“A woman with backbone, a woman with brains and ambitions – and breeding”

Nora Roberts has written over two hundred romance novels. She began her career with Silhouette over thirty years ago, having been first rejected by Mills & Boon when they began scouring the United States for authors. By the time she had found the international success few romance writers achieve her publisher had been bought out and Harlequin cashed in on a novelist attuned to her reader's desires, canny with a franchise and with a relentless appetite for work. Beginning in 1985, Nora created a new dynasty, a multi-generational family of the wealthy, attractive and powerful, allowing her an endless series of books and short stories about the MacGregor clan. Not to be confused with the Mackade Brothers, The Stanislaskis, the Calhoun Women, the Cordina Royal Family, the Stars of Mithra, The Donovan Legacy, The O'Hurleys and the goings-on of Night, the MacGregors are led by Daniel Duncan MacGregor and wife Anna Whitfield. They met and married in print and went onto have three children, who also got their romantic stories told, having numerous grandchildren and great-grandchildren that would fill Roberts' writing obligations for the next few weeks and shape the destiny of fictional American politics and culture, a country controlled by an affluent, white elite.

What followed became known as Playing The Odds, Tempting Fate, All The Possibilities, One Man's Art, For Now, Forever, In From the Cold, Rebellion, The Winning Hand and The Perfect Neighbor. However, Roberts and Daniel Duncan could not be stopped, offering us two collections of revealing briefs; The MacGregor Brides and The MacGregor Grooms. These are not the same stories told from differing points of view, but rather six further romances between one of the world's most celebrated families and the offspring of other incredibly rich legacies. Daniel MacGregor is sick of not seeing everyone he knows married and living in a mansion with countless kids, so he sets about playing secret matchmaker for his gorgeous and talented descendants. In The MacGregor Grooms' opening novella he trains his demented eyes on grandson Daniel Campbell (DC to his friends. Hi, DC!), sister of Julia and son of Alan MacGregor, former President of the United States. Roberts helpfully adds a Family Tree in the glossary. DC is a devilishly handsome and highly successful artist, who has moved back to Washington because of his name. He lives in a luxurious two-storey apartment overlooking the C & O Canal, where he paints sound tracked by the tough urban poetry of John Mellencamp. Despite having everything his glamorous lifestyle lacks a few items that DC would rather not have, namely a wife, some children and an interior design scheme.

From the moment DC was born Daniel had picked out the perfect partner for him. Now, having allowed legality to catch up with his dastardly games, the time for romance is afoot. The only trouble is DC does not want to settle down, so Daniel will have to play this carefully. He ropes in family friend “Aunt” Myra, the actual Aunt of one Layna Drake, heir to the Drake Department Store fortune. Layna has also recently returned to Washington D.C. to work her way up the corporate ladder and one day take control of the family business. Daniel asks DC to accompany Layna to a business function, purely as a favour to Myra. DC reluctantly agrees, but it soon becomes clear that he and Layna have many things in common; they are both exceedingly beautiful, successful and wealthy, they are both controlled by manipulative ageing family members, they both live locally and both have no interest in relationships, preferring instead to focus on their lucrative careers. All best intentions are torn asunder, however, when they see each other for the first time since they were innocent infants, running free down the hallways of the White House. Layna has developed from a willowly waif with hair like a dandelion to a stunning womanly creature of perfection with blonde hair, and still thin. Meanwhile, DC has retained all of his hair and become taller, thus overcoming the two challenges all men face when under-taking growing up.

