“It was good he remembered the good times”

For many budding romance writers, naïve to what they are letting themselves in for, the creation of a heroine appears as abundantly effortless as looking in the mirror and then describing yourself using reckless amounts of fallacious narcissism. Without the ability to do this you will never get anywhere in publishing. To concoct a suitable alpha male hero cliches, day-dreaming and photographs of Hugh Jackman should suffice. However, where does this leave you when faced with the further trouble of secondary characters, such as friends, or gasp, a child? What do Mills & Boon authors know about having friends and children? In many cases, the novelist wisely skips over additional characters altogether, but this is a divisive subject among those who like to argue over what makes for a good romance in book-form. Should we bother with a trusted best friend for our heroine, or should we simply assume that her inevitable marriage to the perfect billionaire dreamboat makes her incapable of being liked by anyone female?

Secrets Uncovered has managed to push itself to the forefront of this debate, merely by thinking it up in the first place. 'Not always, but often, a romantic heroine tends to be rather isolated – emotionally, socially, professionally etc. This works because it places the heroine in a space where the hero can truly possess her, and her emotions.' A wise aside, for those mistakenly assuming there was only one kind of her. 'This isolation enhances the sense that the characters need each other, and only each other.' Surely a girlfriend is no match for a sophisticated, wealthy penis, and as a result, authors are inclined to shape their protagonists as outsiders, only to then fail to offer any semblance of an explanation why such lovely, generous, kind people never have anyone to talk to about their feelings.

'In the 21st century, is it really believable that someone would be so alone in the world, and what does it say about them that they are? If you’re asking readers to step into the shoes of a lonely virgin is a best friend hovering in the wings the most useful weapon in your empathy arsenal?!' For Secrets Uncovered and the majority of lonely virgins the answer is, we, or rather they, don't understand the question. How is the assessment framed, by a responsibility to realism or to the wanton ammunition of an empathy arsenal? Is not a novelist's foremost obligation to their novel? Every reader can sympathise with what it must be like to be a solitary waif, innocent of the carnal lessons of passion, but once the writer has given her a close acquaintance won't that rile the jealous bitterness of those who only find companions in the books they read?

Now, say someone was considering adding a confidante to their narrative, what would they hope to achieve from such a character? 'On a positive note, they can offer much needed advice in times of need; they also provide a contrast to the heroine, showcasing why she’s like no other woman and is worth the hero’s attention. Alternatively, sometimes a BFF plays false, forcing the heroine to accept she needs to let go of her past life and throw her lot in with the hero.' Best of all, a contrasting friend offers spin-off value, whereby one novel becomes an entire series, stretching a reader's interest to a sequel long before they have even lost interest in the original. Typically, romance experts advise against using a gal-pal, flatmate or family member as a plot catalyst for obvious reasons. It would be foolish to move the epiphany-having and decision-making away from the heroine, but a sounding-board is preferable to the risible interior monologue most Harlequin exponents continue to insist upon. Furthermore, there are no negative points, so everyone can move down to the next paragraph.

Secrets Uncovered has extrapolated their argument with a handy list of three top tips, useful not only for when inventing an imaginary friend, but also for when someone real comes asking you for insight into their relationship. '1. Make sure the support network is series-appropriate!' Why would your Medical heroine be hanging around a downtown laundrette with a pregnant stripper discussing drag-racing? The very idea is frankly insulting to the reader. Therefore be sure the task of adding a secondary character doesn't make you completely forget who you are and what your book is about.

'2. The reasons behind the friendship need to be believable. Friends with opposite personalities – the quiet heroine and the ballsy BFF – are great as a vehicle to encourage the protagonist to leave her comfort zone, but extra thought needs to go into explaining their connection.' As we have seen in such films as Something Borrowed an unlikely friendship needs a long, tedious sequence for the audience to understand how they became close in the first place in order to comment that history doesn't rationalise why they remain in each other's company in the present. Back-story will not help a reader doubtful of an incredulous partnership. Instead it is more eye-opening to witness the twosome in action, and learn how they compliment and empower the other while doing friendly things such as visiting the gym, shopping for clothing and drinking coffee in brightly-lit locations.

