“He didn't have much choice with her tugging at him the way she was”

For all our talk of Mills & Boon, and this weblog does seem unhealthily devoted to Mills & Boon, there are numerous other ways to see your romance novel published. There will be a time when Bewildered Heart turns its attention to the likes of Josephine Cox, Nora Roberts and Daphne Something, and when we've lost all hope and turned viciously on ourselves you, gentle reader, shall be the first to know. Until then, and as a break from all this Cherish nonsense, let us gaze upon a novel so different from our standard fare that only the name of the publishers offers any semblance of change – Harlequin Presents a Special Edition Harlequin Silhouette, Special Edition.

When Mills & Boon failed to tap the potential of the United States and their many women Simon & Schuster sought to fill that gap, and they called their romance imprint Silhouette. As we've previously established, Harlequin, owned by Torstar, bought Mills & Boon and Silhouette a few years later rendering the whole sordid affair even more trivial than you might have thought. However, before Harlequin changed the banners and confused us more than we would appreciate having to acknowledge Silhouette worked from the same office as Mills & Boon, published the same sort of books with the same sort of titles and same colour covers with the same photographs of couples canoodling, but under a changed tagline of, “For every kind of woman. For every kind of mood.” Hah, that's a lie, isn't it, Harlequin?

In 2005 Allison Leigh wrote The Truth About the Tycoon, and through a twist of coincidence Bewildered Heart found a copy and decided to save itself a trip to the library. Any illusions, or wishful thinkings, that Silhouette might offer a slightly improved approach to romance writing than Mills & Boon were immediately shattered by the blurb, where the reader is introduced to the two leads, a worldly billionaire hiding a devastating secret and a virginal small-town girl named Hadley Golightly. Having read the first three chapters our understanding of what we have in store has worsened to Mills & Boon Modern Romance levels of despair.

Don't take our word for it, however. Allow Bewildered Heart to explain in typically gratuitous detail. Hadley is twenty-seven, loves her life in Montana, runs an infrequently boarded boardinghouse, enjoys baking baked goods and concocting soup. She has never slept with a man and has two brothers and a sister who are always bothering her about her non-existent love life. Oh, Hadley. You're a creature of rare disposition. But look, for there is less to this pretty woman than jumps from the page. She is also tragically shy and easily-frightened, her voice barely audible and her self-esteem a very attractive low.

Meanwhile, our heroic hunk of wealthy masculinity has everything one might expect from such a character, including the name Dane Rutherford. He's curt, arrogant, mind-bogglingly gorgeous, enigmatic and well-travelled. He has two facial scars to reveal his raw manliness and capability of taming, but small scars only a woman gazing very closely would notice. Hadley and Dane meet at the scene of a car crash, shortly after Hadley and Dane's vehicles crash into one another. Hadley comes through without a scrape, but Dane's classic sports car is totalled and he is bleeding from the head. No sooner have they made poor first impressions of themselves has Hadley's brother, the Sheriff, arrived and arrested Dane for driving without a license. Why doesn't Dane have a driving license? Well, he does, it is in his bag, but Dane is concealing a potentially dramatic secret. His name is, in fact, Dane Rutherford, of Rutherford Industries, the biggest corporation in the world of The Truth About the Tycoon.

For Hadley, her brother and the quaint town of Lucius, Dane is the unassuming Atwood Tolliver. In Hadley's naïve and adoring eyes Wood is just an incredibly attractive sports car enthusiast on vacation in chilly Montana, when in fact he is Dane Rutherford, an incredibly attractive billionaire come to town with murder on his mind. Oh yeah! The plot congeals. Hadley is delighted that the pleasant and helpful Wood has decided to stay at her boardinghouse. It allows her the opportunity to test her skills at driving men away and hating herself for having driven a man away. Despite her tuneless mating calls, Dane cannot afford the distraction of romance. Years ago his sister was kidnapped and tormented by the evil Alan Michaels, and his release from prison has caused Dane's father, Roth, to have a heart attack. Therefore only one course of action is open to the son, head to Lucius and begin an unconvincing romance with the local twenty-seven year old virgin.