Despite the stars aligning for an illicit clinch in a bathroom cubicle DC and Layna are able to control their baser urges and focus on struggling through the evening without any awkward instances of falling to the floor as watery liquid. Instead Layna has a short conversation with DC's parents, who happen to be there, and then they dance, sultrily, their bodies fitting together as if they had been designed to meld into one. Heart rates soaring unrealistically they call it a night without having to admit that they like one another. Foolishly, and perhaps only because Nora's ending demands it so, DC cannot resist some playful home invasion the following day. Finding Layna listening to classical music, wearing a hat and planting flowers in the garden he sketches her face and asks her to an art exhibit at the Smithsonian. There the third chapter ends with merciful succinctness, leaving Bewildered Heart to comprehend what so many millions of readers enjoy in the work of Nora Roberts. Her early fame seems remarkable, as nothing happens in Part One of The MacGregor Grooms to differentiate it from the romance canon, except Roberts seems less willing to baulk her prose out with heavy-handed emotional revelations. There are the standard clichés readers will have resolved to accept as inevitable, including mentions of DC's masculine hands and Layna's realisation that only a thin layer of silk saves her from skin on skin contact. The attraction between hero and heroine is carried out with a formulaic predictability, yet the novel's most obvious accomplishment is the subversive manner with which Roberts brings her leads together.

Mills & Boon Romances are keen to avoid secondary characters and plot contrivances, instead pushing ideas such as fate, soulmates and true love to the forefront of their stories. With the MacGregor series Roberts takes a cynical view, inviting her readers to empathise with the old-fashioned family orientations of Daniel Duncan rather than the actual leads. What do young people know of life and love, he asks, in the introductory passage, supposedly lifted from his memoirs, published, one assumes, when he eventually died of an excess of love in his heart. The youth know not what they want, but Daniel is certain that what they want is the same thing he had at their age, and to believe otherwise would surely call into question his entire existence. Often in these Harlequin tales the deliberations and neuroses of the hero and heroine are delaying tactics until the characters accept they want and can have what everyone wants, eternal happiness with their ideal partner, a department store empire and a national security detail. The umming-and-ahhing is a tedious narrative gimmick Secrets Uncovered had the nerve to call Conflict, but thanks to Daniel MacGregor's delusions of God-like perceptibility the story of DC and Layna giving up their youthful dreams of work and real estate for an incestuous marriage of corporate interests and Nora Roberts franchise-building takes on a knowing, wiser veneer.

Furthermore, to the author's credit, her book assumes a semi-relevant tone involving numerous details of Washington D.C., and throwing out hip references to the youth of the late nineties, such as Chopin, Dali and John Fogerty. Her heroine gardens with a manual at her side, fears death by automobile accident and does not like strangers entering her townhouse without an invitation. Equally, DC is humanised with numerous quirks including his enjoyment of bacon, driving recklessly and entering stranger's townhouses without invitation. While this does nothing to suggest he and Layna should be anything other than spiritual enemies the asides do help create a relatable parallel universe where Alan MacGregor was President, department stores remain in business, painting is a career and twenty-somethings enjoy what sixty-year-old retirees enjoy in the real world. Despite these supposed positives Roberts will have to work her vaunted magic on making the eventual ever-lasting kiss believable. So far the reader has little to buy into besides physical lust and the word of a senile old man hellbent on strengthening corporate bonds through his children. There is a clear lack of romance and credibility three chapters in, unless The MacGregor Grooms, and its forebears, were intended to be darkly satirical treatises on the trappings of money, breeding and heritage, which they really are either way.

“What was madness but a delicious form of intense reality?”

Having read Neurosurgeon... and Mum! while simultaneously cutting and pasting from Secrets Uncovered about best friends, falling in love with a handsome billionaire named Google and single-handedly raising this weblog in a cruel and uncaring world, there seemed no more appropriate a time for a follow-up essay, this time on the use of children as secondary characters in romance fiction. In our dalliance with the Cherish imprint and the recent regrettable interlude with Medical™ we have met two supposedly adorable children. In The Dad Next Door the daughter was a shy, vulnerable eight-year-old desperately mourning the death of her twin sister and seeking a replacement mother having not been adorable enough for her real one. In the aforementioned Kate Hardy novel, little Perdy was a shy, vulnerable eight-year-old cautiously mourning the death of her birth mother, and seeking a surrogate in the woman her father just happened to be sleeping with. Therefore, without even having to read the helpful e-book, are all children eight-year-old girls with severe separation anxiety brought about by a family death causing a deep, endearing look of emptiness in their eyes?