'3. Finally, think about how the dynamic of the friendship will reflect on the heroine.' The use of colleagues and companions for the sake of realism is an unnecessary distraction from the driving force of the plotting, yet it is considered perfectly acceptable to surround the hero with a bevy of mates and business associates to further exemplify his magnificence and sturdy hair-line by comparison. Therefore, the writer must be aware of how the reader will react to the heroine dealing with parents, children and the student serving her coffee, their bleary eyes struggling due to the fantastic light scheme. While an arrogant billionaire can order hot beverages with eye contact and a subtle movement of a coiffured eyebrow, the demure secretary who doesn't know her own beauty must remain polite and respectful to everyone, because the reader reads carefully and seems unreasonably judgmental.

With everything neatly explained, are there any additional secrets we should uncover? 'But if you decide a best friend isn’t for you, that’s ok too!' Sure, but who will you turn to in times of need for things you need, possibly over coffee? Not your fictional heroine, because soon she will be married, pregnant and living in a castle. Who knows whether she will be able to find time to spend with you then, and she can't have coffee, due to the foetus with a low-tolerance for caffeine. Meanwhile, back to the matter at hand, what if you decide to ignore this lesson and not craft a best friend for your protagonist? 'The challenge with writing a more isolated heroine is making that aloneness exceptionally convincing, so that the readers truly get on board with it and can still identify with her. Ask yourself, why would this woman be like this? And think outside the box here – what other ways can your heroine be emotionally vulnerable or isolated that doesn’t preclude having no friends/family?!' Some sort of debilitating allergy?

Once the choice of a credible isolated heroine has been settled upon, this direction should form the entire story. Romance authors often commit an early error with a discordant lack of connection between their characters and their plot, as if one has been dreamed up separately from the other. We see themes hinted at by the heroine's back-story, often involving childhood tragedy bringing about a mistrust of others, then squandered as this woman is thrown powerlessly into a marriage of convenience with a forceful Greek sheikh tycoon. Would a contented, settled childhood have someone react differently to being bought by a Mediterranean businessman who slept with her many years ago only to have recently discovered she birthed his baby and then concealed it from him? As this weblog entry concerns the issue of the secondary character representing emotional support it hardly seems like the place to ask.

“It wouldn't do to be caught crying at the rodeo”

When reading through Secrets Uncovered – Blogs, Hints and the Inside Scoop from Mills & Boon Editors and Authors, the opening chapter, concerning character, offered little we haven't regurgitated here at Bewildered Heart previously. Still, we had no intention of letting an opportunity to fulfill the non-existent requirements of our imaginary post quota slip by, merely out of a fear of redundancy. We discuss Harlequin on the internet, without redundancy we have nothing. Now, do not worry, gentle reader, unlike Mills & Boon and the rest of the print and online publishing media we will attempt to find the areas of Secrets Uncovered not touched upon until now. For example, everybody knows what makes for an empowered, empathetic heroine, but why do romance authors keep writing them as weak-willed and unlikeable, and does this attitude reflect poorly on their persons? Will the editors at Romance HQ offer any insight greater than Bewildered Heart's previous advice to give your smart, young, independent, beautiful woman a failing, such as a lack of sexual experience or being easily seduced by the offer of money?

Once you have looked up the word heroine in a dictionary and found the definition vague, seemingly not geared toward the romance market and full of further words in need of being looked up, you should open the free eBook your agent sent you and ask, what are Mills & Boon heroines? 'All sorts spring to mind – the innocent secretary, Cinderella, the pampered princess (figuratively and literally!), the secretary, the single mum…' Yes, every kind of secretary you can think of, including the secretary who is also a divorced or widowed mother, the secretary enslaved by her deeply unattractive sisters and the royal beauty cut off by her father and forced to take temporary administrative work in an office. 'These archetypes can produce amazing results – from heart-wrenchingly vulnerable to endearingly feisty, you name it, we’ve read it and loved it! However, in the wrong hands, these heroines become the worst kind of cliché – spineless doormats or spoilt brats, and nothing else.' Quite right, no one wants to read about the girl who works on reception unless she has emotional depth behind those vacant eyes and disingenuous smile.

