them a lifetime, until they're clawed apart so they can be buried separately. Claire Somerville, Mills & Boon's marketing director, has said, 'Pretty much anything goes (sexually), but all in the context of the enduring emotional relationship. There has to be a connection between the hero and the heroine. They've got to like each other, otherwise it doesn't work.' Really, Mills & Boon? Your stories are unashamedly old-fashioned, corny and unrealistic, but this contrived and flippant attitude towards sex doesn't add up.

"Their Sexual Adventures Put her Old Wild Ways to Shame"

Looking for something a tad more sensual, imagine the delight in finding out that Mills & Boon cater specifically for readers who prefer their romance with extra helpings of blandly described sexual acts, often at the expense of story and character development. Whereas Modern Romance covers are blue and have a staged photograph of half-naked models caressing each other on them, Sensual Romances are red and have a staged photograph of half-naked models canoodling on them.

Learning Curves is the debut novel by one Joanne Rock. Thirty more titles have since followed. This Learning Curves isn't to be confused with the hundreds of others, written by women who have noticed the same tame double entendre and decided that idea was strong enough to deserve an entire book. Learning Curves isn't the only Harlequin either, another by Cindi Myers has cropped up and we haven't heard the last from Cindi Myers, the author of Do Me Right, a book surely worth tracking down with all the dedication you would normally expend bringing yourself unhappiness.

In Joanne Rock's Learning Curves, the curves in question belong to Maddy, a virginal graduate student somewhere in the United States. She wants to write her dissertation on human mating rituals, but her application for a grant has been rejected because, in her opinion, she lacks the necessary experience in human mating. In the reader's opinion, of course, her idea is silly and redundant. Instead of rewriting her proposal, Mad (Let's call her Mad, eh?) decides to have a very public affair with campus bad-boy, and part-time lecturer, Cal Turner, thus shattering her good-girl image. She believes this is a smart idea, under-mining the novel's scenario that she is a graduate student.

Of course, Cal (once-divorced) has no intention of having a long-term relationship or a short-term fling. Firstly, he doesn't believe he's capable of love despite his previous marriage, which, for logic to win out, must have been loveless from the get-go. Surely another heavy defeat for logic. Secondly, Cal and Maddy have been friends for years and he doesn't want to risk their friendship for passionate sex with a sexy woman. Right on, guy! Thirdly, Cal is in the process of gaining custody of his teenage sister, and so his womanising image needs cleaning up if he is to win the case.

A public, sexual relationship is a no-no, and who wants a sexual relationship with a sexy woman unless it's out in the open and watched by all, including the university board whom write your cheques? In his spare time Cal owns a franchise of garages, where he works hard, and dotes on his kid sister.He's a true woman's man, always covered in grease. Yeah. He's rich and gorgeous and in love with Maddy. The question lingers, Can two people who love each other find love with each other? Clearly the stakes are high and the obstacles insurmountable. Fortunately Rock has two hundred pages to resolve matters, and by the looks of things, she'll need them!

For those readers who believe Learning Curves doesn't share their one-track mind, Cindi Myers is happy to oblige, somehow cramming more sex into her novels, while maintaining the tedious and painful narrative of a woman falling in love with her ideal man as she sex with him, repeatedly. Wild Child is the third book in the Sex on the Beach trilogy and concerns the sexy exploits of sexy office worker Sara, who, while on vacation on a beach somewhere in the United States, meets the sexy surfer Drew. Sara has trouble working for her Uncle Spence, but he's nice really, while Drew has trouble working with his Grandpa Gus, who's actually lovely, and Drew and Sara bond over trite family issues and being sexy. After exhaustively describing their boring problems to one another they have life-affirming sex in a myriad of places and positions. Him on top, standing, her on top, done. Who knew it could be like this, they ask? Silly them, of course, because with Mills & Boon a romance is never made as straight-forward as it really is, and after two hundred pages of bad dialogue and euphemisms for Sara's vagina, they split despite being in love. Four pages later, though, everything has worked out fine, and they go back to the inane dialogue that they bonded over.

Blaze! supposedly cranks up the sex quota and Wild Child does indeed have more sex scenes than books from other genres, with the added liberty of being allowed to describe matters explicitly. Myers says penis when she means penis and there's even a hand-job in the ocean, under-taken because there are no condoms floating nearby. Obviously this pair holiday at very different beaches to the ones Bewildered Heart visits, for reading and other pleasures. Despite all the sex scenes, however, they are never embedded into the plot with any success, meaning each lengthy example is gratuitous, and never serves the novel beyond helping to achieve Myers' intended word-count. Sara and Drew's implied lifetime of wedded bliss has more to do with trust and empathy and less to do with Drew's inability to contain his throbbing manhood when inside Sara's heavenly warmth.