For unnecessary additional insight we turn to Harlequin editor Anna Boatman, who opens with a charming, illustrative story. 'After spending a recent train journey listening to the hysterical screams of a vocally powerful and worryingly eloquent toddler, I stumbled off the train with my ear-drums still shuddering, vowing fervently to remain child-free for the rest of my life.' She already sounds like Bewildered Heart's kind of editor, but please, continue. 'Yet only the next day, I came across an adorable child who totally changed my mind. The catch? This one was fictional!' Imaginary kids are vastly superior to crying babies on trains, as the saying goes, but perhaps Anna Boatman will resolve her opening paragraph with a conclusion to avoid the obvious inference that she is the one no one wants to sit next to on a train. 'It got me thinking about the children who populate our books - they can change the whole feeling of a story, for better or worse, and something that can present a challenge to a wannabe writer is dealing with a child in their romance story – as we all know, children don’t always do what they’re told!' Judging by the output of her publishing house this is a problem not merely plaguing aspiring authors, but all novelists powerless to stop the fancies of the characters they have created.

First and foremost, there is the natural issue of why a writer would even bother to involve redundant secondary characters in their romance. After all, they are telling the story of a couple meeting, falling in love and then sabotaging their own happiness through the inability to behave as normal adults. This is the scenario romance fans consistently pay for, despite all rational reason, so a child not only confuses matters, but also requires enough back-story to kill the forward momentum of a narrative. 'Babies are a classic theme to help bring couples together and they are a reader favourite – there’s something about a tall, powerful hero protecting a tiny baby that tends to resonate for almost everyone.' As long as your hero is taller than the baby you cannot fail, and at Bewildered Heart we have witnessed this subject matter previously. The machinations of the thriller aspect in MacKenzie's Promise utilised and then practically forgot a baby, while Hired by the Cowboy pushed a foetus to the forefront of the drama, in order to explore actual themes such as family, home and belonging in a superficial, tedious manner. The desires of romance readership have been scientifically-proven to hold procreation as humanity's ultimate objective, therefore most books end in pregnancy, the final pages closing the curtain on a shared life before it becomes icky and hormonal.

Anna Boatman, writing under the far more believable-sounding name of Elise Windmill, has some tips to guide you towards the goal of an idealised child, rather than a realistic child, because those are not as commercial. 'The romance should still be driving the story, not the children – no matter how demanding they are. Having too much page time spent dealing with babies or children around can distract from the intensity of the relationship.' Boatman goes onto suggest that the welfare of the little ones should not be the only conflict facing your hero and heroine. Say your single father has no time for romance or euphemisms for body parts, he needs to concentrate on his shy, vulnerable daughter, while also managing his pharmaceutical empire and retaining his muscular physique without ever doing any exercise. When he blackmails a small business owner into becoming his part-time mistress to pay for her younger brother's plastic surgery  there must be more stopping this couple's eternal love than the ephemeral needs of cute, little Emily Rodriguez. For example, her brother's injuries could have resulted from using one of Buck's company's products. That is powerful conflict. Now there is nothing to stop that novel from being written, besides some legal fact-checking.

Next, 'Warning: sickly-sweet children may cause nausea… Sadly, outside the world of fantasy, children aren’t perfect – and we love them for it! A child without a spark of naughtiness is, let’s be honest, a dull child. In the same way as heroes and heroines need flaws to feel real, a perfectly good child is too good to be true.' However, having an eight-year-old's hair go frizzy when it is sunny outside will not suffice. An author would be expected to embed the child's neuroses and bad behaviour into the narrative, drawing from a presumably tragic history. Somewhere along the line they lost their mother or father and now have to spend every waking moment with their emotionally-stunted single parent. The suggestion of humanising characters may sound like writing hints for idiots, but this piece of wisdom requires clarification. Anna has already taught us to focus attention on the central romantic concept, so the author is best served bearing that in mind when giving their invented child a well-rounded personality that fails to serve anything other than as proof they were paying attention during writing school.