The challenge for any author, and the most important to overcome, is to find a way to imbue their female lead with credibility and dignity, whilst somehow maintaining her position as central to a romance story. Countless times we witness a protagonist become an empty vehicle for plot machinations advanced by the hero, who, like any good man, wants to be finished with a Mills & Boon as quickly as possible. The heroine is compartmentalised awkwardly, her virtues, flaws, objectives, circumstances and lifestyle a hodgepodge of ideas poorly intertwined into a narrative with little use for personal identification. She has no stomach-churning dilemmas, caught between desire and principle, to make her a compelling and empathetic protagonist. Instead of centering the worthwhile aspiration for reader likeability around the heroine's momentous decisions, Harlequin insist upon simply avoiding perfection with a handful of minor traits that have nothing to do with the defining relationship about to unfold. Instead of beginning with the cornerstone of any great novel, a character with a wanted destination blocked by seemingly insurmountable conflicts brought about by their own moral demons, we are asked limited questions with no stepping off point to work from.

'Let’s be honest here – who likes a perfect woman?' A perfect man? The truth is, readers do not wish to follow the adventures of perfect people in book form, they get enough of that from television and occasional get-togethers with former university friends. However, this is less to do with the difficulty had in relating to them, but rather because there is no direction in which to develop the emotional journey of someone with nothing to learn. Still, surely all aspiring novelists create idealised versions of themselves through their amateurish inability to write, so what hints can Secrets Uncovered offer to avoid this inevitability? 'Recognisably human flaws go a long way towards dissolving the sickeningly perfect stereotype, and making your heroine 100% real. So, is she spoilt/stroppy/too forgiving/dangerously generous? If so, why?! Show us the true character hiding behind her external characterisation and you’ll be able to make any heroine empathetic!' There are far too many exclamation marks in that sentence for it to be taken seriously, but it is interesting to note that generosity can reach a dangerous level, and also that Mills & Boon has trouble thinking of negative personality traits.

'These women might be victims of circumstance, but they aren’t victims in any other sense! Whatever their range of life experience, it’s this strength of character that gives them the power to tame their heroes.' Despite their protestations that anything is possible within the pages of their novels, there is naturally a nurturing aspect to any romantic heroine, whether the story pushes it to the forefront immediately, or bombastically draws it out through the narrative. After all, the goal of every romance fiction player is marriage and babies, and therefore the hero is depicted as powerful to the point of uncontrollable masculinity, leaving the heroine to the task of emasculating him into suitable husband material. 'Does she stick up for herself, proud of where she’s come from or what she’s made of herself? Or perhaps she’s more vulnerable and shy, and it’s up to the hero to teach her how to stand up for herself, whilst she teaches him to look below the surface? Perhaps she’s massively spoilt, and has to learn to reveal her vulnerabilities under the hero’s expert teaching!' The choice is yours, writers, but pick carefully, as these three options are all you will receive from us.

Moving onward into what we are calling the Twenty-First Century and suddenly the contemporary woman is faced with a changing world without even Mills & Boon to fall back on for nostalgic fantasy, because even they are accepting the date on their calenders is not only accurate, but meaningful. 'In the 21st century, we know women can have it all: work, love, and a family. So, if she wants to bag a job, a child and a husband, that’s great, but if she wants to be a stay-at-home mum, that’s fab too! Your heroine can make whatever life choices she wants.' As long as that life choice involves children, because she will end the novel pregnant whether she likes it or doesn't realise she likes it yet. These guarantees of freedom are always tempered by the commercial needs of the publisher. It is liberty within reason, as the veneer of reality is sometimes necessary to have that stroppiness and potentially fatal degree of generosity really hit the reader in the head as well as in the heart. Perhaps Secrets Uncovered sees little point in teaching the heroine element any further because you, the author, would not have taken to this money-making scheme without, at the very least, a main character. Nevertheless, the major pitfall of practically every Mills & Boon novel lies within the protagonist, and as a result of this weak starting point, the rest of the book collapses, no matter how much can be gleaned from the remaining lessons found in an eBook.

