“She'd hated him for being what he was – obscenely rich, stunningly handsome and sinfully sexy”

In The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress the billionaire and housekeeper elements of the title had been established within the first three chapters. For the more enticing mistress development, however, one had to read on and those who did decide to continue after the disappointment of the first three chapters would have found a lot more than merely the classic housekeeper becoming mistress to billionaire routine. There was a world of intrigue and character-development hidden beneath that idiotic title and incorrect blurb. But how can an author stretch a character being belligerently dumb for twelve chapters without inducing despair and book-destroying rage in their reader? In the case of Emma Darcy, author of The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress, the answer is she couldn't.

Daisy Donohue was fired from her job as personal assistant to some mean-spirited dame thanks to the abhorrent behaviour of ruthless billionaire Ethan Cartwright. Shrill exasperated cry! If Daisy wasn't angry and infatuated enough with him already! As an apology for losing her the job Ethan offers her new work under him as supervisor of his plush mansion's renovation. Daisy needs money to pay off her parents' debts and is grateful for the newfound employment. However, a troubling downside to working with Ethan Cartwright is the effect he has on her. He's gorgeous, kind, a good cook and a lover of board games. He also enjoys walking around in revealing robes and smelling nice.

For the destitute Daisy he is everything she wants in a man, but how can a poor wretch such as her be the dream woman for a hunk of manly loveliness like Ethan? She cannot, she constantly reminds herself despite all evidence to the contrary. Therefore she must bury her desire deep, along with her heart and logic. Ethan, on the other hand, cannot take his eyes from Daisy. She is perfect. She's sexy, but without knowing it, and feisty, fun, smart and emotionally-retarded, although she seems aware of these. If only Ethan can prove that he wants to have sex with her. Perhaps he can tell her, straightforward and matter of fact, shortly after having sex with her?

He does, but Daisy is too enamoured by Ethan and the sex to listen properly and runs away, fearing that their obvious physical connection and declarations of love might ruin any chances they have for a relationship. Fearing losing her to a bottomless pit of stupidity, Ethan lays his cards on the table and delivers a crushing ultimatum. He offers to help Daisy's family with their financial troubles, but in exchange she must consent to become his lover. To Daisy it's akin to prostitution, but fortunately her family is desperate for the income and she is in love with Ethan and is desperate to keep him in her life for sex and companionship. What a dilemma! Thankfully for the novel she agrees to Ethan's demands. Everyone wins and absolutely no drama is guaranteed.

Ethan Cartwright's ruthless billionaire ruthlessly exploits Daisy as they wait to see if his stock market genius will have the desired effect on the Donohue portfolio. With the work on his home completed he wrangles Daisy a new job in PR, because there's only a letter between PA and PR so how different can those careers be? Fortunately nothing, as it turns out Daisy can do whatever she puts her mind to, besides accepting reality, and she takes to her new job like a Mills & Boon reader takes to alcohol.

Ethan solves the debt by investing the Donohue's money (First the reader had heard of them having any money, by the way. If they had money to invest how come they were facing bankruptcy. Oh, you know what, when you consider the plot up until this point the sudden appearance of family funds is a minor contrivance) in a small company about to hit it big (Still, though. Daisy mentions her parent's business portfolio so we can assume there was money there and Ethan merely reinvests this money in better companies, but didn't stocks plummet leaving no money at all? Does that seem odd to anyone else? Is this what happens when you stop reading newspapers? You start to become confused by Harlequin stories? Oh, you know what, it probably isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Daisy questions everything and look where that gets her, a life of luxury and adoration with her ideal man), solving all the family's financial problems and setting the parents up with a fortune.

Ethan's promise fulfilled he returns to Daisy ready to enjoy his personal winnings. Daisy is only too eager to oblige because she is in love with Ethan and he with her. If only their mutual happiness and strength of their emotional and physical bond could somehow be turned into mutual happiness and a strong emotional and physical bond. Ye gods, why do thee forsake Daisy so? She's done nothing to deserve this kind of mistreatment? Is she unable to enjoy more than she could have ever hoped to have even though she already has it because she's cursed by the gods or because she is emotionally-retarded? We shouldn't be surprised to learn that the titular housekeeper mistress of The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress is an easily manipulated moron, but you may be surprised to find out that Ethan only sees her emotional-retardation as adorable and does everything in his power to convince her he is in love with her, besides telling her the truth.

While it appears jarring to use blackmail in your bland romance novel Emma Darcy carefully sidesteps such issues by weakening the implication to the point of insignificance. The fear of upsetting the dreamy perfection of the hero means Darcy writes herself into a typical Mills & Boon cul-de-sac. Sure, it's a lovely cul-de-sac, the houses are huge and the people are white, and their kids play on the street in the sunshine and everyone is forever in love, but it's a cul-de-sac nonetheless. Ethan Cartwright may force Daisy to do something, but it's nothing sinister or against her wishes. Imagine if the movie Saw had the villain capturing people and making them eat as much chocolate cake as they want while screening The Princess Bride and giving them money? Yes, that is a film you could take your mother to, but it lacks the stakes and tension one needs to find stories compelling and worthwhile.

