Cavendish Library Blog

While it is no surprise to you, dear reader that I love romance novels, my taste usually runs to the paranormal.  I was stuck under the hairdryer….again and picked up this book.  I was glad that I did.

Virgin River tells the story of Melina Monroe, a forty-something nurse who takes an assignment in a small town, called strangely enough, Virgin River and through a series of medical adventures becomes the town’s nurse and midwife and falls in love.  OK, the plot is rather predictable. 

This is what I like about the book, and what has drawn me to read the next five sequels: the characters are realistic.  The heroine is not some Barbie-doll ish twenty year old, but a woman in her early forties with a brain and real personality.  The townspeople are quirky and likeable and I cared about them.  Many of the supporting characters are featured in later books and you find Melinda and her hero in the later books as well. 

I recommended this book and the sequels to a library patron.  She took the first one out with some trepidation and came back a few days later and took out the rest of them, saying that she would like to live in Virgin River.

Some days so would I.  I wonder if they have an opening for a librarian, and a hunky ex-marine for me.

I highly recommend these books. All of the Virgin River books are available to be checked out at the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.

Most time travel romances start when the heroine picks up an enchanted object and travels back in time to meet the man of her dreams.  Not so with this one.  The heroine wakes up in another body in the future with no preamble. The premise is exciting.  Jane Mansfield wakes up in 2009 with no idea what is going on around her.  People are calling her Courtney, her body doesn’t look like hers and she has no clue how to use a phone, a computer or what electricity is.

The book goes on over the course of a week or so while she figures out what to do and finds out why she is there. 

The book is interesting, though Jane/Courtney’s continuing confusion with all things modern wears a bit, Rigler is able to overcome it by giving Jane/Courtney “cellular memory” to enable her to do such things as drive and operate a computer.  Further, the narrator does a great job of differentiating between Jane’s internal monologue (English accent and all) and Courtney’s flat California accent.  The book is well written and amusing and I suggest it to anyone who like me, enjoys a romance novel.

It is available in audio book format from the Cavendish Fletcher Community Library.

Midnight Bayou by Nora Roberts  Copyright 2001, Jove 368 p.

I was surfing channels on my television one night not too long ago and I came across a made for TV movie based on the Nora Roberts book Midnight Bayou. As I remembered loving the book I watched the movie and was totally disgusted and decided to revisit the book to see if I had been mistaken when I read it.  After all it might have been as bad as the movie.  To my utter delight, it wasn’t.

The book has two intertwining plots.  One is the story of Declan, a lawyer from Boston who comes to New Orleans wanting a change from his life and remembering a house, Manet Hall, which he has seen years before. He restores it and falls in love with Lena.  Meanwhile he has dreams and fugue episodes about a family who lived in the hall a hundred years earlier.  As both stories unfold we find out what happened to the family and why the hall is haunted. 

This book is extremely well written.  The characters are well delineated and maybe it’s just me, but I always wanted to restore a big house.  The detail in the restoration makes me think that Nora Roberts either always wanted to or did restore something. 

Either way this book is an entertaining mix of romance, ghosts and home improvement and is perfect for beach reading or whiling away an afternoon.

I love a good romance and so far Robyn Carr has written several of them in a series.  “Virgin River” is the first in that series.  It concerns Melinda Monroe, a recent widow and trauma nurse who answers an advertisement looking for a nurse practitioner for the town of Virgin River, Washington.  She gets there to find that the house she was promised was in poor condition, the doctor she was supposed to assist was less than welcoming and that she had been hired by an older woman who thought the town needed her.

She almost leaves, and then finds a baby on her doorstep fulfilling a dream of motherhood she had during her marriage. Not only that, Jack Sheridan, the local bar owner and former Marine falls for her.

I really liked this book for a few reasons; the characters are well done and recognizable without being clichés. Both Jack and Melinda are past the first blush of youth.  What I really liked was that Melinda came from a happy prior marriage.  Most romances I have read where the heroine falls in love for the second time are on the run from an abusive first husband.  I also liked the town is so full of quirky characters who recur in other books in the series.  In fact when I read this book, I found myself wondering what happened to a particular character only to find him again in the sequel “Shelter Mountain”.

So far I have read the first four books in this series and Carr has done a great job of keeping the stories fresh with different twists on the theme and I have enjoyed seeing Melinda and Jack pop up over and over.  I recommend this series.

When I go to library conventions and talk with other libraries about what they put on the shelves, many (but not all) look down their noses at me when I tell them I purchase romance novels for my shelves.  Not necessarily best selling romance like Nora Roberts and Jayne Ann Krentz, but paperback novels with women with low cut dresses in the arms of men in low cut shirts.

I get shocked looks and questions about whether they circulate.  The answer is “Yes.”  Then I ask the other librarians: “Do you read them?”  Many refuse to make eye contact with me at this point or say “I’m too busy reading other books.”  Or “I have to keep up with my library reading.”  Frankly there is a lot of reading that a librarian has to do.  I don’t mean pleasure reading either.  I myself am at the verge of completing a long and grueling class that had me reading a textbook that was so big it could double as a nightstand, but I still took some time out to read trashy romance novels from time to time. Usually in the bathtub.

Why do people read them? Let’s look at a typical plot.  Once upon a time there was a beautiful girl, who lived with a mean parent or sister or aunt or was just abused by someone.  She meets a man who is rich, heroic, has some troubles of his own and isn’t looking to fall in love.  They meet. They can’t stand each other (usually) but their bodies know better (usually) they fall in lust, overcome a big problem together, fall in love and get married (Not necessarily in that order) and live happily ever after.  Think of it as a grown up fairy tale.

There are different variations on the theme.  Sometimes there are vampires or werewolves involved (I love those!).  Sometimes the male is somehow saved by the female, but he often saves her back.  They are contemporary with strong female characters.  They are historical with fiesty characters. There is time travel, history (some better researched than others) and sometimes embarrassingly bad writing and far too detailed descriptions of things better left to the privacy of ones imagination featuring a lot of heaving, panting and throbbing.

OK given all of that, why do I read them, and why should you? Trashy romance novels are escape pure and simple.  There’s usually not a lot of redeeming literary values, but sometimes writing stars develop from the genre.  Life is short.  Times are getting tough.  We all need a break.  Romance novels are not fattening, expensive or immoral.  Taking time for yourself is important.  Fill up the bathtub, barricade the door to keep your children from coming in (I would like to dig a pit fall trap to get privacy in the tub) and take a trashy novel in with you.  It’s a luxury you can afford.

If your library doesn’t carry a line of trashy romance novels, I can suggest going to your local used book store.  You can pick up books for less than half the cover price, then trade them in when you are done.  Or keep them. I have several of my favorites stacked three deep on bookcases in my house. Better yet, donate them to your local library.  I bet you’ll be surprised how many people read them.