Almost every 2 books on the romance book­shelf fea­tures some type of para­nor­mal: vam­pire, were­wolf, were-something. It’s get­ting to be ridicu­lous. On the cover there’s somebody’s neck with a set of teeth hov­er­ing nearby. Or a full moon. Gee. They all seem to read alike to me. I don’t know which one to choose from since they all fea­ture some sub­set of sto­ries that have a vam­pire or a were­wolf in it or a combo of both. Pass.

Then if your not hit over the head with the para­nor­mal, there’s the erot­ica that’s pack­aged like roman­tica and sold in trade size paper­backs wait­ing for your perusal. I had bought Robin Schone’s and regret that purchase. Anyway, I skip those, too. Mov­ing on there are the series books — don’t rec­og­nize any that write good roman­tic sus­pense out­side of Jus­tine Davis. How­ever, Davis hasn’t really reached that emo­tional level in her writ­ing yet, where she was before her hus­band was sick. I loved Jus­tine Davis’s older books. She has a new one out that I recently bought. We’ll see. Tid­bit: Sil. Roman­tic Sus­pense line was for­merly Sil. Inti­mate Moments, just in case you didn’t know.

Then there is the r/s nov­els like Cindy Ger­ard and oth­ers. Skim and skip those, too.  They all sound the same to me. Body­guard­ing seems to be very pop­u­lar and there’s an agency full of them. I did buy Dan­ger­ous Games by Lora Leigh because a cer­tain blog­ger is pimp­ing her book. Can’t wait to read it espe­cially since it got a D– at a cer­tain review site. Why am I not sur­prised? What hurts most r/s nov­els for me is the stu­pid stuff most of these char­ac­ters do when faced with per­ceived dan­ger. Do I actu­ally find it plau­si­ble to meet with a stranger in the mid­dle of the night to receive info on whatever? No. Do I really believe that you can go to a Third World coun­try and save your brother/sister/cousin/father? No. Do you hon­estly want me to believe that after nasty threats and attempts on your life that you don’t need pro­tec­tion? Nope.  Not much inter­ested in r/s nov­els. Usu­ally the romance is weak, sus­pense strong or vice versa. Can I get a happy medium?

For­get chick-lit. Some stores do shelve a few in the romance section. Don’t care for them. Never did. Then there’s the his­tor­i­cal romances that don’t look all that appeal­ing either. Just what is left to appeal to a reader like me? Noth­ing I guess. So, I move on to the other sec­tions of the store like fan­tasy, graphic nov­els, YA and fic­tion.  Hope you all had bet­ter luck shop­ping. The pick­ings seem slim. I really believe that some of the best sto­ries out there are prob­a­bly not sold in stores at all. They are like, wait­ing for word of mouth and I’d have to order it. Or it’s sit­ting in my TBR pile. Hee.