Paperback Reader

It’s a particular curiosity that a genre of fiction as large and as encompassing as romance continues to grow, not with experimental or speculative creativity, but by continually recreating and repackaging and retreading the same product. Romance readers like their formulas and constructs and that’s fine. But, when the same story is told over and over again it should become more polished with each telling, more fine tuned every time it’s recited. What it can’t do is fail on the most elementary level. Fiction, for all its many elastic incarnations, must rigidly hold to certain fundamentals: stories must have beginnings, middles, and ends, setting and character must be established, conflict must build and action must rise, then fall. Fiction that doesn’t ascend to this most basic level—especially in a genre that takes so few risks—fails.

Just in time for wedding season, Catch of the Day arrives with wedding themed novellas by Whitney Lyles, Beverly Brandt, Cathie Linz and Pamela Clare. This anthology offers readers a quick and uncomplicated dip into stories that stay tightly focused on the hero and heroine, while wading through bridal bouquets, pre-wedding jitters, extreme ceremonies, and ugly bridesmaid dresses. Like any wedding, Catch of the Day's crescendos are well planned and well carried out and conversely the low points are as painful and disastrous as a fumbled wedding cake.

The time has come to throw back the curtain and provide a sneak peek into the inner workings of PBR. If you believe all of the book discussions resemble refined Oprah Book Club teas, prepare to be disappointed. The behind-the-scenes action here at PBR is not all that sophisticated at times. In fact, the words "rugby match" come to mind.

The process starts simply enough. Books arrive from authors, from publishers, from PR professionals and, every now and then, from actual bookstores following the exchange of money or credit between PBR reviewers and said bookstores. We pass around titles and upcoming releases. But sometimes - not all the time, but sometimes - a book just sits there and manages to create controversy.

Enter the anthology Hell With The Ladies by Julie Kenner, Kathleen O'Reilly and Dee Davis.

Chestnuts roasting on an open fire and Jack Frost nipping at your nose make the holidays, and curling up with a good book, all the better. The same goes for romances; there is always the hope that holiday themed romances will deliver a seasonal magic and the burden of disbelief will be lessen in the season of miracles. Or, at least, that’s the wish. In the case of Sugar and Spice – an anthology featuring Christmas themed romances from Fern Michaels, Beverly Barton, Joanne Fluke and Shirley Jump – that’s not entirely the case.

Pick up any literary journal and you’ll find short fiction, anywhere from ten to forty pages at the most, that defines settings, develops character, and showcases a journey that has a clear beginning, middle, and end. Pick up any romance anthology (subgenre is unimportant), and you’ll most likely find fiction that is basically flawed, missing some vital portion of storytelling, such as an arc, or motivation, or a rise in drama. How is it possible that literary short fiction manages, in such a limited space, to hit the highest of points, and tell the best of stories, when romance novellas—stories told in five or six times the word count—have all the structure and soundness of a three-legged chair? How is it possible that romance novellas fail not only to be great, but largely fail to be passable as well?

Anthologies always carry a risk. While there are positives, such as getting a taste of a new or new-to-you author without investing in a single title and a guaranteed quick read, there are potential negatives. Those center on the fears of shorter pages meaning less plot, less development or just plain less story. All valid. Those concerns are heightened when the book is the second round on a similar theme. Will the stories feel fresh? Will this be a re-tread of the last book? And, here, will the authors be able to make the daughters of Satan likeable heroines...?