True credible love would be an unlikely result of blackmailing someone into bed, no matter how charming and handsome the blackmailer or foolhardy the victim. There is no hint of excitement in the plot and the central tension is non-existent. There aren't even contrived twists, despite Darcy's intention to contrive twists. 'She was all his... Until the telephone rang,' she writes, suggesting the new chapter will introduce an obstacle for the couple to overcome. The reader nervously turns the page, awaiting the stumbling block that will force the giddy couple apart for a few sentences. However, she throws nothing that Daisy and Ethan cannot dodge with their charm, good-looks and stupidity. The book becomes maddening even by Mills & Boon standards, and this is a publisher notorious for disliking any attempt, however fleeting, to disrupt the romance and tame descriptions of intercourse.

By the end of The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress, Ethan has finally proven to Daisy that he can be the man of her dreams and she has proven to herself she can be the wife of a billionaire. He proposes marriage and she is convinced that their relationship has a future and the whole scheme to buy her body was merely a charming proclamation of his infatuation and misogyny. He didn't just want to have sex and spend time with her for the foreseeable future, he really wanted marriage. One hundred and eighty-seven pages later and we can go back to sleep safe in the knowledge that this couple have overcome their comforts and will enjoy a lifetime of comfort. A happy ending where the happiness is a result of the story actually ending.

Modern Romance is an odd term for this subgenre. Perhaps the Mills & Boon decision-makers picked a word randomly from a hat. The name suggests this is the alternative to Historical in the same manner as Blaze! is the raunchy alternative to Tender. Throughout the history of romance fiction the books have always been modern, set in the time of their writing that is, yet still old-fashioned in their handling of character, theme and subject. With the steely blue cover comes cityscapes, suggesting the stories will deal with the rich, powerful and urban-dwelling, yet these are archetypes of the entire genre. The moniker ends up being no more than a heavy-handed attempt by the publishing house to claim their titles have joined everyone else in the twenty-first century and all the things people do in whatever year this is, but their authors consistently betray them.

Of The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress what part of the title implies today? Gorgeous ruthless billionaires gallivanting through the glamorous horse-racing season seems more out of touch than ever, if there was a time when such a thing could be considered contemporary. Modern is defined by its lack of flavour, the plain control, while the other subgenres deviate from the set-up with subtle changes to the period, location, worldliness and amount of explicit sexual content. So within Modern there is this peculiar ruthless billionaire beguiling virgin standard exploring the love that cannot exist between the two, but the love that grows through exploitation, wilful disobedience, enforced submission and marriage as punishment usually set to the backdrop of obscene abundance. Call Bewildered Heart old-fashioned but that doesn't sound like a world we live in or want to read anymore about.

“He wanted to drag her into an embrace and kiss her until all her resistance melted”

The recent insights into the lack of importance of location in bad romance literature left us eagerly eyeing the kinds of appalling titles Mills & Boon remains notorious for. Cold and calculating billionaires ruthlessly blackmailing subservient virgins into their billionaire beds for passionate payments of a different kind, with italics added in all the right places. Bewildered Heart's attempts at examining the Romance market have so far over-looked this most popular subgenre, and we have not yet had the chance to read a novel with a ridiculous title and openly sexist blurb, if you ignore The Playboy at Pengarroth Hall and One Night with the Rebel Billionaire, both of which had deeply misleading titles.

We wanted something obviously dramatic and clearly involving enforced sex as blackmail recompense, because sometimes Bewildered Heart drinks. How about titles such as Ruthless Billionaire, Forbidden Baby, or Ruthlessly Bedded by the Italian Billionaire (Ruthless!), or Bought For Revenge, Bedded For Pleasure, or The Billionaire's Captive Bride, or The Playboy Boss's Chosen Bride? Not only are those all real titles, but they were all authored by Emma Darcy, Romance Writer, and her latest is The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress. Would the apparent implication of cleaning and light dusting detract from the more compelling narrative issues of extravagant wealth and rape? Well, there was only one way to find out and that way was the most unappetizing, for it involved sheepishly heading into a library and then sheepishly reading The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress. Now the customarily opinion-forming three chapters in allow us to ruin the opening three chapters for you, gentle reader.

Our heroine is Daisy Donohue, the plain-looking, drab PA to PR queen Lynda Twiggley. Despite being plain-looking and drab Daisy is spectacularly beautiful, with big brown eyes, full feminine breasts, pert bottom, silky brown hair and flawless skin with a peaches and cream vivacity. Our hero is the ruthless billionaire Ethan Cartwright, him with the thick black hair, emerald green eyes, sexy physique, masculine face and Brad Pitt eyebrows. Financier and Australian version of Wall Street whiz-kid Ethan foresaw the economic downturn that is all the rage right now and saved his many clients from bankruptcy. He has billions of Australian dollars to ruthlessly lavish on whatever he pleases and hangs out with his good friend named Mickey Bourke. Meanwhile, poor Daisy- Sorry. Mickey Bourke? Really? That's the name for the social-climbing horse-racing expert best friend? Let's pretend that's not a thing, shall we?