By the end of the third chapter so much has been established despite very little happening, besides the inciting car wreck and a smattering of meals. Allison Leigh has bought us up to speed and introduced us to the hero and heroine. The lengthy explanations are rather needless though, as so far Dane and Hadley are identical to every pairing in the history of the genre. Yet despite the trappings of the form there are certain deviations that propel The Truth About the Tycoon into the almost palatable. Hadley is neurotic and socially-awkward, yet beautiful and unfailingly friendly. With her easy-going lifestyle, her simple outlook, her casual self-loathing and her upper class stalker there remains an element to her person that makes her relatable to the twenty-seven-year-old virgin whom dwells in all of us.

While the location of Lucius uses every cliché expected of rustic Americana the setting carries with it a predictable charm and the boardinghouse in particular is a novel twist, offering Leigh an opportunity to add an assortment of oddball characters which she manages to squander. This is not our first read of a romance in a small-town in the United States, of course. Finding Nick was set somewhere in Texas, Learning Curves took us into the heart of Arizona and The Dad Next Door played out in whichever state Squam Lake is in. The homespun values of these fictional, idealised locations are well juxtaposed by the demands of an harassed, ruthless billionaire passing through. Modern Romance seems to call for the fast-paced world of urbanity and professionalism. Cherish, and whatever The Truth About the Tycoon turns out to be, can optimise the lax attitude of country living. However, with every writer and reader aware of this obvious contrast one must be careful to avoid slipping into stereotype, fish-out-of-water shenanigans and scenes from Reese Witherspoon movies. While it is too late for Allison Leigh it is worth making a note of it here, for our sake.

This is not our first brush with crime and kidnap either. We all remember MacKenzie's Promise no matter how hard we try to erase it from our collective memory. However, unlike that deeply inappropriate mixture of child-suffering, murder and life-affirming sex, The Truth About the Tycoon suggests a route of the healing power of love. Will Dane find redemption from his dishonesty and homicidal intent through the disarming beauty and innocence of a good woman? In any other genre it would be too early to tell, but with Harlequin Presents a Special Edition Harlequin Silhouette, Special Edition we should avoid becoming too cynical too soon.

What may happen is that Alan Michaels will continue to be evil, and Dane will heroically save another child from the same fate of his sister, but through doing so will reveal his true identity and actual motivations to the increasingly smitten Hadley. At her discovery of his treachery and heroism she will turn away, hurt and shocked, stripped of her innocence and trust, only for Dane's sister to explain what was really going on before Dane returns to say something, or smile, or take his shirt off, leading Hadley to accept that she cannot convince her heart, or brain, otherwise, as she is already head over heels in love with this man, whatever his name is and whoever he turns out to be once he ends the charade of pretending to be a sports car enthusiast to cover his intentions of violent revenge. Hadley didn't even know he was a billionaire Rutherford, and that surely proves how pure her devotion is. At this point that looks the more likely course, but Bewildered Heart hopes for everyone's sanity it is the former. For now at least we have a reason to continue reading.

“Through a twist of fate they found a family – and each other!”

In our lengthy and occasionally irritating search for the perfect subgenre to write our love stories for we thought we had found an ideal match in the warm homeliness of Romance Romance, which also sometimes goes by the moniker Special Moments, or Tender Romance. What made Romance Romance different from all the other subgenres? Children, that's what. As we've established, the plots and characters are consistent across every Mills & Boon variety, but in Special Moments one of the leads usually has a child, suggesting the novel has greater emotional depth. Yes, we swooned, this is the category for us, this is the category that will accept us for what we really want to write. An open, sensitive and sweet-natured subgenre that will never hurt us, or lie to us, despite the nagging mystery of having so many changes of name.

'Everyone needs a daily pick me up from the pressures of life – job, family, relationships – women these days juggle so many things!' You don't need to tell us about it, promotional material. You just need to tell us what the daily pick-me-up is, because we find alcohol and denial just isn't working like it used to. 'Imagine a little luxury: some time out, just for you, a break from the pressures of everyday life. We offer this and more in our home and family category, which since September is published as Cherish.' The break on offer from the pressures of family and relationships is a book about family and relationships? What happened to a good old-fashioned box of metaphorical chocolates?

