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GIULIA TORRE

~ reading and writing romance

GIULIA TORRE

Category Archives: Giulia Torre

Wolfe Island is now on Audible!

15 Friday Apr 2022

Posted by Giulia Torre in Audible, Giulia Torre, Lisa Kelypas, Wolfe Island series

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audible, bridgerton, historical romance, wolfe island

I love listening to books – while I work making jewelry for minusOne jewelry, while cooking or folding laundry, while walking the dog. I understand many people can’t take in stories this way, but after two doctoral programs – one in English Literature and the other in teaching it – I find it difficult to sit down and read anymore, especially without a pencil. One must be productive, and I can be productive and escape with Audible both at once.

It was Audible narrator Rosalyn Landor bringing Lisa Kleypas’ historical romance regency series to life that inspired Wolfe Island. So I’m thrilled to have found a true actor – Cassandra Medcalf – to share Wolfe Island with Audible listeners.

Message me via Facebook for a promo code for a free download.

Review – The Everywhere Man – Victoria Gordon (1981)

31 Sunday Dec 2017

Posted by Giulia Torre in feminism, Giulia Torre, Harlequin Romance, vintage romance review

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category romance, Harlequin, harlequin romance, Mills and Boon, romance, romance novel reviews, romance reviews, sexual harassment

In honor of all the women who in 2017 fundamentally changed the conversation around sexual harassment, in honor of all the women who for a hundred years prior tried and failed, and in honor of those of us to come who will still speak truth to power, even in the face of new ASAP legislation (I speculate here) that will make accusing a white man of anything at all a criminal offense…I give you The Everywhere Man.

the everywhere man

Because, even if she claims she doesn’t, every woman wants a stalker.

Set in Australia, Alix is an architectural draftswoman with a talent for design and training German Shorthaired Pointers. Alix lost both her parents to a bushfire two years before, a sad fact that serves to motivate our heroine, at the awfully familiar sound of an Australian bushfire, out of the bush onto a busy highway at warp speed. She swerves into a ditch to avoid the hero. In the midst of an angry man rescue, she faints (ffs).

“Obnoxious, arrogant, conceited” Quinn Tennant pulls her out of the ditch. After Alix fails to show proper gratitude, Quinn asks, “Is it part of some Women’s Lib programme to be ungrateful, stroppy, and generally disagreeable?” (p. 17). Expressly claiming payment, he kisses her with “no crude savagery. Only a vast knowing” (p. 18, italics belong to the author). She tries and fails to claw-slap him (“Naughty, naughty” he chides), which is followed by laughter: “Why not relax? You’ve only one more kiss to finish the debt” (p. 19).

The professional rapes described in the story are metaphoric in scope. Victoria Golden, author of Always the Boss (1981) and Age of Consent (1985), among other 80s category romances, is presumably familiar with the issues of sexual predation in and out of the workplace.

Alix’s former fiancee and co-worker, a threadbare stereotype, steals her designs. New hero Quinn Tennant is not only her judge in dog shows, the landlord of her rented cottage, but also her boss. I won’t go into the details of the now-dated professional set-up for the central love scene. It includes a hotel suite, a drink in the boss’ face, a naked roll across the vast bed, an “athletic” dismount from the mattress, followed by a “sprint for the doorway”  (p. 114). Alix’s virtue remains intact because heroines can be out-and-out shrews when confronted with deflowering.

Fast forward through more dog shows to the happily-ever-after: The two are engaged to be married, and Quinn reveals he’s rescued Alix’ stolen designs. She promptly rips the short stack of drawings in half and quarters, saying “these are from the past; they don’t matter now” (p. 189).

What woman would rip up her original drawings? Who would expect her to?

It may mean nothing, but author Victoria Golden is a man, and the a.k.a. was born in response to the publisher’s claim that “no man” could write Harlequin category romance: “Gordon is widely believed to be the first man to seriously meet the challenge.”

I ask myself: is it one thing when readers consume toxic romance narratives imagined by other women, but another thing entirely when they’re crafted by a man (pretending to be a woman)?

My students tell me that it seems sometimes that I love these books, and sometimes that I hate them. Rarely in life am I this conflicted. True, someone can offer me one drink or another, and, faced with a hard choice, I’ll end up with both.

So I’ll end up with both here…

I love romance.

I hate this book.

 

Review – Liberated Lady – Sally Wentworth (1979)

04 Saturday Nov 2017

Posted by Giulia Torre in feminism, Giulia Torre, vintage romance review

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category romance, feminist romance, romance, romance novel reviews, romance reviews

 

liberated lady wentworth.jpgThis is science folks. And a romance novel from 1979 titled Liberated Lady…? It could be the motherlode. The size of the TV studio camera on the cover screams Lacanian gaze, and Sally Wentworth is celebrated for 101 books on Goodreads. It’s the perfect storm. Talk to me, Goose.