Before we have learned anything Anna Boatman has moved onto her final point. 'Put your children to work! How can these little secondary characters help to move the romance forward? Shared responsibility for a child can be a great way to bring couples together, while they’re also a way for the reader to see another side to a character.' Exactly, there is no sense in having a child character unless they are the focal point of the drama because the child will always be the focal point of their parent’s life. As evidence we turn to Romantics Anonymous, the Clinton-era tale of denial, middle class solvency and parenting ineptitude. Lauryn Chandler puts the teenage daughter to such compelling dramatic use she skimps entirely on plausibility. Firstly, Beth runs away from home to bring the divorced hero and heroine together and then blackmails them to spend a Christmas as a reconciled family by threatening to indulge in drugs, alcohol and drug and alcohol-fuelled under-age pregnancy. Once Cynthia arrives dishevelled on Lane's doorstep, frantic and fearing kidnap the motions for rekindled love have been oiled and Chandler is able to carefully write Beth from the plot, bringing her back occasionally for maudlin displays of affection. While Romantics Anonymous has glimpses of story-telling competence, the handling of offspring as a secondary character matters less because Beth is older, independent and supposedly well-adjusted. Equally a baby is representative of its causes and the uncertainties of the future. A shy, vulnerable eight-year-old demolished by grief becomes a novel in itself, not a conceit for love and euphemisms for body parts. To even suggest such a thing is perverse and deeply offensive.

“She heard him rip the packet, then the unmistakeable sound of the condom being rolled on”

With the opening three chapters of Neurosurgeon... and Mum! proving an arduous struggle hopes for the remaining eleven were cautiously pessimistic. When an operation on her best friend's husband is a calamitous mistake brain doctor Amy Rivers heads to Norfolk on sabbatical, only to end up sharing her aunt and uncle's house with visiting GP Tom Ashby and his eight year old daughter. Tom lost his wife to death only a year earlier and he has seen Perdy disappear further into a shell made of self-doubt and whimsy. Perhaps, somehow, love can blossom in these difficult times and Amy can find the family she always wanted. Meanwhile, we should expect that she and Tom will practise a little medicine, for this is a Medical™ and the readers demand excitement and descriptions of bladder infections in amongst their usual concoction of tiresome emotional reiteration, euphemistic sex scenes and parades of family togetherness with child and dog followed by a hefty chunk of emotional reiteration.

Tom knows he should not enter into a relationship with Amy, not because she isn't beautiful, on the contrary she is stunning, and not because she is fat, on the contrary if anything she is underweight, but because she is mentally troubled, she will soon return to London and foremost, he must put the needs of Perdy first. Amy knows she should not enter into a relationship with Tom, not because he isn't handsome, on the contrary he is very handsome, and not because he doesn't make a lot of money, on the contrary he does all right, but because he is a mourning widow and father who must put the needs of his daughter first, not to mention that she, Amy, is a complete mess of a woman who will soon be returning to London. Of course, no amount of determination can stop Amy and Tom from being together, because they are soul-colleagues, and sure enough, within a couple of chapters they have kissed in the kitchen and made love in the bathroom area. Wanting neither a short-term fling nor a permanent relationship with genuine commitment, they instead agree to a short-term relationship hidden from locals and Perdy, but involving sex, spiritual connection and a commitment ambiguous enough to placate the needs of a lonely, unemployed woman desperate for a family and a grief-stricken single father desperate for love.

While Perdy has taken to Norfolk as any well-adjusted, healthy person takes to Norfolk her father and surrogate mother sense turmoil and shyness within her. What about school work and school friends? Should this girl really be spending all of her time with Amy and Buster the Dog, rather than kids her own age, doing normal things kids do, such as running around screaming? Why won't she speak about her deceased mother and why does she take such an interest in cooking, cleaning and other womanly things? Isn't all this time she could be playing outside or sleeping outside seriously cutting into the time Amy and Tom could be using for sex? To help, the potential couple take his daughter out on day-trips, to pick strawberries to turn into ice cream, and to see the seals, to possibly bake into a pie. However, every adventure is strewn with complications, as members of the public occasionally appear to ask awkward questions, assuming Amy to be Perdy's mother or Amy to be Tom's wife, and, in an extreme case, one noisy youngster collapses after an allergic reaction to a wasp sting.