'Think of Cherish as a variety box of chocolates – each one is very different, but all contain satisfying author voices, a happy ending, a rush of feel-good emotion to give you a lift and leave you on a high!' Now you're talking. There's no filling quite like author voices, and no hard shell like the dilemmas of pregnancy from a one night stand with a Mediterranean Prince. But what if you don't look at the contents card and pick at random and wind up with a Hazelnut thing when you're allergic to hazelnuts and your cheeks swell up, or whatever the romance reading equivalent of that nightmare is?

'Are you a classic girl who loves a vanilla fudge smothered in milk chocolate? If you are…then there are stories in this series that deliver the same fix – 100% romance, like curling up with a favourite film, these heart warming stories will leave you on a romantic high!' You don't have to be a woman, or a chocolatier, to question to validity of that promise, but what happens to those who are not classic girls, or easily duped with expensive gifts? Perhaps you are a modern type with an apartment in the city and a job in the financial industry who lives a jet-set lifestyle and has no time for whatever vanilla fudge is supposed to represent.

'Are you a cosmo woman who likes a naughty liquor kick to their seriously dark chocolate? These vibrant, funny, entertaining and unexpected stories may make you laugh out loud or challenge your expectations.' Alcohol certainly tends to challenge expectations and serious dark chocolate is always hilarious, so this sounds like Bewildered Heart's kind of option, but it still feels as if Mills & Boon is safely covering every base without actually offering any clear indication of what one might expect from the Cherish shelf. So far heart-warming, classic, funny, modern and naughty have all been catered for. What's next? Is there a chocolate in that box that is guaranteed to make you cry?

'Are you a crier who loves a smooth caramel centre? If you’re a real softie, and love a heart wrenching romance that makes you go gooey inside, especially when a happy ending is guaranteed, we have the perfect story for you too!' Oh, Mills & Boon, you know us so well. Of course we'll end up eating the entire box and hating ourselves. There is no point maintaining this charade any longer. Just bring on the candy/literature. What was this sales pitch even supposed to be advertising? It hardly seems important now. The point is, don't promise chocolates unless you actually have chocolates.

As always with this publishing company their introductions amount to meaningless drivel, full of charming empty gestures, offering a life of happiness and affection filled with the kinds of emotions we dream of experiencing even though we know at the first sign of commitment Cherish will turn into Blaze! and call us names and expect us to read their books without needing to be seduced or made to feel special. We thought what we had was real, orange-covered subgenre. We were going to read Cherish forever. But you changed from the poorly-insinuated descriptions of the thing we presumed you were based on a handful of nebulous sentences of puff copy-writing we saw on a website. Now you're no better than those dishevelled Spice collections we glimpse in doorways downtown, their dust jackets barely concealing their contents.

We didn't mean for you to see that. Nevertheless, the enigma remains. As this is the case, and this is always the case, we are best served checking out the titles and synopses to understand what we can expect when we follow The Dad Next Door with the next adventure. Should we brace ourselves for more single parenting, domesticity and coy conversations in front of adorable children? Recent titles include: A Miracle for His Secret Son, Proud Rancher, Precious Bundle, Accidentally Pregnant!, Star-Crossed Sweethearts, Secret Prince, Instant Daddy, Cowgirl Makes Three, Expecting Royal Twins!, To Dance with a Prince, Nanny Next Door, The Baby Swap Miracle, The Doctor's Pregnant Bride?, The Texas Billionaire's Baby, and Wrong Groom, Right Bride.