Going in, here are my boy-crazy-yet-feminist (mark my epitaph) hopes for this love story:

  • some consent language, really erotic stuff, that will, you know, teach me to put what I want into words
  • a behind-the-scenes look at a TV studio in 1979
  • really good prose
  • not rape?

I’m not optimistic. First sign of trouble is the inside cover, a total turn on for us rape fetishists who are titillated by forced seduction…

Don’t try to deny what’s between us.

Alex took a purposeful step toward her as Sara raised her hands in a futile attempt to ward him off. But he merely caught her wrists. Briefly she tried to struggle, but he said harshly, ‘It’s too late, the fight’s over.’ And he pulled her into his arms.

His mouth covered hers hungrily, claiming possession, allowing no resistance. Desperately, Sara tried to break free, but she couldn’t escape the passionate torment of his lips, searching, demanding a response.

She made a little sound, deep in her throat an the hand she’d raised to hit him instead sank slowly onto his shoulder and crept around his neck…

That’s right. Just let it go, sisters.

For the entirety of the book he’s mad she won’t admit he turns her on, but then when they can finally agree that she’s totally hot for him, he gives her a job, a part-time PR gig because “she knows something about computers.” Bam. HEA.

*sigh*

the male chauvanist sellers

I need a hero.

But “sensitive, liberated men” aren’t in the cards for mainstream romantics. Take as another example, Silhouette Intimate Moments (1985) The Male Chauvinist by Alexandra Sellers. First off, I love camp shirts, but is he wearing jorts?

Language is important. Liberation, chauvinism. These things need words, and having them makes talking about the issues easier.

Andreas…seemed to epitomize the attitudes Kate had fought to escape–but his potent sensuality drew her into his arms. No “sensitive, liberated” man had ever had that effect on her.

See how we did that? We found the words to explain that male chauvinists are actually hotter.

Review – The Little Nobody – Violet Winspear (1972)

15 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by Giulia Torre in Giulia Torre, Harlequin Presents, Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Romance Cover Art, Uncategorized, vintage romance review, Violet Winspear

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1970s harlequin, Boon Harlequin, category romance, contemporary romance, cover art, harlequin presents, harlequin romance, Mills and Boon, retro romance, romance novel reviews, vintage romance reviews, Violet Winspear

A Romance Canon, one as staid and firm (and stout) as Harold Bloom‘s should include Violet Winspear, whose corpus includes over 90 titles written for Mills & Boon. I love her name almost as much as I love Foyle’s War’s Honeysuckle Weeks.

The Little Nobody was chosen for the alpha hero lurking beyond it’s title.

Violet Winspear The Little Nobody

With a little nobody, a Big Somebody must be in there somewhere.

Violet Winspear is known for (notorious for at one time) her alpha heroes: angry, incomprehensible heroes and our future bodice rippers. In 1970, she explained:

I get my heroes so that they’re lean and hard muscled and mocking and sardonic and tough and tigerish and single, of course. Oh and they’ve got to be rich and then I make it that they’re only cynical and smooth on the surface. But underneath they’re well, you know, sort of lost and lonely. In need of love but, when roused, capable of breathtaking passion and potency. Most of my heroes, well all of them really, are like that. They frighten but fascinate. They must be the sort of men who are capable of rape: men it’s dangerous to be alone in the room with.

The category line Winspear helped to launched has pervasive arm-gripping, angry kissing, and even spanking. Still, she got a little flack for that.

The Little Nobody is only #15 in the original Harlequin Presents line (of thousands). A more recent Harlequin line of the same name has the same mission as the original:

You want alpha males, decadent glamour and jet-set lifestyles. Step into the sensational, sophisticated world of Harlequin Presents, where sinfully tempting heroes ignite a fierce and wickedly irresistible passion!

The little nobody is Ynis Raiford. She is newly arrived on a dark and stormy night to a gothic castle on the Cornish Cliffs (Cornwall, England) called the Sea Witch.

Her name – Raiford – is not even hers. It’s borrowed from her stepfather, a con man serving time as a result of his designs on the hero’s fortune (a part of it at least). The hero – Gard St. Clair – is a former maestro whose arm was injured by a freak storefront accident, and then severed from his body at the shoulder by a surgeon, unaware he was operating on a famous conductor because Gard’s wallet had been stolen from him by a pickpocket while he was still unconscious and bloody beneath the shattered pane of glass. So, when Ynis’ petty thief stepfather was caught trying to steal from Gard a couple years later, our hero was still a little touchy and unforgiving. Ynis ventures to the Sea Witch to persuade maestro Gard to drop the charges, but finds the hero a tad embittered by pickpockets, his missing arm, and, presumably, the bad weather.