Those looking to Romance HQ for help are in more trouble than Romance HQ can save them from. Furthermore, those having read any example of trite romantic fiction will have assumed the task is blissfully straight-forward, simply because the publishers consistently line their shelves with books that do not take heed of the information revealed in the guidelines and blog entries posted online. Due to these inconsistencies, brought about by myopic greed and an insatiable public hunger, there are no signs of improvement from Mills & Boon, while their profits rise and their stable of writers grow increasingly irked by outsider criticism. Everyone deserves better from the traditional arrangement where books last one month, authors hurry out three or four titles every year, worried only about hitting their word count, and readers buy blindly, unable to discern quality from a purposely homogenised product. Meanwhile, Bewildered Hearts watch on, optimistic yet eternally bewildered, wondering how a business model can escape a rut when a rut is all it has known. An empowered, empathetic workforce would be a fine start, more time spent crafting character and plot would be appreciated, and a semblance of competence in the art of literature would solve many of these problems, and might perhaps teach people how to love each other and themselves, no longer willing to view frizzy hair and naïve kindness as humanising weaknesses.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He'd called her his wife, kissed her, held her. Was she wrong in her interpretation of that?"

When we left Hired by the Cowboy at the end of its third chapter we abandoned Alexis Grayson at a pivotal moment in her tumultuous life. Having met a dashing, sensitive, attractive, old-fashioned, young Canadian rancher she had tentatively agreed to a marriage of convenience, allowing he to save his farm and herd of cattle, and allowing her somewhere quiet to pregnantly fester, learn to cook, garden and tidy and experience the addictive joy of having a stranger care for you in order to land a life-changing amount of money. For her titular cowboy and owner, Connor Madsen hadn't bet on finding Alexis both charming and attractive, despite noticing both of those qualities upon meeting her, as she lay thankfully unconscious on the floor of a grocery store. Even though all seemed curiously devoid of drama we had ourselves a lengthy novel to read, and now with it read we can begin to ruminate on its many faults, such as dim-witted characters, slack prose style and the contrived use of tornadoes to resolve emotional crises. You, dear reader, may also read this book, for free, through the magic of the internet, although be careful not to get distracted by the cover of Baby Bonanza.

Ever since her crusading historian parents died in a plane crash when she was however old she was when it happened, Alex has been alone, resolutely determined to never put her faith in anyone, in case they somehow die in a plane crash. Somewhat miraculously therefore, and perhaps further proof she was right not to rely on somebody else, she is with child and the father has long since disappeared, hopefully in the direction of his own unlikely romance novel, or, failing that, an aeroplane. The idea of a safe home, a little spending money and a fraudulent wedding is just what she needs after an existence on the straight and narrow. With the opportunity of a few month’s worth of recuperation and recipe-learning she sets herself the task of giving birth and setting her baby up with the opportunities she never had, until she too steps aboard an ill-fated flight. Once she is settled, healthy and able to care for her fatherless, unsupported kid she will move out of Connor's desolate ranch and start over, afresh and ready for the next challenge, such as finding work and balancing motherhood with poverty and scheduling.