Sure, we readers appreciate being treated like adults when reading adult fiction, but no one with a discriminating mind will accept this nonsense as either entertaining, worthwhile or an unlikely hybrid of the two. Nothing happens and nothing matters. The issues raised by the characters through their conversations are not dealt with by the narrative. The status quo the story challenges was not worth keeping and is not affected by the decisions of Sara or Drew. If their actions have no impact on the plot why does the writer waste time following their actions? This isn't character-driven, it's forced by structure, as if the principles are stuck inside a romance novel and can't escape. Is this fate? they ask. No, Cindi Myers replies, it's Chapter Twelve so you're in love with each other now. We're racing to the end, and why, because, you stupid author, all you have is an ending.

"Don't Get Involved with Clients... Or with Women"

MacKenzie's Promise is a Modern Romance by Catherine Spencer that adds intrigue and investigative police work to the usual couple-falling-in-love shenanigans. An attractive, lithe twenty-seven-year-old virgin, named Linda Carr (A terrible name for a romantic heroine), hires a retired, reclusive cop-turned-self-help-writer, MacKenzie 'Mac' 'Sully' Sullivan (Better), to find her niece, who has been kidnapped by the father. Linda's sister is barely mentioned, apparently too emotional to help find her own child. Mac, a once-divorced, tough alpha male who enjoys fine-dining and being cruel to women, doesn't do police work any longer, but he agrees to solve the case and risk his life for unspecified reasons. Perhaps he is so enamoured by lovely Linda's charms he can't refuse her. But one of Mac's rules is to never get involved with his clients, so he's rather shooting himself in the foot there.

'Can he keep her at arm's length?' asks the blurb. Wouldn't it be easier to just turn down the case? replies the reader. The tag-line is: 'Can he find the baby?' Seriously, that's the tag-line, as if a Mills & Boon reader cares what happens with the plot gimmick used to bring the romantic leads together. A superior tag-line might have been: 'Can he find what he's looking for? You see, because he thinks what he's looking for is a kidnapped baby, when what he really wants is love, with a beautiful woman. To hell with the baby.' Is tag-line-writer for Mills & Boon novels a real job?

While Mac and Linda easily track down the baby, they fall for each other, big time!, despite constant bickering, and overcome their personal issues to live happily ever after. While typically functional and moronic there are a few marked differences between MacKenzie's Promise and the standard fare. For starters, someone gets murdered at the end. Also, at the beginning, a baby is kidnapped. These are not incidents traditionally associated with trite Romance Fiction. In fact, this sounds like an inappropriate story involving child kidnapping and murder with a tactless love sub-plot clumsily shoe-horned in. If you were thinking that, you would be correct. Of course, the reader has nothing more to go on than the blurb when choosing this book from the neatly stacked shelves of similar titles. Of more significance than the story potentials, however, are the number of pages and the font size. MacKenzie's Promise is quite short, and this is as good as any a reason to choose it. Also, the gratuitous sex.

What MacKenzie's Promise does do is suggest a different way of telling a romance story. The search for the baby keeps the leads together, serves as a distraction, forces them apart when necessary and takes them to a myriad of exotic locations, where they often lunch. The problem with the romance strand is clear. As Linda points out, time and time again, should they really be enjoying a leisurely meal when there's a kidnapped baby to find? She makes a valid point. However, Mac's so hunky she quickly over-looks the matter. This only opens up a new issue. Man, what a shitty aunt and awful human being. She should die. Perhaps the trouble simply is that the baby kidnapping isn't treated with the seriousness the situation deserves. Maybe all a more talented writer needs to do is keep things light, but equally plot-orientated. Surely these two characters can have the same flirtatious conversations while crawling around in tunnels rather than over candlelight on a yacht?

"Then, by an extraordinary quirk of fate, Madison became pregnant..."

In writing classes designed to dupe money from writers unsure over what writing involves, 'Drama' isn't considered a genre. Every story must contain drama to be considered a story. If nothing dramatic happens, what makes it worth talking about? Say nothing in your day was dramatic and someone, probably a parent who worries about you, asks you to describe your day. Would you be able to? Would you have anything to tell him that wouldn't bore said listener to tears? Still, the day happened. Time passed. Did you even get out of bed? Jeez, man. You're wasting your life.

