"I'm very grateful she's a woman, and so easy to forget!"

The follower of Bewildered Heart must be curious as to how the attempt to watch every romance movie on the list of American Film Institute's 100 Years 100 Passions Top 100 Most Romantic Movies Ever Made in these United States has been going. Though the comment boards have been typically silent on the matter, we can only assume readers have been asking incessantly, and so as we near December and the beginning of the month rightfully set aside for Christmas movies and Christmas-themed Mills & Boon's, it is with great delight and much relief that we can announce it is almost over. Many of the films featured are much admired by anonymous internet critics able to stomach such things as swooning, bursting into song and Barbara Streisand. However, Bewildered Heart is not such a blog, and as we have recently had to endure The Way We Were and Funny Lady it is with thankfulness that we note the end has arrived.

There was a time when Audrey Hepburn existed and ran around on cinema screens in wonderful clothes pretending to fall in love with actors who were much too old for her. Those lean years are a glory to look back upon. Naturally, many of those films don't hold up today and yet five of her films feature on the AFI's most romantic films list. Her total of five is bettered only by two stars, Cary Grant and Katherine Hepburn. Audrey Hepburn's career began, in earnest, with Roman Holiday, where she was paired opposite Gregory Peck's American journalist, playing an escaped princess shirking her regal responsibilities to have a free-spirited jaunt around Rome and a hair-cut. Tsk, another journalist! Of course Roman Holiday is a mighty fine film, one of the most romantic of all time, according to the AFI, with two strong central performances and a handful of inspiring set-pieces in a well-used location. Tellingly it also has a bittersweet ending because journalists are not deserving of happy endings as they are journalists. To say bittersweet is misleading, mind. The journalist is miserable and an Audrey Hepburn character remains single

A year later and there came Sabrina Fair, an awkward film and only the 54th most romantic of all time, but Audrey manages to imbue a dignified credibility into her supposed idolization of William Holden, a romance given further creditability by the offscreen romance between the pair. With all this hard work done, however, Billy Wilder goes and squanders it by having her instead fall for Humphrey Bogart, who looks as uncomfortable as someone can when wearing trousers pulled up past the belly button. Ten years after Sabrina, Hepburn and Holden would appear together once again in Paris When it Sizzles, but Audrey couldn't carry the effect of Sabrina into this new film. Her marriage to Mel Ferrer and Holden's deteriorating health due to his alcoholism made for a problematic set and despite a cameo from Marlene Dietrich and a tongue-in-cheek performance from the late Tony Curtis Paris When it Sizzles stands up today as only a fitfully amusing comedy, thanks largely to a tongue-in-cheek performance from Tony Curtis, and, of course, Audrey Hepburn being adorable.

Love in the Afternoon works whenever Gary Cooper is offscreen, but these sequences are few and far between. Nothing against Gary Cooper, though. He's just Gary Cooper. When Audrey says he looks like a cowboy this ends up as perceptive criticism rather than referential in-joke. Billy Wilder intended Love in the Afternoon to be a tribute to his mentor, Ernst Lubitsch, but Lubitsch never miscast like this, beyond putting Melvyn Douglas in anything (Look at his moustache, it's smug). May to December romances aren't fit for stories of eternal love. When the narration tells us the lovers were later married we say, Sure, and roll our eyes. Unlike some critics whose dislike of Billy Wilder means they won't find their names printed here, no casual human being should feel anything but great affection towards Billy Wilder, but his romantic comedies work best when shot through with his patented cynicism for mankind. The Apartment, Number 62, is a beautiful and touching romance, but his frothier offerings such as Irma La Douce pale in comparison to his best work. Sadly, Sabrina and Love in the Afternoon are among his weaker films, although it is fair to say that Audrey has never looked as gorgeous as she did in these movies.

Now Funny Face was lovely, although it's hard to get over Fred Astaire telling Audrey Hepburn that she isn't conventionally beautiful, but he loves her anyway. She should have slapped him for that comment or offered him a mirror, but it is infuriating whenever an Audrey Hepburn character appears on screen and is not followed by a horde of men and women carrying bunches of flowers. One above The Apartment comes Breakfast at Tiffany's and here's a perfectly acceptable film with a leading man close to Audrey's age. Audrey is cast against type, in a role brimming with self-confidence, far from the shy ingénue of her other characters. Breakfast at Tiffany's is her most iconic role and her most believable romantic-comedy romance.