If these books were chocolates eating more than one would be nauseating. But which should we begin with, they all sound so varied and unpalatable? How about we take a tentative taste of At Home in Stone Creek by Linda Lael Miller, but make sure not to swallow anything? 'Everyone in Ashley O’Ballivan’s life is marrying and starting families – except her. But what date can compare to Jack McCall, the man who broke her heart years ago? And now he’s mysteriously back. But he isn’t who she thinks he is. After a dangerous mission, security expert Jack McCall rents a room in Ashley’s bed-and-breakfast. For her sake, he must keep his distance. But his feelings for her are so powerful that only his heart remains off-limits. To protect her – from his enemies and himself – he has to leave, vowing to fight his way home to her and Stone Creek forever.'

First of all, that sounds like it could be published under Intrigue or Modern. Second of all, how can Jack leave and fight his way home at the same time? Sadly, we will never know because we won't be reading At Home in Stone Creek. Let's try a different one. A Baby for Mommy by Cathy Gillen Thacker? The title doesn't inspire confidence, but it has got our saliva on now, so... 'With a busy career and three kids to feed, single father Dan Kingsland needs help! Hiring a professional chef is such a perfect solution, Dan doesn’t notice the baby bump under Emily Stayton’s coat. Emily is finally getting what she wants – a baby – and going where she wants: home to the peach orchard her family used to own. But when Dan shares the joy of her baby’s first kick, he realises he’s falling for his very temporary employee. Can his love be the home that Emily’s been looking for?'

Yes? This sounds more like Cherish though. After all, there are three kids and the heroine is pregnant, making for a rare fat romantic lead. However, if Dan was say, a single, childless billionaire, and Emily was a single, non-pregnant, unemployed beauty then you'd have The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress with a few minor changes and the removal of implied blackmailed rape, which is probably for the best. The glaring obstacles for the couple in A Baby for Mommy are the same obstacles placed in front of Gavin and Alison in The Dad Next Door. Who got Emily pregnant and where did Dan hide his wife's body? Just kidding, of course. Dan sounds lovely. So our conclusion brings us back to our introduction, that what marks Cherish as unique is the involvement of offspring and the heightened tension their child's welfare brings to the romantic decisions of the single parent lead. When the conclusion resolves the issues brought up in the introduction you know you've written a good article. That's the first lesson you learn at article-writing school.

“Money was not the root of all evil, Daisy thought. It could be a huge blessing”

Shortly after finishing the task of reading The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress Bewildered Heart settled down with a handful of romantic movies, until the salty taste of Mills & Boon had been washed from our mouth and replaced with the salty taste of Hollywood. First there was Something's Gotta Give, an older person love story precursor to It's Complicated, and proof that Nancy Meyers takes her titles from overheard comments her teenage daughter makes. Her films, which include What Women Want and The Holiday, are not created for teenagers, of course, rendering the titles as infuriating as they would be if you were talking with someone who used them.

There are few truly fine romantic comedies made nowadays and Something's Gotta Give is not one of them. Neither is It's Complicated, but they do at least feature fifty-something actresses playing women regaining their sexual confidence despite losing their husbands to younger women. Being played by sexually alluring actresses doesn't hurt, mind, and having Keanu Reeves paid to pretend to be attracted to them is helpful as well. These, and the comfortably superior I Could Never Be Your Women, despite the inexplicable presence of Tracey Ullman as Mother Nature, have become a new branch on the withered romcom tree. It is unnecessary to differentiate between these and 'normal' love stories featuring people we want to see fall in love, but it is comforting to know that the likes of Diane Keaton, Michelle Pfeiffer and Meryl Streep are allowed to make terrible films as well, from time to time. We can't allow Katherine Heigl and Jennifer Aniston to dominate the market.

After Something's Gotta Give there was Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, one of those old-fashioned swashbuckler Hollywood epics that was neither old-fashioned nor epic. There was some light swashbuckling. Jake Gyllenhaal, it would seem, is our new dashing leading man, with beard, lank hair and penchant for grinning having murdered someone. He plays the titular prince, borrowed from the streets and adopted by the King to take pride of place alongside his half-brothers as heirs to the throne. Jake is too much of a daring, loveable scallywag for such regal duties, however, but must eventually learn responsibility through a series of bizarre scenes liberally stolen from other movies and involving a time travelling dagger which he uses to inadvertently kill everyone in the world. Walking across a desert bickering with a beautiful woman would be nothing without a beautiful woman to bicker and walk with, and therefore Jake is joined by a queen, the most beautiful woman in Persia nonetheless, for some bickering and occasional parkour. Mostly they argue over which of them has led a more sheltered existence of indulgence and luxury until they realise they both have and the screenwriters have forgotten the all-important element of audience empathy.