Daisy's parents lost everything in the recession and Daisy must keep her soul-destroying job working for a tyrannical monster to pay the bills so her parents don't lose their house. High stakes and possible character motivation! Eep! With so many people unable to make ends meet Daisy can't stand seeing wealthy people indulging their gluttonous lifestyles. If only her career didn't involve indulging the gluttonous lifestyles of wealthy people. Ethan has a new racehorse racing at the first racing event of the new racing season, a gala Lynda Twiggley is organising. Twiggley is hoping Ethan will work his magic on her business portfolio, but all that interests Ethan is Twiggley's assistant. Daisy is nothing like all the Victoria's Secret lingerie models in the big tent. No, Ethan is tired of such photoshopped beauties and ruthlessly yearns for something more substantial, a real conversation with a woman who seems to obviously despise him and everything he represents. It's all about the chase, right, fellas? That's the trouble with Victoria's Secret models, too attainable.

Ethan had a disastrous engagement to a socialite named Serena, and ruthlessly broke it off when he heard her proudly mentioning to a friend that she was engaged. Ugh, he thought, perhaps idiotically. He doesn't want a woman who loves him and loves being married to him. He wants that girl, the one staring at him with eyes of seething fury and he will ruthlessly stop at nothing to get her, because he is a ruthless billionaire who always gets who and what he wants, often without any sign of ruth. During a quiet spell in the racing festivities Ethan grabs hold of Daisy's arm and refuses to let go until she has confessed why she hates him so much. Their intimate moment of barely concealed resentment is interrupted, however, by Lynda, who wants Ethan all for herself. Ethan interjects, upset at how cruelly Daisy is being treated. Lynda is upset at being revealed as a tyrannical monster and Daisy doesn't stand up for herself, because Ethan is so gorgeous. No sooner have we realised that this is a heavy-handed and poorly-written plot contrivance has Lynda fired Daisy for breach of their confidentiality agreement and Daisy has fainted, because she's a fragile, tiny woman.

Ethan is stunned, but astutely uses Daisy's unconsciousness to sate his manly, ruthless desires. Before he can store her in the boot of his limousine, however, she stirs awake to the dispiriting epiphany that she has been rendered unemployed in a hopeless job market, her parents face foreclosure on their house and the mightily attractive billionaire Ethan Cartwright is responsible and still has her hat. Such dire circumstances call for desperate measures, but before Daisy need act Ethan steps in, offering her a job in one of his new houses in Sydney's wealthiest suburb, Hunters Hill, running the renovating efforts under the dolled-up title of Executive Housekeeper. Whoo! Suddenly the Mills & Boon creative team's choice of title makes perfect sense, and we know the mistress part will work out because we already assume these two are going to have a lot of sex and relationship-name-based misunderstandings. That brings to a close the end of Chapter Three and the adventure is afoot. Can two people who find each other sexually attractive and have nothing stopping them from falling in love fall in love? It seems unlikely at this point, especially considering Ethan's attitude of fiscal conservatism and Daisy's destitution. Still, one man is rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams, but has no innocent, demure woman to ruthlessly force into his bed, and one innocent, demure woman really needs money. With that set-up there is a chance for a form of romance so long as while Ethan is conservative on the matter of economics he is a little more liberal on the subject of prostitution.

Emma Darcy's Modern Romance is pointed in remarking how unlike a sheikh Ethan is. He is closer, Daisy notes, to a feudal lord. Ethan wants to be a feudal lord where Daisy is concerned, but this is not the Dark Ages, despite Daisy's protestations that it actually is the Dark Ages. She's misguided, of course, because if it were the Dark Ages the book would have a different colour cover. In the modern world of the Australian billionaire party circuit feudal lords are now called financiers, and servant girls are now called personal assistants. Caves have become hotel suites and jousting has become horse racing. No one would believe men dragged women back to their caves in the Dark Ages, but a metaphor is an easy thing to lose sight of.

The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress is classic Mills & Boon escapist Modern Romance with a resolution so obvious the one hundred and fifty pages between here and the end insult the reader. But hey, we understood that going in. For now we must concern ourselves with the discovery of ruthless billionaire mating techniques. After all, Ethan's honourable behaviour thus far is not in-keeping with his reputation of ruthless inhumanity. So far, in fact, it appears he is a genuinely decent chap who is sensitive to the needs of others, uses his money for good and dislikes displays of indulgence. He also happens to have no financial problems. Well, we can be sure he will pay for his misdeeds with a lifetime of happiness and sex with the woman of his dreams, teaching people everywhere one must be ruthless to succeed. And handsome and a billionaire. It's probably more important to be a handsome billionaire.

“Africa does things to some people; the very air and strangeness possess a lure which no amount of vicarious experience can shatter”

Following on from our discussion on the importance of location in romance fiction, all that was missing was a selection of examples and a thorough examination of those books. Thank goodness, therefore, that we have been reading Mills & Boon novels these last few months. It is time we put this research to good use and perhaps even learn something. Many Harlequin subgenres have a clear location implied by their category. Medical Romance must, by its definition, involve places where medicine is practised, unless the doctor is possibly on holiday at a beach and must administer CPR on a beautiful widow's heart, resuscitating his own capacity for love in the process. Well, look at that. One paragraph in and we already have a great idea.

Here at Bewildered Heart we don't read Medical Romance, of course, because we crave relatable characters in habitable locations and sick people alarm us. So instead we read the likes of Learning Curves by Joanne Rock, Roughing It with Ryan by Jill Shalvis, and Finding Nick by Janis Reams Hudson (Heh heh heh). These are all Harlequin entries involving quaint examples of small town Americana, in states such as Arizona and Texas that may or may not exist. Learning Curves concerns a college graduate and a garage owner-cum-lecturer. Neither location speaks volumes for glamour, although a garage offers a little raw masculine sexuality if the reader ignores their own experiences of visiting garages. Can love blossom in the most unlikely of places, Joanne Rock does not have to ask, because on the pages of a Harlequin novel is the most likely place for love to blossom.