Meanwhile, Connor is a changed man since his parents and brother died in a car crash, many years ago when he was however old he was when it happened. Since then he has given up on his dreams to be a vet and instead worked tirelessly to save the family homestead. Due to a beef scare his cattle may have to be culled, throwing him into the grisly ordeal of bankruptcy and killing cows for no good reason. Therefore, a timely marriage to an equally troubled soul would release his trust fund early, staving off the prospect of losing everything. The majority of Donna Alward's novel, after the swift establishing of plot, is spent on wedding planning, shopping and touching, hugging and emotional support leading to unresolved sexual tension. Both Connor and Alex have fallen in love with each other, even before their wedding, but remain certain that initiating romantic actions will jeopardise their untenable situation. Because Hired by the Cowboy is a Special Moments release the author never indulges the reader in a series of gratifying sex scenes. Instead of working hard to justify her couple never uniting she chooses to drag out shallow emotional reasoning for interminable periods of self-doubt and stupidity. While a Modern Romance would have also resorted to unsubstantiated dithering at least we would have had several bouts of love-making, not to mention Alex would be without womb foetus and Connor would be a ruthless billionaire, and the novel would have been written by Paige Cameron (How about The Billionaire Rancher Buys a Wife, or The Billionaire Cowboy Takes a Wife? Come on, Paige Cameron!).

Certainly the hero and heroine have their motives for keeping their marriage strictly platonic, the woman is pregnant, the man is noble, their futures are uncertain and they agreed to a platonic marriage from the outset. However, Alward makes a series of understandable missteps, a cuddle, revelations, promises, a sweeping kiss with tongues and a shared empathy from having their families killed by mechanical failure. There is simply no option for Connor and Alex but to end up together and Alward has no idea how to keep them physically close yet romantically apart. They have so much in common after all, they are in love with one another, there isn't another human in a hundred miles and in a strange twist of fate they are married under a poplar tree. If the husband's decision to go all out on a fake wedding, especially given his perilous finances, seems imprudent the reader would best be reminded they are reading a romance novel. Still, why did he invite a hundred guests, buy a fancy dress for her and a tuxedo for him, handcraft a gazebo, hire a band, serve food, exchange vows while making eye contact and kiss the bride if their declarations of eternal fidelity were acts of deceit? No wonder Alex is a tangled mess of hormones and mixed signals, and she is only living it, we’re the ones reading it with the benefit of third person interior monologues.

Her, and our, problems are only exacerbated by a following trip to the local rodeo when the assorted judgmental Canadians are able to see Connor with his new, clearly showing, bride. Discovering that this social faux pas may cause some to ask questions Alex flees to the boot of the pick-up, knowing all of Sundre will have assumed Connor must be the father. This reinforces the major stumbling block of any romantic hopes for the book's husband and wife. The reason they cannot be together is because she carries another man's baby. Yet Connor would make a wonderful father, and in his mind he is the father, because he has a tenuous understanding of biology. Alex desperately wants she and the man she loves to no longer be a fake family, but a real one, a change that would require a minimal amount of effort. Despite these simple solutions the lovers quarrel and Alexis resolves to move out. After all, she does not need to live at the ranch for the marriage to exist legally on paper. If only they had realised that from the beginning they could have saved so much time and money by marrying at a registry office in jeans and T-shirts and Donna Alward could have avoided writing the book thanks to a pragmatic loyalty to logic.

Instead Connor opens a letter to discover his herd must be culled and no matter how great his trust fund, or how much affinity shines from Alex's eyes, or how tempting those sandwiches she has made look, nothing will save Windover now. Distraught at the news he rushes out towards the hills on a swelteringly hot day. Seconds later the clouds have turned grey, rain has fallen and a tornado has materialised. There is nothing quite like thinking someone has died to make you re-evaluate your feelings towards them, and sure enough hero and heroine confess love and kiss in the wreckage of what is now their place where a home once was. Suddenly neither care about any of the things Alward had previously been using as narrative devices and neither do we, the incredulous readers, because we hadn't been paying particularly close attention. A brief epilogue explains how the adoption went smoothly, and no worries about the family's secret and shame of the Madsen name, because Alexis is pregnant again, and this time we can only hope Connor is the legitimate dad. Furthermore, the business is safe, as Connor and a friend went into business rearing horses, an obvious solution no one had bothered to think of before.