Audience empathy seems to be increasingly over-looked in terms of recognisable finances. Prince of Persia: Sands of Time has a devilishly attractive Prince as hero, Gemma Arterton-faced queen as pure-blooded heroine and a bearded villain with resentment over a lack of entitlement. It is hard not to feel a close bond with the dastardly evil-doer who just wants to prove his worth, all because a twist of fate gave his brother the kingdom and him nothing but a powerful brother. While our two leads are extremely pretty and have glorious skin despite the sandy, scorching conditions why are we expected to care for protagonists on the basis that they're beautiful, rich and spoilt? Something's Gotta Give has a billionaire and a millionaire falling in love, every scene played out to a backdrop of resplendent comfort and relaxed ease.

When Mills & Boon pairs a hero with a heroine for frolics and misunderstandings the man is invariably wealthy, his billionaire status demonstrated by the book's title. Appropriately, when one half of a couple is a billionaire the author is well-advised to cast the heroine as something of a pauper. Yet great lengths are taken to make sure the reader understands that their limited reserves are not a slight against their upstanding character. Usually with money comes arrogance and with a lack comes humility. The author strives hard to show her billionaire is a decent, valiant man who worked hard and deserves his fortune, even though money doesn't mean anything to him without a woman to spend it on. Equally, our struggling naïf worked just as hard for her lack of resources, but doesn't care for money or power, what with being a woman and all. If you have comfortable protagonists without financial problems you can have them concentrate fully on the troubles of falling in love, in-keeping with how we humans live, putting off relationships until we have secured our prosperity.

Typically though, the creator of such characters loses sight of what is necessary to make a romantic lead likeable and compelling. It is a given that any role in a Hollywood movie will be portrayed by an actor with looks that rival those of Patrick Dempsey, Kristen Bell or Josh Duhamel etc., because in a multi-million dollar movie even the ugly people are beautiful. Those wanting to watch the amorous adventures of the unattractive can head to family reunions. It may make the characters more difficult to empathise with, but it makes them easier to look at, which is clearly more important. Still, besides the superficial values of physicality, our protagonists tend to have glamorous careers in the fields of advertising, public relations or pharmaceutical sales, which all amount to the same thing, the perpetrating acts of evil on an unsuspecting populace. They are successful doing insufferable things for money and are dedicated to jobs they adore, they are beautiful and young with hair in only the right places and a bevy of loyal, witty friends who each appear to be played by hip stars of popular television shows. Looks and career barely scratch the surface of disposition, however, although it usually suffices for a screenwriter. What about cooing at babies at supermarkets or having a soft spot for stray dogs? You know, defining traits of an identity dedicated to work and self-improvement? Without these, there is little else to say about their personalities, so what humanises them to the extent that hateful, insecure viewers can find their feet-dragging and contrived clumsiness loveable for sometimes as much as one hundred and ten minutes?

Are they so vapid we feel intellectually superior to them and therefore delight in their quirky confusion? Clearly not, because if this were the case a happy ending would see the film climax with them trapped inside a refrigerator outside an abandoned gas station near the South Kaibab Trail, and there has yet to be a romantic comedy which resolves in such a fashion. No, their kiss and cuddle to a sunset backdrop suggests we wish only the best for them, so long as the best we can wish upon someone is a lasting union with Jennifer Garner or Ashton Kutcher. After all, the simple structure of the genre has not troubled audiences for many decades and shows no sign of causing any troubles today, so the formula is tested, true and an occasional quality example proves the enduring potency of screened romance. We come for the set-up and the guarantee of a happy ending, but the most important part of the equation remains. As with every story and every day of life we stay for the people involved.

“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.