“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.

“Just stop blaming her for getting that tropical fever and dying”

During the last entry on this very weblog we decided to learn more about the Harlequin Medical™ subgenre, and having found the Mills & Boon website's description predictably unhelpful, we chose as a random example the 2010 effort Neurosurgeon... and Mum!. Throughout her typically prolific career, author Kate Hardy has switched between Medical™ and Modern Heat, allowing herself to indulge in sizzling romances with and without doctors in them. However, the reader can tell no such raunchy antics will take place within the pages of Neurosurgeon.... and Mum! because her hero and heroine are damaged people going through the various stages of grief, there is a child involved and the story takes place in Norfolk, England, where the only sexy things to happen are most likely illegal everywhere else. Sorry, Norfolk.

Amy Rivers has had a tough few years, although the details have yet to be fully revealed because the writer will need something to flesh out those nagging central one hundred pages. Firstly, her distant, academic parents moved to the United States, and secondly she fell in love with a single dad and became surrogate mother to his kid, only for he to reconcile with his ex-wife and take Amy's new family with him. Furthermore, while doing some neurosurgery she made a catalogue of errors on her best friend's husband of a patient, destroying at least two relationships in the process. As a result, and at the behest of her clearly Irish supervisor, Fergus Keating, she has decided to take a sabbatical away from London and go where, only to her beloved Aunt and Uncle's house in Norfolk, where she spent many a happy childhood experience. Naturally for Amy things go awry, as Cassie and Joe are off to Australia to see their real daughter, who is pregnant and therefore more successful than Amy. Despite this minor setback Amy heads north regardless, to stay at the house with a visiting village doctor, who has also taken time away from the big city to deal with tragedy.

For the charming, decent Tom Ashby the last few years have been tough. Now his distant, academic wife has perished from the obvious dangers of being a doctor without any life-saving borders, Tom has taken his infant daughter Perdita (Perdy to her father. Hi, Perdy!) to a small village in Norfolk, for mawkish befuddlement and bonding. While Perdy remains withdrawn and in a constant state of mild terror, Tom enjoys the rural pace of the countryside, and he and Perdy seem to get along with the Rivers' potentially important dog, Buster. While Joe had warned Tom about his new house-guest Doc Tom had not expected to find her so instantly beguiling, even though that is the sort of thing that happens in romance novels. Equally, Amy's attraction is only tempered by the assumption that Perdy is Tom's wife, not his daughter. Once they are introduced, however, she reacts poorly and serves to under-mine the child's already shattered self-confidence. Still, after what happened with her previous relationship she is reluctant to become involved with a single dad, even though this one is at least a widow and therefore without external plot devices.

Neurosurgeon...and Mum! has all the hallmarks of Cherish, the imprint perhaps known better as Tender, Special Moments or Romance. Unlike the straight-forward Modern, or Modern Heat, here Hardy can avoid the foreseeable narrative techniques employed by her colleagues in other subgenres. Tom Ashby is no standard alpha male. He is sensitive, he has a troubled daughter, he wears thick-rimmed glasses, he spends his days tending to the disgusting ailments of the elderly and he may have murdered his previous wife. Meanwhile, Amy Rivers is no catch either. She is under-skilled at her work, has not been eating properly and has a boyish haircut, which only serves to emphasise her fine bone structure. Neither character has any problems marriage could not fix, and their emotional turmoil does not seem to have stemmed from their own failings. It is not Tom's fault his wife died, we can only presume, and Perdy is merely going through a phase all children go through when they are uprooted unexpectedly to Norfolk shortly after their mother passed away. On the other hand, Amy cannot be held accountable for her mistakes during Ben's operation, because neuroscience is complicated and she is only a woman with love to give but no one to give it to. Saying any different would be misogynistic.

While Amy and Tom seem to enjoy brief conversations of vague biographical insights and silent disapproval of leapt-to conclusions their shared, uncomfortable silences and mistreatment of Perdy must come to an end. At first Amy disappears upstairs to busy herself with her great-grandfather's medical casebooks, but eventually she joins Tom and his daughter for a series of dinners and before she can realise she is becoming sentimentally-involved with a temporary surrogate family she has offered to babysit Perdy while Tom conducts his business of being a doctor. After a flippantly undertaken background check father is convinced to allow this apparently psychologically-fragile stranger to take his child to an isolated field to pick strawberries. There the third chapter ends and Hardy has either set her protagonists up for a gratifying romance or a sinister race-against-time thriller, perhaps starring a young Rebecca De Mornay. Canny readers will have already guessed the former, however, based on the novel's title and the fact it has been published by Mills & Boon. Well done to you, canny readers.