Bewildered Heart chose Hired by the Cowboy because of Alward's statements in Secrets Uncovered about dealing with heartbreak. However, there is little darkness here that didn't appear in The Dad Next Door, which had the gall to kill off a child, albeit a twin to lessen the blow. As with all of Harlequin Mills & Boon's claims at greatness they are under-mined under the barest scrutiny. The tragedy the novel supposedly deals with is contained within the back story, and while Connor loses everything he easily recovers, and while Alex carries a baby the father is never mentioned and this is merely a subverted plot-point from every Special Moments example involving a single parent. Hired by the Cowboy has a tender relationship at its heart, but makes too many inept errors to work properly as a credible romance. The characters are too foolish to make for believable human beings. As a result their decisions become forced and infuriatingly slow for a storyline eager to push for behaviour unbecoming of anyone capable of considering consequences and basic emotions. While the narrative felt conceived from thin air as Alward went along she was able to give her reader the happy ending that never seemed further than one honest conversation away. With characters as homespun as Alex and Connor no one would begrudge them all those children and a steady income, thus resolving the two issues established in the opening chapter, when a girl without identity was hired to illegally acquire funds to pay off business debts.

“I'll stop as soon as I fall in love”

In 2006 Karyn Bosnak, she of Save Karyn fame, followed her autobiographical cash-grab with some contemporary romance fiction, a novel entitled Twenty Times a Lady. This tells the story of Delilah Darling, a recently-unemployed, twenty-nine year-old singleton who drunkenly sleeps with her former boss and hits the dizzy heights of twenty sexual partners, almost two times the national average, still with no immediate prospect of a husband. Instead of adding to her number then, and on the advice of self-help books and a priest, she decides to seek out her ex-boyfriends to find if any of them are now suitable marriage material, learn a little something about herself, and maybe, just maybe, find love along the way. With the help of her dog, Eva Gabor, and the sexy-bartender-next-door, she heads off across the United States on a madcap adventure sure to delight those who are entertained by that sort of thing.

Meanwhile, and completely coincidentally, in 2008 the bright sparks at the US television network CBS created a show concerning an attractive female who visits a psychic and discovers that she has already dated the love of her life. The Ex-List, as it happens, was based on the 2007 Israeli series The Mythological X, to convolute this anecdote to the point of tedium. Anyway, the aptly named Bella Bloom sets off in search of her myriad of ex-boyfriends, convinced there she will find the husband to grow old with and one morning way off in the future find lifeless next to her in bed. Each week she would track down another former beau, assisted ably by a handsome bachelor, her next door neighbour and best friend. Almost immediately it became obvious where the show was headed, and sure enough it was cancelled after four episodes.

Never ones to let an obviously flawed idea die gracefully, however, Hollywood responded with a glossy adaptation of Twenty Times a Lady, entitled What's Your Number?, hoping a few artificial changes would tempt the thrice-bitten audience into theatres. Now then, novel and silly TV series, modern women do not take romantic advice from mediums or the New York Post, they receive their dating insights from lifestyle magazines, and so, when an attractive female singleton reads Marie Claire she realises American women average ten and a half sexual partners in their lifetime, with seventy-two per cent of the same ladies confused over what constitutes half a sexual partner. For Anna Faris’ renamed Ally Darling, her number has already hit the dizzy heights of nineteen, and then a further statistic is bandied about. Once women reach an even score they are somehow doomed to never marry and experience the bittersweet joy of waking one morning to find their husband's corpse snuggled gently beside them. Dun-dun-dun.

When Ally celebrates her life-changing decision to swear off all men until the perfect one comes along, she has a few too many cocktails and achieves her partner-limit through a shameful one night stand with Community. Oh no, Anna Faris, you have already reached your maximum number at the early age of Anna Faris' acting age-range. Therefore, Ally concludes, she must delve back into her history, and find her husband from the assorted back-story of doomed relationships and casual sexual encounters, because this is enough of an idea for a romantic comedy nowadays. Fortunately for Miss Darling, and the creaky plotting, her hunky, single, possibly charming, next door neighbour agrees to help track down the men and then watch those awkward conversations, all the while making snide, possibly charming, asides to the amusement of no one but himself.

