Hi everyone! Hope your week is going well. The winner of Wild Desire, DayHunter, and When Good Wishes Go Bad is….
Mariee!
Please send me your mailing address!
So I noticed a review the other day on Goodreads in which the person gave one of my adult books a low score because it was “extremely inappropriate” and “it said paranormal romance, not pornographic romantic!”
I found this review a little surprising and a bit amusing, mostly because she’s implying that paranormal romance is supposed to have no sex. If you’re a reader of romance, and you’ve read my books you probably think they’re typical, as far as the level of intimacy is concerned. Or, perhaps, even a little tame compared to a lot of romances out there.
The problem is that I think people are confusing Paranormal Romance with Young Adult Paranormal Romance and Urban Fantasy. Romance has been around for a long, long time. Romance novels were in vogue before YA and UF. Typical romance novels have scenes of an intimate nature. Lots, in fact. So if you’re going to buy a YA paranormal romance and don’t care for those intimate scenes, make sure it says YA.
So yes, in my adult books there are scenes of an intimate nature. But you know what? If my book says its a romance, it is. That means that in my books, whether they’re YA or Adult, my characters are in love and they are faithful to each other; that is the typical romance novel that has been around for decades. I do find it amusing that in the U.S. especially, we can read books in which people are murdered and tortured and no one bats an eyelash, yet throw sex in there (sex between two characters in love, no less) and suddenly the book is corrupting society.
To be fair this reviewer probably read my YA and grabbed my other book thinking it was another YA. If you’ve never read a true romance before, I’m sure they might be rather shocking. I remember reading my first romance at 16. Instead of being shocked, I was more intrugued. lol. I’m not angry at all at this reviewer; I find it more interesting, if anything. In fact, I blame myself for not using a different name to write my YA and I’m sure I’ll get hate mail eventually from some angry parent saying I write porn. But I promise you that in the publishing world my books are not considered porn and in fact, are very typical for the majority of romance novels.
If they only knew what was really out there 😉