For Medical fans surprised at the lack of frenetically-paced action and emotional intensity promised by the Harlequin promotional material, Hardy has at least managed to offer a scene where the kind doctor calmly breaks the news that Max Barton's tiredness, plaster-wearing and ongoing night urination can be explained by type two diabetes, which can be controlled through diet and exercise. Max is relieved that it is nothing more serious and medicine followers will delight in reading a superficial description of the inability to utilise glucose in the modern, middle-aged male. In an earlier chapter Doctor Ashby saw an old lady with an ulcer above her ankle, a sequence to make you cry out for the gripping dilemmas and high-octane excitement of Grey's Anatomy. As a resident of coastal Norfolk, Hardy's choice of East England village may have spoken to her own interests, but so far there is little sign of emergency and a controversial use of a stethoscope. In fact, we have nothing more to look forward to than The Dad Next Door with a series of narratively distracting health scenes.

At this early stage the appeal of Medical™ remains a mystery. When Mills & Boon began this enterprise their stories focused on the entirely out-dated set-up of male doctor and female nurse. Nowadays such a sexist scenario would not be consistently tolerated, even by romance readers, but the chance of a powerful female doctor meeting an enamoured male nurse would seem at odds with the publisher's mantra. Unless Hardy is able to weave in a satisfying medical subplot her novel will be marred by clumsy cutaways of Tom being nice to old people, for the benefit of the reader and the infirm, but not helpful in furthering the central concept concerning Amy, Perdy and a happy ending.

Possibly because of the subgenre's strategic attempt to exist in a politically-correct age both Amy and Tom are doctors, but the heroine's career has stalled to allow a plot to accelerate. As female fantasy goes, Neurosurgeon... and Mom! lacks the fairytale aspect of an arrogant, yet brilliant, doctor hero who is skilled with his hands, but not with his heart. Hardy instead settles for heart-warming simplicity using Tom's profession as a diversion. It is difficult to believe fans merely want their regular romances with some unnecessary pages of technical jargon involving bladder infections. Nevertheless, while Tom worries about his daughter, finds his new house-mate attractive while knowing he cannot enter into a relationship with her and mourns his late wife he still finds the time to fret over Mrs Poole not drinking enough tea. How many billionaire tycoons masquerading as bell-hops at a supposedly haunted Colonial hotel would do that? All of them? Still, this is an entirely different genre from the ones where billionaires masquerade as bell-hops at supposedly haunted Colonial hotels. For those, try The Secret Billionaire's Chambermaid Bride, published under any of the other Harlequin imprints, unless either the billionaire or the chambermaid is also somehow a doctor.

“Her mouth opened and shut like a fish in a bowl"

During Bewildered Heart's endless pursuit to cover the multiple categorisations of those capable of falling in love, so far we have merely skimmed the surface of romance, having only touched upon the modern, the tender, the romantic, the desirable, the twos-in-ones and the possibly flammable. What about the rest, such as the historical, the mysterious, the paranormal, the teenage, the thrilling and the Spanish? We've read Romance Romance, but how about Superromance, because that's a thing. There's Love Inspired Suspense, there's Heart & Home and we remain unable to satisfy our curiosity into Harlequin NASCAR. Isn't it heart-warming to know that this unprofitable weblog could run indefinitely? Well, continuing on this endeavour, while attempting to ignore the wider implications, it is time for a closer examination of one of Mills & Boon's most popular series, Medical. This subgenre is exactly like any of the others, except it features characters who work in medicine, and targets those doctors, nurses and surgeons still reading at a primary school level.

First, allow RomanceWiki to elaborate with some historical background. 'Mills & Boon began publishing paperback medical romances in series under the Doctor Nurse Romance imprint in 1977, reusing a name from the 1950s. In August 1989 the imprint's name changed to Medical Romance and in October 1993 to Love on Call. The name of Medical Romance was adopted again in 1996 and since June 2007 the imprint is called simply Medical™.' From those many options Medical™ is certainly the most snappy and least sexist, suggesting someone at the publishing house is making the right decisions while still putting in the least amount of effort. Naturally, fans of romance are drawn to this subgenre for the green covers and suggestive titles such as The Children's Doctor's Special Proposal, Even Doctors Weep, Prince Charming of Harley Street, and A Surgeon Called Amanda. The appeal of Medical™ lies in the heroic profession of noble, caring individuals who save lives and treat sick kids, not for the money, because they are also billionaire sheikhs, but for the love of helping people and making special proposals to children.