Finding Nick is a fish-out-of-water tale with a stylish New Yorker slumming it in a friendly, carefree Texan town. These tales don't use location as prominently or successfully as they might have had the authors been interested in heightening or contrasting their romances with a wider picture. Roughing It With Ryan is more urban, but revolves exclusively around the nondescript apartment building in which the heroine lives, relegating the drama to the instantly forgettable. In The Rugged Hero's Beautiful Blonde Chick the leads rarely leave the bedroom, but we agreed we wouldn't speak of that title again.

In fact, there is little evidence to back-up Julie Leto's argument that romance writers give much attention to their backdrop. There certainly appears a lack of contrast or embellishing. Even the clichéd history of exoticism and glamour seems to be disappearing from the pages. These stories are decidedly middle-class and domestic, serving to illustrate the obvious characteristics of the leads. The single Romance Romance example we have, The Dad Next Door, gives the reader the barely glimpsed shores of Squam Lake. The emotionally-wrought arguments take place in kitchens, on porches and in the back of a shop. When you have characters who are living and not looking for love, the author never forces her leads out of their physical comfort zones. The romance evolves while day-to-day life goes on.

This is a modern development, because in previous years Mills & Boon was dedicated to aspirational wealth and glamour, a genre of escapist fantasy in location as much as story. The 1965 Kathryn Blair novel, appropriately named Bewildered Heart, is set in the sultry jungle of Murabai, Nigeria (Please note, Murabai does not exist). The protagonist is truly out of her depth, an unconventional face in a strange, beautiful, but scary country. The reader is introduced to the heroine through her descent into this unrecognisable world, which is sketched out through the heroine's intrigue and neuroses. The exotic location is unimaginable to the reader, and becomes a selling point for the book in itself.

Nowadays, we have The Playboy of Pengarroth Hall, where the location is used with a typical heavy-handedness to shade in the cold, distant hero, his house and grounds representing his wealth as well as his fastidious personality. Susanne James' story is as archetypal a Mills & Boon as one could hope to read, if one would ever hope for anything such as that. Our heroine falls in love with the location first, and then slowly warms to the hero once she realises he owns the land. Their first kiss takes place in a darkened bedroom, an intimate moment of empathy in a church and his marriage proposal in a small park in central London.

Cindi Myer's Wild Child's filthy parade of childishly-described sexual acts all occur on a beach and the usual locales that surround a beach, such as beach-side houses, beach-related shops, beach-huts and the ocean. The author makes no attempt to imbue her prose, setting or characters with any originality and so Wild Child ends up as a substandard postcard written by a fourteen year old boy. This is a shame because while a beach is one of those stereotypical, unimaginative locations Julie Leto warned us against using, its tropes are open to such subversion that a writer could fill a beach with the most unlikely elements and invent something creative.

Recently we read One Night with the Rebel Billionaire and with this still fresh in our memories we can examine scenes on an individual basis, because as we have seen there appears a general ambivalence toward a single location, but rather the writer prefers to have her characters constantly roving to new and exciting exteriors with views. In MacKenzie's Promise, for example, our leads run from beach house, to restaurant, to hotel, to different restaurant to secret island getaway and on, all places shot through with a sense of luxury, in frothy contrast to the events of the book, which involve kidnap, murder and bad dialogue. It is difficult to know whether this contrast was intentional, but let's sleep tonight assuming it wasn't.

The location for Trish Wylie's One Night with the Rebel Billionaire is the Martha's Vineyard mansion where the majority of the events take place. The book opens on the mansion's beach and ends in the guest house. This is indicative of the titular billionaire, a sign that our characters need not worry about their finances, and can instead focus solely on their emotional retardation. On the way to love, key scenes take place in office buildings, supermarkets, grassy patches of land and in a small aeroplane. As aspiring Mills & Boon authors, how do we make sense of this seemingly arbitrary use of setting? Julie Leto told us to think carefully about where to set our scenes and then use words to describe how they look, but what we have seen so far seems thoughtless. After all, it is impossible not to set them somewhere.

As romance continues its stunted growth toward being the runt of the literature, location has lost that desirable, thrilling aspect that once marked Mills & Boon as the leader in escapist entertainment for women. This change in writing and location is consistent to the changing attitudes writers have taken towards their characters. Men are no longer mysterious, brooding, potential rapists controlling large portions of African jungle or mountain ranges in Wyoming. Today men are capable of marriage, domesticity, cooking, fixing sinks and raising children without the support of whiskey. For the reader to be satisfied by the happy ending she must see the hero in his element, doing manly things such as love-making and being sexist, while believing him capable and content to wash up the dinner things and watch whatever is on Living for the rest of his life.

Mills & Boon exists to publish female-driven plots. We no longer live in a man's world (although we still live in a man's world) and it is deemed sexist for the heroine to submit to the love and lifestyle her man is accustomed to. The popularity of such books as Pleasured in the Billionaire's Bed and The Brazilian Boss' Innocent Mistress challenge this. Does the virginal girl end up moving to the rainforest to become a reclusive Brazilian billionaire, or can she retain the dignity of women somewhere by claiming the parts of her single life that made her she? Are we to believe innocent girls await demanding billionaires with really luxurious beds, ready and willing to give up their old lives for all the man has? Romance writers can't think much of women if that is the case.