By the nature of the argument, however, other genres such as Western, Sci-Fi and Action are not immediately suggestive of story. They are settings and themes. If the story is connected to the location or time period then you have a Western Whodunit, or a Sci-Fi Romance. Romance stories, as glimpsed in the haughty pages of Mills & Boon, are immediately suggestive of story. Romance is a genre in the truest sense. Therefore Sci-Fi Romance is a compelling fusion, if only for the lurid robot sex. Of course Mills & Boon would scoff at the idea of bridging such gaps between classic genres such as these. Yet romance can take various forms. There are many ways to be romanced, after all, and while romance is a genre, there are numerous sub-genres within romance for the reader to find the perfect way she or her can receive her fictional loving.

The company, like their sister brands, are so aware of customer desires that they now offer a diverse selection of categories such as Crime, Paranormal and Nocturne (which sounds like Horror, but without, you know, the horror). There are plenty of Western Romances, with cowboys and cowgirls and sunsets and trite emotional baggage, as well as Adventure or Action Romance, with cops and guns and chases and trite emotional baggage. More generic, however, are the striking differences in tone, sex quota and colour of the book sleeve. So, depending on the reader's stomach and attitude toward children as supporting characters there are Tender Romances, Modern Romances, Medical Romances, Historical Romances, Blaze and Modern Heat! Perhaps the titles are self-explanatory, but for word count a little elaboration is called-for.

Tender Romances are often tender, focusing on love and tenderness and strong emotional bonds, rather than sex and lust and having lustful sex. Modern Romance brings Mills & Boon into the now, exploring what it's like for a modern woman in an urban setting to become involved in a painfully dated Mills & Boon love story. Medical Romance is like Modern Romance but with doctors and nurses and sick people, for those readers who believe ER and Grey's Anatomy aren't concerned enough with tiresome romantic sub-plots. Historical Romance, still popular today!, sets romance in the olden days where such modern heroes as ruthless property developers and brooding police detectives are replaced by ruthless landowners and brooding knights. Blaze and Modern Heat, on the other hand, are basically the same sub-genre but with different titles and focus on the passionate and constant sex between a couple as they inexplicably forge an emotional bond despite limited conversation.

Remove all these elements, though, and focus on what makes the Romance genre all it is, and you're left with simple stories involving the accustomed archetypes audiences have always been fond of. For example there's the popular cruel oil sheikh and the spirited female who somehow manages to be tricked, blackmailed or forced (not raped, but whirl-winded by sheer magnitude of personality) into the bed of the charming sheik. Classic stuff. So romantic and exotic.

For the more discerning reader, and the more ambitious writer, these stereotypes, settings and plot-lines are tired and warily formulaic. Yet curiously, the predictability and familiarity of the stories, characters and set-ups are all part of the appeal of romance fiction. Strong, feisty women (usually virgins, often twenty-seven) meet and immediately desire strong, alpha males (usually divorced, occasionally thirty-two), who equally desire them. However, a series of easily surmountable obstacles are put in the way of their impending happy ending. The writer must therefore use ham-fisted and repetitive prose to hold back the couple from falling in love, all the while initiating a series of passionate love scenes, in expensive and glamorous locations.

There's a Hollywood film, a Matthew McComedy, entitled How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. The inexplicable plot runs as such, girl journalist writes a piece on how to get a man to break-up with her in ten days. The guy chosen has to stay with a girl for ten days in order to win a bet with a rival and land an advertising gig. If the film hadn't strived and failed to gain laughs, it would have all the hallmarks of a Mills & Boon, and when considering most Hollywood romantic comedies, or romantic dramas, many follow the same worryingly unambitious structure of this most yucked-over franchise.

What is wrong, then, with Mills & Boon? Is it the calibre of writing, is it the lack of laughs? Is it because they take longer to read than a Sarah Jessica Parker movie takes to watch? Are films such as Failure to Launch and The Wedding Date thought of as laughably as Public Mistress, Private Affair? While the plots are all the same, the characters only superficially-altered from book to book, the amounts of glamour and misogyny troubling and unrealistic in equal measure, it is surely the terrible quality of prose that is most offensive to the objective, critical reader. A deceptively simple style is a necessary requirement in this type of fiction, but never have simple and simplistic been so shamefully confused.