Say you, gentle reader, were looking to turn your back on a lucrative career in medicine for the far less lucrative career of romance writing, or, say, you have a sexual fetish involving ambulances, stethoscopes and the uniforms, what is expected from aspiring authors in the Medical imprint, and what should fans hope for when opening, for example, Neurosurgeon... And Mum! by Kate Hardy? 'Do you adore handsome, big-hearted doctors? Or perhaps it's devilishly alluring maverick docs that set your heart racing?' What would the maverick doctor prescribe for an elevated heart rate? Surely not the same thing as his pragmatic, by-the-book nurse who also happens to be his ex-wife. Uh oh, Doctor Rodriguez, your handsome big heart may have saved all those children with its unorthodox use of a defibrillator, but it can no longer go it alone when the woman you have never stopped loving has returned from her independently-run clinic in Africa, and who's this, the son you never knew you had, and why is he coughing like that?

'Do you love reading about strong heroines who juggle saving lives with finding the men of their dreams?' There's nothing that exudes strength more than complex multi-tasking, but perhaps women in the medical business would have more time for themselves if they limited their objective to just the one man of their dreams. 'Would you like to write stories that deliver the same high-octane excitement, intense emotion and sizzling passion as the latest boxset of Grey's Anatomy, ER, House, etc?' No television show speaks of scorching lust quite like House MD, but the Mills & Boon promotional material is wise to mention such popular contemporary programmes that presumably remain on the air. There appears to be a direct comparison between Harlequin novels and the sentimental romance of Grey's Anatomy, with its female protagonists and their hunky love interests, skilfully playing into the audience's passion for soap opera story-lines, fast-paced action and unrealistically good-looking men in blue T-shirts.

So, what are the key ingredients necessary to see you published, and is the medical element a superficial gloss, meaning a writer could take their Modern Romance novel involving a property tycoon and a florist, change their careers and have their very own Medical™ without having to bother with any of that tiresome research? 'Medical Romance is first and foremost about thrilling romance. Readers revel in falling for top-notch docs and hot-shot surgeons from around the world, experiencing love and life in the shoes of smart, caring and beautiful medical heroines!' The implication is that yes, the medical inserted before heroine is an adjective easily inter-changeable with numerous others, and docs and surgeons could simply be replaced by millionaires, pirates, princes or werewolves. Come on, Mills & Boon, where's the however to prove some thought has gone into this? 'However, pulse-raising medical drama that throws our heroes and heroines together is crucial—it's this double dose of emotion that will ensure your book is un-putdownable! The challenges of finding love should be played out in a contemporary, globally accessible medical setting—appeal for the widest audience is key.'

Thank you, these are the crucial differences that mark the Medical series as unique. Instead of a plot-point that throws hero and heroine together, there must be a medical plot-point that causes the story to begin. It is this deviation from the standard archetypal scenario that will ensure your publisher will misuse the word double for the sake of a pun. Furthermore, part of this subgenre's success is surely in its niche market. To reach the widest possible readership an author is well-advised to make their novel less job-orientated and publish under the broader scopes of Modern, Special Moments or Spice. After all, 'Our stories can be intensely passionate, sexy and sassy, or warm and tender; but we're ultimately looking for a range of emotionally intense reads.' In other words, there are no set guidelines in regards to sexual content, the only issue separating those less well-defined categories. Medical therefore ranges from tender romances with high emotional stakes, thus containing children, to explicit romps with high emotional stakes, where thermometers aren't the only things being placed under the tongue.

As the promotional fluff informs those who continue to read on in the unrealistic hopes of learning something, the publishers expect, 'Big reads in small books.' While the big is as arbitrary a definition as all the others have been, the small has at least been set at fifty thousand words, typical of practically every other Harlequin series. Readers can only conclude that this subgenre has been needlessly classified, putting it into the same grouping as NASCAR and Teen as separated solely on the grounds of the occupation within. Nevertheless, in a somewhat surprising move from Mills & Boon, they end their piece with the following statements, all of which should probably be dismissed as fanciful. 'From innovative emotional concepts that are developed in unique, unpredictable ways to experimentation with format and structure, innovation is encouraged. Synergies with contemporary medical TV drama are also always welcome.' Synergy? Look at you, Harlequin Mills & Boon, reinterpreting your business model in accordance to the fluctuating fortunes of modern companies.

Despite the contradictory nature of the publishers seeking innovation and cross-over intermedia in the light of everything we have learned about them over the years, this can only be tremendous news for those authors with a ground-breaking romance set in a medical environment who have abandoned hope of seeing their work printed by a legitimate establishment. For those Bewildered Hearts who had thought all that erotic Scrubs fan fiction would have to rot in a desk drawer where it belongs, rejoice! Mills & Boon might be searching for such a story, it isn't exactly clear what they are after. For now, the vagueness of their demands have left us with no choice but to do what they were hoping we would do, and that's read Neurosurgeon... and Mum! because who could resist such a title? Furthermore, there's an adorable child on the front cover and the promise of both romance and medicine in the blurb. Can a disgraced doctor from London and a single father doctor from London find love when forced to live together in Norfolk? Yes. Will they have lots of conversations about what it's like to be a doctor? For that we must read on...