A History Nut's Romantic State of Mind

Ahhhh good old Amanda Quick!

Sometimes you read a few pretty bad books, trying to get to know a few new writers, get used to their styles, and you realize: man I am tired. I want a good old-fashioned romance story where the heros, while dark nad brooding, know their responsibilities and the heroins, while strong-willed and sometimes foolishly romantic, are gentle and loving. I don't know whether it is a trend in romance novels, but nowadays readers seem to love a hellcat or a heroin, warrior princess, a woman who fights like a wild cat and threatens to scratch your eyeballs out if she believes you threaten someone she loves. I just don't know what is so attractive about that? If I want female hyeteria, I have it aplenty from work.

It is at times like this, I turned to one of my old favorites. Amanda Quick is one of them.

I started reading this book today in one of those moments I described: after trying on a few different new writers for fit and getting so tired of all the "feminist toughness", I decided to go for my old flames. And I am sooooo comforted after reading it.

I am not sure whether I am making sense. This is not so much a review as a note of my cathartic reading experience this afternoon. If you have read Amanda Quick before and liked it, read it. You won't be sorry. This book is Amanda Quick at her best: a mystery, a man who needs tenderness and a woman who needs a firm chest. No fights over dominance or submission. But lots of negotiation, finding boundaries and coming to a concensus, which is, what relationships should be about. It is true that these Amanda Quick stories follow a formula. But this is a formula that works very well and Amanda Quick has the talent to write yet another tender story out of the same formula.

I hope my review was not too abstract. :D It is just.....I somehow feel that I met the old self reading this book. Remembering how I felt when I read Amanda Quick as a teenager and finding myself, still touched by the softness in her stories.