Once you marry a billionaire playboy what does he become? A millionaire husband? If a hero is defined by his bachelor status the story has its work cut out to convince us he will be ready for the tribulations of matrimony. Therefore location moves into the home, and while these men live in mansions, beach villas and country estates in Cornwall, their glorious houses still have faulty plumbing, dirty crockery and extra bedrooms for the inevitability of offspring. Is there a place and an inclination for the likes of Jack T. Colton in modern romance? Surely his swagger, quips and facial scarring can find a way back into Harlequin's pages and its readers' hearts? Just because he doesn't strike us as the type who would give up his dangerous quest-filled existence for a life in suburbia it doesn't make the moment where he kisses the girl any less romantic.

'I feel pretty, oh, so pretty, I feel pretty and witty and bright! And I pity any girl who isn't me tonight.'

And so, you've created a twenty-seven year-old woman as the idealised version of your-twenty-seven-year-old-self and then given her a quirk, such as cooing at babies in supermarkets (but only supermarkets, for anywhere else is creepy), and a physical flaw, such as frizzy hair on especially hot days. Then you've created your ideal man from a possibly embarrassing photograph of Hugh Jackman and loaded him with the kinds of characteristics and physical traits all women agree upon as desirable in a man. Once you have your heroine and hero the next step for your Mills & Boon romance is the story and location. Location is important. The romance genre has a history of exotic and glamorous settings, the sorts of places where running into an enigmatic, ruthless and handsome sheik is a plausible occurrence. After all, the perfect man is a well-hidden breed, and rightfully so. We can't have the manifestation of the perfect partner swanning around urban shopping malls. He must be chopping wood in isolated snow-covered landscapes or flying overhead in a helicopter building a multi-million pound empire to use to lovingly force a woman into his marriage bed.

Fortunately for those undecided on such issues as location Julie Elizabeth Leto is here to help. You may remember her from The Domino Effect, that terrible book Bewildered Heart read and hated. Well, as with so many authors of terrible books we have read and hated, she posts essays on her website explaining how to write terrible books we will someday read and hate. There are many essays, but for now let us concern ourselves with  Where Am I? The Importance of Setting to Your Romance Novel. 'A lush tropical island. A dark, candlelit restaurant by the ocean. A remote cabin in the foggy mountain tops. With little imagination, romantic fantasies bubble out of settings such as these. What better place could possibly exist to set your romance novel? Plenty of better places - trust me. Those listed above are easy and no one ever said that writing well was easy.'

If you're not going to say it, someone should. Writing romance isn't the same as writing well. However, an early point to Julie Leto, as most of her examples are tired and formulaic. Still, a remote, foggy candlelit restaurant on a tropical island sounds delightful, although the service would be poor and the menu mostly fish and coconut. 'Your job as a writer is to create settings that will not depend entirely on images and emotional responses the reader already possesses, but those that will take her literally to a whole new world.' Well, not literally. 'Do I mean science fiction? Not necessarily.' It's not necessarily sci-fi. It's not sci-fi at all. You're misusing the word literally. Stop that.

Leto's reference point is Make That Scene: A Writer’s Guide to Setting, Mood and Atmosphere by William Noble, and according to Noble setting is vital for three reasons, 1, it adds vividness to the story, 2, it influences the characters and 3, it plays a vital role in the story. Now, while this may sound like the nonsensical throwing around of technical words for the benefit of no one, there is something worthwhile to be gleamed for this and that is, location is vital. Without it your characters would wander a desolate world of existential blankness with no dimensions or gravity. Except that itself would be a location. In fact, it is the location of the Tron movies. Leto goes on, 'If a setting you’ve chosen doesn’t interlock this tightly with the story you’re about to tell - if it’s just a backdrop as changeable as stage scenery - you may not have chosen the right place for your story to occur.' We appear to be hammering on about the importance of setting, but it's worth remembering. Setting a tender love story in a futuristic world of bareknuckle-boxing on an oil rig made from cardboard would be stupid. Although tender love can blossom anywhere, so let's not rule out inspired bursts of originality, eh, article?

'West Side Story is essentially Romeo and Juliet set in a different time and place. Fourteenth century Verona becomes 1960s New York City. The circumstances and plot remain the same, but the audience doesn’t seem to mind. The changed setting meant changed characters, and together they flushed out fresh elements to the basic plot of forbidden, star-crossed love.' West Side Story is one of the most romantic American movies ever, according to our friends at the AFI, so good example, Julie. West Side Story is a silly film, where the forbidden element of the love isn't credible or particularly well-thought out. Then again, the silliness might have had more to do with the constant singing, homo-erotic dancing and egotistic vanity.