My Fair Lady is over-long, weighing in at almost three hours, which is a slog for even a viewer who can tolerate musicals. Hepburn is miscast and ten years too old for the role. Still, there are a handful of likeable songs and pleasant sequences, but George Cukor shoots the film as a theatrical production, merely transporting the play to the screen without the benefits of the adopted medium. Furthermore and most importantly, perhaps, My Fair Lady isn't a love story despite the AFI declaring it the 14th most romantic American production ever. Oh, Film Institute, where is the romance? From the young man when he sings the song of stalking, or are we led to believe Audrey and Rex Harrison fall for each other, in an almost as credible a coupling as Rex and Gene Tierney, in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, Number 73? After all, admitting you've grown to tolerate someone is hardly the fourteenth most romantic gesture open to a man. The ending is subtle, to the point of ambiguity, but we assume Eliza and Henry marry and live as happily as the viewer can imagine them living, yet if there is an implied relationship in My Fair Lady the audience has the right to refuse to acknowledge it. This is a satisfactory compromise, for having seen Audrey pretend to love Bogie, Gregory Peck, Fred Astaire, Gary Cooper, Burt Lancaster, William Holden and Cary Grant it is difficult to manage Rex Harrison to boot.

This leaves us with her Stanley Donen double bill, of Charade and Two for the Road. As Charade doesn't figure on the 100 Passions list, we can quickly skip over it. Suffice to say, Charade is a fine thriller and Cary Grant takes a shower with his clothes on, which is easily more romantic than admitting you've grown accustomed to a lady's presence. Two For the Road, meanwhile, features at Number 57, and earns its place as a surprisingly tender, painful and insightful observation of a marriage, and pairs Hepburn with Albert Finney, a man seven years her junior, a nice change for Audrey, the saucy minx. Two For the Road is smartly-written (by Frederic Raphael) and cleverly edited to show a relationship in its beginning, its honeymoon stage and as it breaks down. The same year Audrey Hepburn was impressive in Wait Until Dark even though the story around her performance made no sense at all, and beyond that there were only a handful of films she saw fit to grace. Nevertheless, sixteen films in fourteen years and five among the most romantic of all American time is a remarkable achievement. She has been a rare bright spot in this debauched month of romance movie-watching and she should always be remembered as the perfect anecdote to sitting through a Barbara Streisand movie.

“Speaking of the devil, your daughter looks remarkably like...”

Mills & Boon categories are conveniently separated by colour. The more sexually explicit material has a sexually explicit picture on a cover adorned with red, the international colour of explicit sexual material. Modern Romance is symbolised by blue, because blue is classy, emotionally sterile and modern. Our newfound favourite subgenre is Romance Romance, also known by a series of less powerful monikers including Tender Romance and Special Moments. These books have an innocent picture of two adults innocently cavorting with an adorable child on a orange cover, because nothing speaks of romance without explicit sexual content like the colour orange.

The Dad Next Door tells the story of a thirty-something single dad, abandoned by his wife when their twin girls were one-year-olds. Marianne, a traditional name for an evil woman, disappeared and has not been heard from since. Life for the single dad, Gavin Gray, hasn't brightened either. From two kids he is down to one, Tory, an insolent, uncommunicative tyke without opinions or forthrightness. Her sister, Samantha, was the outgoing, strong-willed one, so outgoing in fact, she ran into a street one day and was hit by a motorcycle. Gavin is tired and disconsolate, but still rather handsome, with broad shoulders and John F. Kennedy's gait. Shortly after Samantha's death he ups sticks and moves to small town New Hampshire into the house his wife grew up in, a decision the author, CJ Carmichael, manages to make sound more curious than creepy. To add to the glamour of the location the book is set on Squam Lake, the very golden pond Henry Fonda and Katherine Hepburn filmed On Golden Pond on. The American Film Institute's twenty-second best romantic film is surely the most glamorous movie ever made about geriatric loving, irresponsible parenting and fear of dying.

Meanwhile, back in the novel, we meet the cute and loveable Alison Bennett, a single business owner with only happiness in her manner. She takes an immediate interest in the strapping hunk of grief moving in next door and can't help but note the adorability of his daughter. However, we soon learn Alison comes with her own forlorn hopelessness. She receives an order of wedding invitations she forgot to cancel, having cancelled everything else romance-related with her ex-fiance, Tyler Jenkins. Now just a sad, lonely woman with nothing to do in the evenings except be alone, her telephone rings and who's on the other end? Her father, wishing her a happy birthday.

