Review: EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT LOVE I LEARNED FROM ROMANCE NOVELS by Sarah Wendell

Everything I Know About Love I Learned from Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell is a joyous celebration of those novels we all love to read, romances.

Contemporary, historical, time travel, urban fantasy--we can't get enough of these stories. And not just because of gorgeous heroes with ridged muscles and large…ahems. Whatever trials the hero and heroine suffer in these courtship stories, the book always ends with a Happily Ever After (HEA). In an imperfect world, romances give us hope that we can solve our own relationship problems, too. And not only solve them, but find the love and happiness we deserve.

What a fun book! I had a great time breezing through Ms. Wendell's thoughts on romance. Written in her witty, upbeat style, Ms. Wendell, with numerous comments and excerpts from romance novelists, dissects the attraction that has made romance the best selling, as well as the most vilified, fiction genre. Romances give us permission to value ourselves and show us the types of men to slaver over and the ones to avoid. In these novels, we can solve our relationship problems, learn how to ask for what we want, and even (gasp!) find out about sex--what we like, what we don't and what we didn't even know existed.

Ms. Wendell's most important point is that in a romance, the woman counts. I came to romance for that very reason. My preference in novels is a rousing fantasy adventure tale. But men wrote most of them and the women characters were either subsidiary or non-existent. In romance today, I can find the stories I like with the heroine right up there kicking butt alongside the hero. What's not to like?

Ah, romances. We sweep through them enjoying every moment. And when we finally reach the end and our beloved HEA, we savor it because the hero and heroine deserve it.

And so do we. Enjoy.

Thank you all,
Linda
ARC supplied by Sourcebooks
Sarah Wendell is the cofounder of the romance review site SmartBitchesTrashyBooks.com

Discounted Georgette Heyer eBooks!

Georgette Heyer's Birthday is August 16.

For those of you with ereaders, Sourcebooks is celebrating from Monday August 15, 2011 through Sunday August 21, 2011 with $1.99 ecopies of all their Georgette Heyer novels and books about her. I don't know about you, but I'm going to fill in my gaps.

Here's the link with all the info below:

http://www.sourcebooks.com/readers/casavip/happy-birthday-ms-heyer.html

Here's the announcement:

Tuesday, August 16 would have been Georgette Heyer’s 109th birthday. In honor of this most beloved author, who many call the Queen of Regency Romance, Sourcebooks is discounting EVERY SINGLE one of the eBooks we currently have available to $1.99 for one week, getting Heyer’s Birthday Party started a day early on August 15!

That’s 46 books by Georgette Heyer, plus the fabulous reader companion, Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester, available for $1.99 from August 15-August 21.

As always, please feel free to share this awesome deal with your blog readers, on Twitter, through Facebook, etc. This is the perfect time for everyone to read Heyer, and celebrate the woman who was such a prolific author! Please note that this promotion does not start until MONDAY, August 15. So if you want to wait until then, or post it over the weekend to post about the deals, that is fine, and will probably cause less confusion amongst eager readers! But if you do post about it today or tomorrow, please make it clear that the deal starts on MONDAY! Did I mention this starts on Monday? ;-)

Below is the full list of titles, separated by category: regency romance, mystery, historical fiction and non-fiction. And here’s a link with all of the info in this email, as well as a look at those gorgeous covers: http://www.sourcebooks.com/readers/casavip/happy-birthday-ms-heyer.html.

The eBooks will be available through Sourcebooks.com and major eBook retailers (and please give them some extra time if prices aren’t adjusted right away on Monday—this is a long list and a lot of data to update J). I wanted to let you know about this fabulous deal a little bit early. We’re looking forward to Monday, August 15 when our Heyer celebration begins! Enjoy!!


HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MS. HEYER!
eBooks Available for $1.99
August 15-August 21, 2011
Heyer’s Birthday: August 16, 2011


REGENCY ROMANCE
1. Arabella
2. Bath Tangle
3. Beauvallet
4. The Black Moth
5. Black Sheep
6. Charity Girl
7. The Convenient Marriage
8. The Corinthian
9. Cotillion
10. Cousin Kate
11. Devil’s Cub
12. False Colours
13. Faro’s Daughter
14. The Foundling
15. Frederica
16. Friday’s Child
17. The Grand Sophy
18. Lady of Quality
19. The Masqueraders
20. The Nonesuch
21. Powder and Patch
22. The Quiet Gentleman
23. Regency Buck
24. The Reluctant Widow
25. Sylvester
26. The Talisman Ring
27. These Old Shades
28. Venetia


MYSTERY
29. Behold, Here’s Poison
30. A Blunt Instrument
31. Death in the Stocks
32. Detection Unlimited
33. Duplicate Death
34. Envious Casca
35. Footsteps in the Dark
36. No Wind of Blame
37. Penhallow
38. They Found Him Dead
39. Unfinished Clue
40. Why Shoot a Butler?


HISTORICAL FICTION
41. The Conqueror
42. An Infamous Army
43. My Lord John
44. Royal Escape
45. Simon the Coldheart
46. Spanish Bride


NON-FICTION
47. Georgette Heyer's Regency World

Sourcebooks British Babes and Georgette Heyer Giveaways

Starting Monday, April 25 through Friday, April 29, Sourcebooks is sponsoring two book giveaways in honor of the royal wedding.

First, a "Georgette Giveaway" here! Leave a comment on this post with your email address through Friday, April 29, for a chance to win one of two copies of a Georgette Heyer novel. Sourcebooks can mail to the US and Canada only.

And the winners of the Georgette Heyer novels are Pommawolf Emeraldwolfeyes and Emily Hendrickson! Congratulations!

Second, on the Sourcebooks British Babes Book Brigade Facebook Page:

If you haven’t already checked out the Sourcebooks British Babes Book Brigade Facebook Page (where you can participate in giveaways and interact with authors like Elizabeth Chadwick, Jill Mansell, Helen Hollick, Sarah Bower and Phillipa Ashley and more…) then you should before next week because the page is about to go royally mad!!

The royal wedding is only a week away and we are going to be celebrating all next week. Starting Monday we will be doing a giveaway every day until the big celebration on Friday. But these are no ordinary giveaways – these are royal wedding prize packs!

3 winners will be randomly picked each day from the facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/britishbabesbookbrigade):
- The 1st place winner will get a William & Kate wedding memento (it is top secret for now (just like Kate’s dress J) but check the page out on Monday to find out – oh and they are all different so there will be a different memento each day). Along with that they also get their choice of three books from any of our British Book Babes.

- The 2nd place winner will have their choice of any two books from any of our British Book Babes.

- The 3rd place winner will have their choice of one book from any of our British Book Babes.

Have fun!