The bad weather is important, because after Gard declines Ynis’ request to free from prison the only family she’s ever known, she runs out into the dark, stormy night and is deservedly hit by a car. She awakes back at the Sea Witch with amnesia and a ring on her finger. Gard claims she’s his fiancé.

Readers of this line are given no insight into the thoughts and feelings of heroes beyond their actions and smoldering looks of incomprehensible rage, but we can assume the hero feels guilty, or something.

So there we have it. Add another woman – “his old love, the beautiful actress Stella Marrick” – and the set-up is a typical 1970s Mills & Boon pretzel-plot.

Of significance…Ynis has been living in a convent for the better part of her life. Though the Reverend Mother tried to convince Ynis to take orders, instead Ynis wants to see the world. She’s at her hills-are-alive moment when this book begins.

What the heroine’s convent background provides is a nice dose of virgin envy. Yes, it’s a real thing. And Winspear knows how to work it.

He didn’t care a rap she found him more fearful than fascinating. He seemed to her to enjoy the fear which she felt. ‘There are certain terrors known only to a girl,’ he said. ‘The fact is fascinating to a man, and that’s the bare truth.’

Virgin envy. I’m green with it.

Review – The Queen’s Captain – Margaret Hope (1979)

08 Friday May 2015

Posted by Giulia Torre in Giulia Torre, Harlequin Romance, Hero Archetypes, Laura London, masquerade historical, Pirates, Romance Cover Art, ship captains, vintage romance review

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1970s harlequin, best historical romance, Boon Harlequin, category romance, Harlequin, harlequin romance, masquerade historical, ship captains, vintage romance

The Queen’s Captain by Margaret Hope arrived in a box from my mother’s attic. A huge box filled with Masquerade Historicals and Harlequin Romances when they were prized at 60 cents.

The Queens Captain

Consider this a reading case study. I’d call it an auto-ethnography, but, ew.

Phase I. I find the book in a box of books. They’re all vintage, which means all cock-blockers. There will be no sex, and if there’s any kissing to speak of, there will be no tongue.

Shameful.

Phase II. I find this particular book and read the inside flap.

Get to work, lad, or I’ll whip you.

Phase III. I remember a thread on Goodreads. One of those threads where a reader looks to the group for help to remember a title. The title this reader wanted to remember had a delicious scene where the heroine, disguised as a man, gets flogged by the hero. Flogged. Right there on the deck of the ship. The ship’s crew knows she’s a woman, but has been keeping the secret from the captain. They watch her flogged, unable to do anything about it, because there is no mutiny on a ship. The captain reigns supreme in only the way a captain can. (Note to self.) Then, when the captain discovers the man is a maid, the laments that follow are sweeter for the beating.

I think I’ve found that book.

I was so excited, it took me a few weeks to pick it up. When I did, I put it down again. Another week before I picked it up again. The anticipation bordered on dread. I was that titillated.

Phase IV. I forget utterly that this is a Harlequin line from 1979. It wasn’t until the heroine had escaped the ship unflogged that I’d realized my mistake.

What follows is an altogether different reading experience than I’d hoped for, but one I would recommend nonetheless. Margaret Hope may not have allowed her captain to flog the heroine, but she did so much research that I learned a few things about the Defeat of the Spanish Armada and the Battle of Gravelines.

Plus, Hope’s sentence structure is outstanding.

Swan Bay

15 Saturday Nov 2014

Posted by Giulia Torre in Giulia Torre, Romance Cover Art, Swan Bay, Wolfe Island series

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best historical romance, giulia torre, historical romance cover art, romance cover art, swan bay, wolfe island

SWAN BAY 
Swan Bay cover painted 11 14 14

Simon Low is a rake. His name travels across New York on whispers and titters. Owner of a luxury department store on the Ladies’ Mile, it’s his job to create desire.

He makes women want things. 

At least, that’s what Chloe Swan’s brothers tell her.

But her brothers must have the wrong man.

Simon is the most awkward man Chloe has ever met. When Simon visits his brother’s grave at the cemetery managed by Chloe’s family, he refuses to touch her. He can barely look at her, let alone seduce her.

What in the world could he make her want?

But Simon has a secret. He and his twin shared an extraordinary connection, one that was lost when the two were separated during the storm. He had always felt that connection. And then, with the single gulp of the river that had swallowed his twin, had not.

Until he meets Chloe.

Now, Simon has the devil of a time telling her the truth…that he can feel her from the inside out.

Set in New York against the Thousand Islands Region and Manhattan in 1893, Swan Bay continues the story of Wolfe Island.

Yes! Sign me up! I want to read SWAN BAY.

Kindle, Paperback Publication Date: February 14, 2016.

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