Dirty Little Secret

Time to reveal a dirty little secret... I read Mills & Boon. A lot. Yes, I can hear you sniggering as you imagine me in my old dressing gown, glasses on, coffee in hand, surrounded by cats, reading tales of strangers getting down-and-dirty. You're SO wrong. I don't even have loads of cats... *moving swiftly on*

I buy a lot of used books - mostly online, and usually from sites like Awesome Books and Better World Books - mainly because I can't justify spending huge amounts of money on something I'm not sure I'll like. Whenever I buy a used book online, I donate an old used book of mine, so in my little head, it evens itself out. Don't get me wrong - I've no problem paying full whack, but when you read as much as I do, that can turn into an expensive habit pretty quickly.

The latest Mills & Boon that I read was "Hot Wired" by Jennifer LaBrecque, and I LOVED IT. I'll give you the spiel on the back cover:

Bad boy Beau has a need for speed. The racing driver's been irresistible to women - yet feisty wedding planner Natalie is the only one who can keep up with him! But does she have the power to tame this reckless rebel for good?

Oh, Jennifer LaBrecque, you had me at Bad Boy. Just to iron out any illusions you may have at this point: I'm not single, I'm not sex-obsessed, and I'm not a big perv. Well, most of the time I'm not a perv. Who doesn't love a bit of light escapism? Frankly, the only thing that shocks me about most Mills&Boon books is that more of them haven't been turned into movies. This would be an instant movie classic, I'm telling ya.

Image: http://www.priceinspector.co.uk/

In my head, the hero never looks like the one on the book cover, but in this one, he was vaguely similar. Which got me thinking, who the heck are these people on the covers? Where do they find them? I mean, I know they're models, but is there any particular agency that Mills&Boon/Harlequin use to find their models? I'd love to know (purely for research and nosiness). I remember reading an article in a magazine once about this couple who liked to recreate Romance novel covers for the craic* and it looked like so much fun. Not that I'd ever do that, I mean, my other half is more at home under the bonnet of a car than between the pages of a book. Also, he thinks I'm strange enough as it is, that'd put me into another level of weirdness altogether!

All in all, I can't recommend Mills&Boon highly enough - laugh all you want, but the majority of them that I've read (and that's a LOT - my collection is reaching disturbing levels) have been better than any "romcom" that I've seen.

What kind of books do you guys like? Is there anything that you wouldn't admit to having in your collection?

S xxx

*craic (pronounced crack) = Irish word for having a laugh. Not shoving something up your snout.