My word, book. How did you get published? What is more, we're only three chapters in. Bring on the terminal illness and dog who has seen better days. It makes for an inauspicious beginning when to up the ante the author decides to kill a child, and to add insult to death the accident, as Gavin wants it to be known, seems a superfluous tragedy to base the narrative around. There is plenty going on with this family without the need to make the cause so obvious and peripheral. We will learn more of the incident and its effect on the characters in due course, as Alison gently tugs on the string holding Gavin's existence together. Clearly he and Tory have not moved on from losing Sam, as a father and a twin sister are supposed to. While Alison has moved on from her broken engagement from Tyler, her divorced and lonesome parents do not believe she has made the right decision. In the small town tongues wag and Alison needs a new man in her life to quell speculation as much as Tory needs a mother figure and Gavin needs a supportive, loving woman. But good golly, that's surely too much to ask. If only there was some way to neatly fit these carefully constructed pieces into one puzzle.

While Bewildered Heart continually criticises the problematic nature of Modern, Sensual Romance, Blaze! and Modern Heat, for their inherent lack of depth to story and characters, even the most cynical critic cannot fault The Dad Next Door, which dishes out the neuroses and tragedies as if the author has something to prove to the reader. This overwhelming heartache will make the coupling of Gavin and Alison, because that is happening, all the more satisfying, as this union will solve every problem for every character and every character has a serious problem that only love will solve. Hurrah for the healing power of love!

Credit therefore to CJ Carmichael. Well done, her, so far. Nevertheless, with all this additional sorrow piled upon a simple tale of love the writing becomes a delicate balancing act of haunted emotion and story progression. Alison is an old school-friend of Marianne, and the revelation of her being Gavin's former flame must have an effect on the burgeoning relationship, meaning Carmichael will have to introduce Marianne and even Tyler now they've been pointedly referenced, their force over our leads abundantly apparent.

Never before in my Mills & Boon reading has a story begun with so many broken lives, with so many characters living in lonely despair, regretting life choices and reluctant to be hurt once more, in a world where everyone gets hurt and nothing good comes easily. This isn't to say The Dad Next Door is a successful book, of course, the prose style has forced contrivances and heavy-handed emotional footnotes, leaving no room for subtlety, and yet it is these faults that feel more in-keeping with the Harlequin modus operandi. There is plenty of opportunity for subtext, yet a stern refusal to leave certain things unsaid. When a character stops short of saying how they really feel, the narrator helpfully jumps in, to press home the unspoken bond between Gavin and Alison. This is a shame, but perhaps an inevitable one.

There remains a missed opportunity in back-dating the tragedy. After all, who wants to read a book in which all the interesting, dramatic things have already happened? The Dad Next Door ends up revolving around the renovation of a house, a handy metaphor, but a didactic and clichéd one. We, the gentle readers, continue on regardless awaiting the arrival of Marianne with all her baggage. There is an obstacle in the way of romance here greater than Gavin and Alison's thought processes and hang-ups. Marianne represents the author's first obvious concern when introducing a child into their Mills & Boon world. What happened to the missing parent? And of course, what about the child? How does the kid figure into the plans of the adults? Presently, Tory is a minor nuisance, with an issue Alison immediately fixes through the clever skill of offering companionship. Therefore the daughter becomes what children are in real life, a sign that their single father is sensitive and charming.

"Does this have anything to do with the fact that I'm gonna get sunburn on my rear end?"

Before an aspiring author attempts their addition to the swell of romance writing published every month by Mills & Boon they are smartly advised to choose the sub-genre they wish to be considered for. Without further ado, therefore, a little research is necessary. As Bewildered Heart has already helpfully alluded to there are numerous different styles for your generic love story, including, but not limited to, Nocturne, Medical, Blaze!, Intrigue and Historical. Other less well-known categories are named Mira, Cherish, Desire and Riva. What are these? you demand, impatiently. Unfortunately, our necessary research wasn't especially thorough, but never mind because Cherish sounds like the antithesis of Desire and frankly the other two aren't even words, so forget them.

Because of a particular aversions toward vampires, demons, well-being, sex and old people, we should press on with the least likely category to contain animalistic rutting between otherworldly beasts. With Nocturne and Cherish out of the way then, we are left at the grateful feet of Modern and Romance. Yes, that's correct. There's a Romance sub-genre called Romance. Romance Romance, you might say. So, what does the Romance Romance genre ask for? Mills & Boon opens with, 'Do you love a happy ending?' It is never a good idea to immediately ask  a stupid question, but seeing as how they have we have little choice but join them. Don't all Mills & Boon books have happy endings? If the reader didn't love a happy ending would they even be here? How does that separate this style from all the other styles? Can we pretend they didn't ask that and move on? 'Do you love to get lost in a story that takes you on a roller-coaster of emotions?' Sure, why not. A roller-coaster of emotion sounds like a normal roller-coaster, except with more vomiting. But seeing as how most romance novels are emetic there doesn't appear to be anything here to differentiate this from the likes of Historical and Medical, besides history and medicine. After all, a stroll through indifference would be a terrible idea for a story.