What follows is predictable and largely embarrassing for all concerned, as lovably clumsy Anna Faris and the possibly charming torso with head Chris Evans slowly fall in love through arguments, occasionally interrupted by a previously-respected comedian slumming it for money. What’s Your Number? hints at the wider implications of its concept without ever concluding with anything worth knowing. Audiences may enjoy a handful of the jokes and will no doubt cheer as the girl rejects the pleasant businessman for the misogynistic, unemployed slacker, but they will garner no comfort from the knowledge that every facet of your life will work out ideally if you are the protagonist in a romantic comedy. After all, how do Ally and Colin afford such luxurious apartments when neither have jobs and why are they able to find ever-lasting love when neither one of them has any likeable personality traits?

The film, scripted by writers inclined towards sitcoms and shot by a director inclined towards television, lacks the cinematic depth most modern cinema lacks in whatever era we are calling this one. Despite an indecent unwillingness to engage the viewer in anything besides contempt, What’s Your Number? accidentally treads upon a handful of curious insights before abandoning everything for gynecology jokes and the womanly delight of weddings. The filmmakers understood who made up their target audience and that crowd did not include we Bewildered Hearts, with questions and concerns and a desire for romantic comedies to either entertain or challenge human assumptions of living.

Towards the beginning of the film, as Ally leaves a bar, disgusted to discover one ex-boyfriend remains a bartender, with Colin, the out-of-work musician (although a bartender and unemployed actor in the novel) she concludes the film determined to love forever, she shouts him down over the male’s idealised fantasy of the perfect woman, mother-sister-lover-friend-angel-devil-earth-home. Ally describes her less eloquently, but resolutely insists such a lady does not exist, and Colin is quick to agree. This argument is largely irrelevant, as the movie continues towards a different epiphany that woman are not defined through the eyes of their lovers, or through friends, family or rivals, but by themselves. The scientists at Marie Claire, uptight married friends, possibly charming neighbours and Martin Freeman cannot force Ally to become someone she should not have to become. Through what amounts to an arbitrarily-sketched character arc our heroine comes to the same conclusion, only to learn one drunken night stand never happened, so Colin is her twentieth after all and her whole journey of self-doubt and recrimination was meaningless.

It would be very easy, and probably correct, to dismiss What’s Your Number? as shameful sexism, yet the pressures on modern women come from within. Ally’s two romantic options differ crucially in their reaction to hearing her number, but neither particularly care about who she was, rather who she is, even though who she is never gets explained by the narrative. No one passes moral judgement on Colin’s abundant sexual history or his appalling treatment of women, until Ally, who dismisses him as a pig before sleeping with him. Colin’s attraction to Ally is purely physical, and his developing social interest grows from their proximity, her seeing his lifestyle means it is impossible for him to lie to her. They aren’t so much soul-mates as flatmates, wise to each other’s distortions.

The audience will learn nothing from the film, or Ally’s revelation, because it is shallow, obvious and played for laughs. Mostly, however, What’s Your Number? has no resemblance to the real world and the statistics have been conjured from thin air to benefit the story. An admittedly ten-year-old study stated U.S. women average about four partners, making Ally’s achievement all the more impressive and further burdening her with a moronic social stigma she does not seem too concerned about, until a friend elaborates. ‘In America, 96% of women who have been with 20 or more lovers can’t find a husband,’ she says over drinks in a bar, pulling numbers from the recesses of nowhere. How can anyone relate to anything that isn’t remotely accurate? When you cannot empathise with the characters continued viewing is usually unwarranted, and when the film, book, article uses made-up findings to prove its point a critical evaluation of those results would be obviously misguided.