'Contrary to popular myth, Poe was not a drugged-out weirdo who wrote gross stories about blood and gore. On the contrary, he was a master craftsman whose attention to detail in his tightly woven narratives contradicts any possibility of a steady use of hallucinogens.' At this point it is easy to become concerned for Julie Leto's grasp on reality. But thank God she's here to defend Edgar Allen Poe from the vast majority of literary experts who revile him as nothing more than an old-timey version of Eli Roth. With Poe's reputation restored, let's see what the drugged-out weirdo had to say. 'In the whole composition there should be no word written, of which the tendency, direct or indirect, is not to the one pre-established design. And by such means, with such care and skill, a picture is at length painted which leaves in the mind of him who contemplates it with a kindred art, a sense of the fullest satisfaction…' Let us hope Leto didn't take Poe's review of Hawthorne as a personal attack on her own novels, but we can surely sleep peacefully under the notion that she doesn't consider herself a skilled literary artist.

'In our novels, the preconceived or single effect is romance, coupled with the overall mood of the book (i.e., suspense, a historic richness, or humor). Genre and sub-genre - your targeted market - must be taken into consideration when you plan your overall effect.' We appear to have narrowed our choice down to either Modern, or Romance. The single effect, therefore, is romance, with the mood being romantic. Romance plus romance equals double romance, thus Romantic Romance, our preferred sub-genre. Thus the setting must be evocative of romance, the sort of place people go to fall in love, which also has the effect of helping people fall in love. Suitable locations would include a lush tropical island, a dark, candlelit restaurant by the ocean or a remote cabin in foggy mountain tops.

'Should the setting enhance the single effect, or contrast it?' It turns out that there are unlimited choices open to an author when choosing location. Perhaps a contrasting background would work more strongly, for example somewhere that does not instantly produce love make might the impending love even more powerful, through contrast. How about finding love in the most unlikely location? But surely, you cry, a remote cabin in foggy mountain tops is unlikely. What kind of single man will hang out there with anything other than murder on his mind? You're right, and possibly a little paranoid. In The Domino Effect, our spy heroine was thrust into the surprisingly easy-going locale of a Chicago nightclub, with all the mystery, sexiness and poor lighting one would expect from such a place. Clearly Leto wanted to enhance the effect. Had she contrasted it, her tough-talking, hard-living, sexy spy might have had to seek out traitors at a nursery school, or a petting zoo. Quickly, Google, write that idea down.

Leto moves onto how to set a scene, saying, somewhat curiously, that a writer must use words to describe things. 'To most of us, there is only one way to establish setting - through description by the author.' Most of us, Julie? We can assume the rest are illiterate, or screenwriters. If the writer has decided against inference through story and dialogue, instead insisting on straight description, we return to William Noble, who has another list of three things. 1, Colours, 2, Shapes and 3, Textures. Well, that is hard to argue with. Noble asks us to, 'Imagine ourselves in the scene: it is we who do the looking and the absorbing, and we know what will strike us most forcefully. We seek ‘key details’ with this method, ever mindful that use of detail can overrun us if we aren’t careful.' Indeed. Readers don't read Mills & Boon for the fancy language and poetic insights. If they want good writing there's a much smaller shelf a few rows down. We're here to serve them with a straight-forward story of romance with lashings of romance against a backdrop of romanticism. What does it matter if we don't know any appropriate words besides romantic?

“Maybe you're only alloted a certain amount of tears per man and I've used mine up”

Anyone who enjoys cinema and female companionship will be disappointed to learn that the column Girls on Film is merely a bunch of essays by women on the topic of movies. False advertising on the internet, who knew that occurred? Well, you won't find any of that on Bewildered Heart, where we're true to our original goal, posting photographs of Hugh Jackman in embarrassing poses. No one is tricked onto this blog, no one is invited either, it seems. The point is, please click on the adverts.

Girls on Film is one of the more vocal exponents on the decline of romantic comedies, a subject Bewildered Heart is also dedicated to uncovering. From the AFI list of the hundred greatest romantic films, only a handful are comedies, and the finest of those include The Princess Bride, The Goodbye Girl, Harold and Maude, The Lady Eve and Casablanca. Of those there aren't many traditional romcoms, as we've grown to expect them. Possibly the reason for this is that the AFI is solely interested in great movies, and The Way We Were, whereas we have grown to expect romantic comedies to be as terrible as The Way We Were. After all, when Ernst Lubitsch died William Wyler sensed the end was near, and Hollywood never replaced the likes of he or Preston Sturges. Girls on Film have decided that this issue is worth filling their essay quota on, and so over at their Moviefone website you can read what's wrong with Hollywood and more importantly what's wrong with you, the audience, who lap this toilet water up. Monika Bartyzel makes numerous mentions to The Bechdel Rule, an idea taken from a twenty-something year old comic strip where a character asserts she will only see a film if it adheres to three strict rules. 'One, there are two women who Two, talk to each other about Three, something other than men.'

Because of this rule, the strip argues, the only film that woman has seen is Alien, where two lady characters speak of the phallic metaphor chasing them down narrow corridors. Now, perhaps it is misguided to blame Hollywood for seeing females as a niche audience with limited interests, as critics contend. Women make up the majority of the population, but not the cinema-going public. Is this because there are no films that specifically appeal to women? After all, Sex and the City and its sequel made hundreds of millions of dollars. Sex and the City has become a hugely successful franchise, with a television series, two films, a line of cocktails and it is likely they have a cut of the shoe market, to boot. What's curious about its success, however, is that the films are horrible, insensitive, awful and sexist. Female audiences forgive this, mind, either because they're so starved for representation they'll take what they can get, or women are stupid and have no self-respect or taste, something they probably learned from Sex and the City.

