Vilja Reads

I imagine this is what Harlequin novels are like (I never read one); very simple, yet somehow compelling.

To clarify, this is a compilation of two novels written in the same year by the same author, Another Kind of Love and Love Is Where You Find It.

I was disappointed to find that these novels were not nearly as cheesy as I'd thought they'd be. There are a few tickling sentences and quiant terms, but they read like simple, sparse love-stories with an air of tragedy that never quite hams it up enough to be really funny. It's a shame, because I quite enjoyed them, otherwise. Maybe it was because of my lowered expectations.

In some ways they were eye-opening. I knew being gay meant having to hide your love life from the public eye for a long time, but here I almost managed to identify with that feeling of being shut out and secret; grogged how stressful it would be to have to choose between being afraid of discovery and giving up your career. Being afraid to tell your mother is one thing, but to be afraid of your co-workers and friends and people on the street would be worse, and being loud wasn't much better if you hoped to get anywhere in life, if you hoped not to have to pick your friends from a very small circle. This is all obvious - I just never thought of it before.

Also, apparently all lesbians kind of like men sexually and want to marry them, but can't fall in love with them. It's like a curse that darkens their days, a trap that binds them into this half-world between the sexes, to sordid clubs and a hopeless string of desperate embraces.

Well, if the books won't ham it up, I'll have to do it for them.