Throughout the latter stages of Neurosurgeon... and Mum!, author Kate Hardy takes the opportunity to explore Amy's second career as a neurosurgeon. Sequences such as the wasp incident are followed by numerous other, less action-packed scenes, where Amy shows off her knowledge of the nervous system, and Hardy eats up the word count by copy and pasting from her medical dictionary. First there is poor Mrs. Cooper, who has a great deal of pain in her jaw, possibly from yawning incessantly whilst reading Mills & Boon novels. Doctor Ashby is merely a general practitioner and his comprehensive understanding of health does not stretch to the intricacies of neurology. But hey, says Tom, the woman I'm sleeping with might be able to help and, over a strategic glass of decent wine, he invites Amy to speak perceptively on gamma knives and other mystical instruments, thus calming Mrs. Cooper's worst fears, revitalising Amy's passion for patients and science, and allowing Hardy to bulk out a flagging second act.

Soon Amy is lecturing locals on the wonders of pain and the cutting edge advancements in the fight against ageing appropriately. Her vigour returns, as does her radiate smile and she even eats enough of Perdy's pudding to return to a salubrious weight. Things are going so swimmingly, in fact, that Hardy allows the reader to indulge in a second sex scene. With chapters dwindling, however, there is still the small matter of the plot to sort out. Thankfully, Amy's former best friend calls out of the blue to apologise and admit that Amy's handling of the operation that destroyed her life and career was actually a roaring success. Ben can move his hands and masculine areas, and although he will never walk again he can have a life and Laura can have children the natural way. Amy, did you hear, the concept of the novel was based upon a fallacy and the reasons to doubt and cast yourself into isolation never existed. Laura and Ben are fine, everyone can become friends again, and why, Kate Hardy, why can't Ben ever walk again? This is a book of fiction, and Ben isn't real, but still you take away the feeling in his legs just like you take away any remaining feelings of joy in the reader.

As for Mrs. Cooper, Max Barton and the rest of Tom's patients none see their subplots through to completion, as instead Amy gets her dream job forty minutes down the road, Tom finds a permanent place in Joe's practise, peripheral figures of little importance stop being unreasonable for reasons that are not explained, Perdy betrays her age with a series of statements that belie even her claims at being a realistic human and Tom and Amy are married at the local church, watched on by all, who have returned from wherever they were for a painfully elongated final chapter. What about old Doctor Joe's casebooks that Amy was transcribing for the majority of the story? Well remembered, but that plot-point is entirely abandoned by the author, as her heroine already has everything she ever wanted, except the love of her clearly quite discerning parents. There we leave the small world of Amy Rivers and Tom Ashby, little Perdy and their new puppy, Buster Two, safe in the knowledge their family will be strong, loving and constantly baking. We assume the assortment of secondary characters will sort themselves out and even if they don't they were never significant anyhow.

Neurosurgeon... and Mum! certainly delivers on both love and medicine. First, at its gooey centre, is a Cherish Romance, where a put-upon loner and a single parent find strength through the other's encouragement and warm eyes. There is no sense of conflict between the pair, no obstacle to overcome, only the need for time to heal wounds and allow affection to grow. With two characters unsure of their futures Hardy proved herself unable to conjure the most minor of difficulties, and quickly resolved to watching her couple fall in love, always knowing there were diseases and injuries to distract the reader from noticing the complete lack of narrative twists. Anyone with the merest experience of living will be able to relate to a good Medical™ as it brings together two favourite conversational topics, gossip and health. Naturally, from a technical standpoint the book is unreadable drivel because of its anaemic plotting, weak characterisation, interminable dialogue and a sloppy prose style. Nevertheless, the demands of the subgenre could be found responsible for this. Hardy places emphasis on Amy's rehabilitation where she regains her self-confidence from Tom's support. This works in regards to Mrs. Cooper, who has two thankless scenes of listening to surgical jargon, but Hardy quickly hedges her bets by introducing numerous other ailments and old people. This creates a series of disparate elements, as while Tom treats patients his career has little to do with his emotional growth as a lover and a father. Perdy's development was thoughtlessly arrested to the point where the book would have been better off without her, but this flaw was consistent with all of Neurosurgeon... and Mum! to the point where it did not need to be told.