Now, it is perhaps worth bearing in mind that while women are stupid, the wider point is that people are stupid and women are people. Furthermore, many of these same women are aware that Sex and the City 2 is an abysmal, xenophobic and oddly misogynistic movie, but they enjoyed it anyhow. So Girls on Film, what the hell? 'While I can't fathom forgiving all of the flaws of SatC on the big screen, forgiveness is an essential part of the experience for any moviegoer eager to see real-life women. There are, quite simply, too few films that are interested in reaching beyond the typical stereotypes.' Huh. Women call it SatC. Interesting. 'Studios don't see this success as an example of moviegoers wanting more diverse and awesome women on the big screen, or more women in general. They see it as a simple equation: Romance + sexy women + comedy = Goldmine. Female friends + fashion + money = Goldmine. Women obsessed with men = Goldmine.' She misused the word awesome, but for discerning film-goers desperate for the beauty to be put back into romcoms it makes for a worrying trend. Unless the studios are onto something, which they are, because that equation makes a lot of sense. If we continue down this decline then eventually romantic comedies will be in as bad shape as most other Hollywood genres. Skyline was a rubbish sci-fi alien invasion film and made no money. If the next rubbish alien invasion film also makes no money will Hollywood listen and go back to the safe-haven of remaking classic alien invasion films?

Moviefone points its angry finger at SatC, SatC2, Mamma Mia and Valentine's Day as a sign of this threat to quality. These films are critically-ravaged, yet each made a lot of money. Is this because women lack representation on screen but forgive the movie's faults because it has been made with them in mind? Do they blindly support 'female' films even when they're insulting to women? This is a flawed argument, of course, because Sex and the City had a loyal built-in fanbase, Mamma Mia had previously been a huge success on stage and Valentine's Day had a lucrative history as a day long before it cashed in as a film. It is akin to arguing that just because Spiderman 3 made a fortune at the box office teenage boys will pay for abysmal superhero films just to see Spiderman at the cinema. Well, everyone rightly hated Spiderman 3 and despite its profits Hollywood listened, going to great lengths to trick the audience into watching another one. Surely nobody wants to make atrocious films. None of the people involved in Valentine's Day intended it to be that bad. Yes, the female characters are made up of, 'the sweet-as-pie grade school teacher, the airhead blonde high schooler, the perpetually single girl who wallows in candy and panic attacks, the rich wife who tries to ignore her husband's infidelity,' but the men didn't come off any better. There was a professional football player who turns out to be gay, a smarmy doctor cheating on his wife and an Ashton Kutcher. It isn't a matter of Hollywood folk lazily trading on stereotypes, but just a bunch of hacks doing the best they could.

The New York Times film critic Manohla Dargis says different. Asked why romantic comedies are in such straits, she helpfully pointed out that, 'One, the people making them have no fucking taste, two, they're morons, three, they're insulting panderers who think they're making movies for the great unwashed and that's what they want.' Clearly this can't be correct because that would mean a Hollywood producer would have to be an insultingly pandering moron with no taste and an arrogant, superior attitude to the public. Maybe Dargis means filmmakers can be one of the three options. Choose carefully, Hollywood.

'So where's the line between fighting for diverse representations, feeling anger over stereotypical crap, rebelling against bubbleheaded fluffdom, and being a supporter of female achievement?' asks Monika Bartyzel. 'That's not something I can quite figure out yet.' Well, Monika, you're lucky there's a big strong man around to help you answer that. After this Bewildered Heart will take care of that spider. Dargis makes an obvious point when she refuses to judge female-directed films differently from male-directed ones, even though it begs the question as to what difference it makes to have a female director. A female writer and director with a female cast telling stories about women for female audiences seems to compartmentalise women as not only niche audiences, but niche filmmakers too. Why would you celebrate a film being made, or being seen by a lot of people just because it was made by women? It's a shallow victory that limits the threshold of potential achievement. Don't check the credits to see who wrote and directed the film, just rebel against stereotypes and bubbleheaded fluffdom as much as others will rebel against journalists making up words.

“Her tongue thickened. Here it came. She tried to prepare herself. 'Oh?'”

When we left The Dad Next Door he was beginning to fall in love with our protagonist, Alison, but remained concerned how this new relationship would effect his daughter, Tory. Alison, meanwhile, was beginning to fall in love with the single father neighbour, Gavin, but was concerned he was obsessively stalking Tory's mother, Marianne. Tory, on the other hand, was still coming to terms with the death of her sister, Samantha, in a motorcycle accident (Sam was hit by a motorcycle), and the move to Squam Lake, but at least now has Alison, her adoring new mother figure and a general disinterest towards the feelings of others, because she's a child.

The easily resolved issues don't stop there, however. First there is Alison's divorced father, named something fatherly yet distant, such as Frank (it's actually Seth, how inappropriate), and then there's Marianne, a bohemian version of Megan Fox, with black hair, pale skin and facial features so chiselled a man could cut a finger on them. Marianne is an artist and Tory's estranged mother, disappeared for years. A bad woman, a bad mother, a lousy girlfriend and, though the author doesn't acknowledge it directly, an inept painter of moody, esoteric pictures with little commercial value. Alison is the Julie Bowen alternative to Megan Fox, all smooth lines, safe for children, warm autumnal colours and blonde hair. Her shop, The Perfect Thing, is a tourist trap of popular nic-nacs obtuse visitors and locals immediately adore.