'Do you want to walk in your heroine’s shoes?' They don't offer great arch support and chances are they wouldn't fit, but yes, we most certainly do. After all, she is our narrative representation, albeit with nicer shoes. 'Do you want pure Romance?' Of course, who doesn't want pure romance? No more of this diluted romance that doesn't even taste like romance. It's mostly anti-freeze. This question is a tricky one to answer, but the implication is that Romance Romance skips on the more sultry stuff. 'Each story delivers 100% pure romance - but happily leaves the explicit detail on the cutting room floor! Readers come to this series to experience the feel-good high of love blossoming!' So it's 100% pure, but not uncut?

'Do you want to explore a rainbow of emotional scenarios?' This is the same question as before only worded slightly differently, so the answer remains the same, only worded slightly differently. You're gosh darn right we do! And yet, why does it feel as if you're making vague and derisory statements that in no way explain what Romance Romance writers are expected to deliver? How about a long list of words? 'Vibrant, hilarious, heart-wrenching, exciting, uplifting, unexpected, intelligent, warm…' Yep, that didn't help either. In fact, as a description it seems ever more confused. Does Mills & Boon want a novel that fits all of these adjectives, or can the author choose one word and base their book around that, because Bewildered Heart has never featured a Harlequin that was any one of those things.

'We celebrate women: their lives, triumphs, families, hopes, dreams…and most importantly their journey to falling in love. These are heroines every woman can relate to, root for, a friend you can laugh with and cry with. There should be a sense that the story really could happen to you!' That's something. Readers of Romance Romance seek familiarity, their own personal, realistic fairytale with a likeable, relatable lead character. But what about that chap hiding behind her? 'Behind every strong woman…there’s a strong man. A guy you could meet on the sunniest of days, but who’ll be there for you on the rainiest.' That doesn't make sense. Let's assume what they're demanding is that we don't create a fair-weather love interest, instead a man who can be relied upon, for better and for worse, through sickness and in health, the sort of heroic lover that has appeared in every Mills & Boon since its inception.

'So - wherever in the world your book is set, whether it’s fun and flirty or deeply emotional, let your imagination fly. The possibilities in Romance are endless.' Please note that by endless we here at Mills & Boon are not implying that the possibilities in romance are endless. On the contrary they are limited to a standard structure, character archetypes and predictability any deviation from will result in instant manuscript rejection. We ask all potential authors to follow the strict guidelines that are not mentioned anywhere within the submission section of our website because we enjoy receiving up to 20,000 manuscripts a year that are unsuitable for publication.

Alternatively, there's Modern Romance, which translates as romance for the modern woman, still 100% romantic, but now with the occasional sex scene and talking on mobile phones! 'Modern Romance is the last word in sensual and emotional excitement,' they inform us. 'Readers are whisked away to exclusive jet-set locations to experience smouldering intensity and red-hot desire.' They are whisked away to exclusive jet-set locations in their imagination, for those excitable readers who took that literally. Modern Romance is the most popular category to write in and the most comfortable to be seen buying. Who doesn't yearn for a little romance in this day and age? Despite the contemporary illusion, the stories are exactly the same as they are in Romance Romance, only with the sexual element amped up to Low.

'Modern Romance explores emotional themes that are universal. These should be played out as part of highly-charged conflicts that are underpinned by blistering sexual anticipation and released as passionate lovemaking. However, Modern is not the home of purple prose, cliché or melodrama; we want to see writing that offers unique perspectives and bursts with originality.' Yeah, you salty dogs. Clichéd, melodramatic purple prose with stereotypical perspectives that occasional flashes with banality are published under the Blaze! banner.

So what have we learned from this, besides not to look to the Help pages for help? Well, it really comes down to sexual content. Much like life itself the books are categorised by the amount of explicit description they contain. Modern Romance features one, maybe two, encounters, but must use coy euphemisms and old-fashioned reactions to mark the books out as Modern. Blaze! can say what the reader wants to read, and must tailor their story around a couple who meet and almost immediately begin having sex, thus discrediting any semblance of intellectual connection. With Romance Romance the focus is rightly on the romance, and it would be expected that the couple do not fuse their bodies in a fit of passion until after the book has ended. A standard example will revolve around a slow-burning and tender courtship often involving a single parent with an adorable child. That's another thing we'll have to think about later on down the line, the involvement of adorable children, but for now we should all get on with reading some Romance Romance and the first example will be The Dad Next Door, and look there's an adorable child on the front cover holding a teddy bear!