All this homely pleasantness and reasonable reactions to everyday occurrences is soon shattered by the return of Marianne, with a secret so dark and unlikely no one may ever be the same again, except Tory who glides through life with a childlike apathy towards the feelings of others. The use of 'may ever be the same' is apt, because Marianne's secret doesn't change much irrevocably, it merely serves to extend the story for a further one hundred or so pages. Marianne's secret is nothing compared to Seth's secret. That's a secret that should shatter everyone's lives, but somehow doesn't, resulting in something eerily close to incest. Yep, The Dad Next Door is the first Mills & Boon to contain 'sorta incest'. Add that to the list, Google.

Our delightful heroine, Alison, is a modern woman of standard neuroses. Her recent broken engagement to Tyler isn't important in the grand scheme of things. Her future is fixed from the moment Gavin and Tory move in next door and the adult problems soon to plague her quiet house of middle class domesticity only serve to regress her back to childhood and the same selfish outlook that bonds her so quickly to Tory. She grew up with Marianne and everything was a competition. Every boy Alison liked was stolen by Marianne and Seth always took Marianne's side. Some father, the reader thinks, unaware how right they are. With her feelings for Gavin growing the arrival of Marianne threatens to upset their newfound love, especially as it takes place shortly after The Dad Next Door's only sex scene, on a sofa and involving metaphorical melting.

Despite this, CJ Carmichael has no intention of figuring anything out, instead using Marianne as an unrealistic plot point. Her sudden reappearance reveals the devastating secret no one wants to hear. Oh, please allow this weblog to reveal the secret, because our Bewildered Heart cannot contain itself any longer! Seth had an affair with Marianne's drunken whore of a mother and is, in fact, Marianne's father. Holy cow, yes! Alison and Marianne are half-sisters and always have been. Not only that, but Alison slept with her niece's father. Phew! You have no idea how long we've been wanting to tell you that, indulgent reader. Can you believe it? Alison Bennett always seemed like such a nice, simple woman of autumnal colours and Julie Bowen congeniality. It must be that child that looks eerily like how Megan Fox presumably looks. Everybody knows what bad influences the child-incarnations of Transformers stars are.

You're gosh darn right, non-existent alcoholic Squam Lake busy-body. How will this mess of crap be sorted in the remaining ten or so pages? Really, there are only ten pages left? What, is Carmichael just going to call a taxi for Marianne, remove her from the picture and then have the characters never again mention this sordid chapter of their lives, much to the dismay and annoyance of the reader, who had patiently concentrated on her words for two hundred and eighty pages awaiting something dramatic to take place? Nah, of course not. That would be rubbish and deeply infuriating.

The Dad Next Door positions itself as a Tender Romance and the sexual element, while present, is subtlety excised, the editor moving on as the couple move into the bedroom, leaving the awkwardly timid descriptions of penetration, thrusting and orgasm (we all know it happens) on the floor of the writer's equivalent of the cutting room. Clipboard? Unlike Modern and Blaze! there includes a noticeable plot centred around a compelling protagonist. There is a child old enough to speak and influence the narrative and Carmichael cleverly uses Tory to push Alison and Gavin together, their intimacy brought about by a resolutely pampered kid. This is no different from other romance stories that use a gimmick to hurry along the romance, but a child brings a heightened emotional significance to any potential coupling. This relationship has more riding on it than a wasted month of crying, eating ice cream and watching reruns of Murder, She Wrote.

Furthermore, there is the introduction of Marianne, a villain. A woman whose selfish apathy towards the feelings of others isn't as adorable or as tolerated as Tory's. Marianne is a cold, conniving artist-type who never wanted children and was forced to give birth to twins when she would have preferred an abortion. In another writer's hands Marianne could have been portrayed as human, weak and confused, a victim of circumstance, poverty and poor parenting, while also suffering from a proper illness that is wrecking her life and destroying any chance she has of making contact with her only daughter. However, Carmichael takes a different route. Marianne is a manipulative bitch with a made-up disease who stands between Alison and her man, undeserving of happiness she has not earned and cruel and drunk and inconsiderate and a bitch and I hate her.

Fair enough then, but Marianne represents little more than Alison's own deluded sense of entitlement. We here at Bewildered Heart love a happy ending and as the word count is reached Alison, Gavin and Tory are complete, a loving and happy family. Woo-hoo. Yet if there is one thing even better than a happy ending it is a good ending, with all the story strands resolved in a satisfying and rewarding manner. The Dad Next Door has a happy ending, but a disappointing one. Gavin and Alison's contentment has left a trail of damaged people in its wake, but because those people brought their shame, loneliness and misery on themselves the reader is expected not to mind. If Romance Romance has the opportunity for more complex scenarios, darker character history and less easily-obtained romance than the usual Mills & Boon sub-genres, then Romance Romance owes itself deeper emotional resonance than The Dad Next Door.

Please note that this review refers to CJ Carmichael's The Dad Next Door, and not Kasey Michaels' The Dad Next Door, published by Silhouette and featuring an author with a worryingly similar name.  We also do not mean to criticise Virginia Myers' The Dad Next Door, or any living or deceased male neighbours with children, although you probably have your own narrative issues that a few rewrites and sex scenes would take care of.