Bodice Tipplers

We're going where we won't slut shame you if several men, a few women, and the odd salt vampire have gone before!  We're talkin' bout Darmok and Jalad between the sheets!  That's right - we read Imzadi!

Night Song by Beverly Jenkins - this is the first book by the First Lady of African American Romance, from 1994.  Cara is a schoolmarm.  Chase is a Buffalo Soldier.  They do it.  A lot.  All over the house, y'all.  All over the house.  Also there are some murders.

There is no sexual assault in the present of this book; however, several characters tell the traumatic stories of their pasts under slavery and one does include rape.  There's also a romance novel-y rape threat by the villain but it doesn't actually happen, and an equally romance novel-y miscarriage (no vivid details.)

Silver Angel by Johanna Lindsey is evidently a book about a troll doll with boobs.  There are, let's see.  Twins.  Harems.  Corsairs.  A public fight about pubic waxing.  Assassins.  Eunuchs.  Poisonings.  A vizier.

As usual, you're definitely going to want to get a vintage copy with an older cover.  What is it with these publishers reissuing these with the worst covers?

The trigger warnings on this are... complicated.  There is no sexual assault actually happening in this book, surprisingly.  (I did forget - there is one of those gross virginity test scenes.)  But there is a lot of talk about it, a lot of it has happened in other places, there are a lot of threats, and it's just a general atmosphere of sexual fear.  There's also... lord I don't know how to describe it, there's some... it's kink shaming and a deeply disturbing failure to understand the psychology of sexual violence and it's all very weird and upsetting.

Sandra Kitt's Adam and Eva was the first Harlequin romance written by an African American author about a African American couple, in 1984.  It's not the first black category romance - as far as we know that's Rosalind Welles' Entwined Destinies, which was published by Dell Candlelight in 1980.  There's also a rumor that Anne Weale's Blue Days at Sea is a "stealth black romance" - evidently the protagonists' race just isn't mentioned but the people on the cover are even whiter than usual.  (And they are usually really white.)

We have a January treat for you: books we actually read as criminally young girls!  Sara's is Palomino by Danielle Steel.

Samantha is one of those hyper-competent insanely beautiful has-a-weird-nickname Steel women who is taking the advertising world by storm while simultaneously being abandoned by her ridiculously awful husband.  She goes off to heal her broken heart on a ranch in California and meets a super hot ranchin' dude.  If you were like me and you loved books about horses and books about boning, this book was everything.

This is a tiny little Bodice Tipplers Extracurricular Mini-Episode - we're going off the reservation and reading a modern book!  Hearts Alight by Elliot Cooper is a cute little gay romance Hanukkah novella about a sad sack guy who falls in love with a golem.  It's adorable and sweet and you'll read it in an afternoon and you should go do so.

Celebrate Christmas with us with Bewitching Hour by Anne Stuart, the kind of book where you know going in that there's gonna be a blizzard and the roads aren't the only things getting plowed.  Sibyl is evidently a witch who's a secretary for other witches and Nick is a skeptic about everything except dowsing.  There's also a haunted house that nobody ever mentions again and a late-game crime caper.  I don't even know, y'all.

Sirena, foot stamping sword waving hellion, takes her sister's place as wife to the virile Regan van der Rhys, Dutch colonizer of Java in "Captive Passions" by Fern Michaels. By day she is his quiet pious wife, but by night she sinks all his shipping and taunts him with her tawniness and her thighs.  It's 1977 and thighs are very in.  Buckles are swashed.  Also there is a lot of nutmeg.

Join us and commemorate the genocide of thousands of indigenous cultures by reading this boring-ass book about Lakota warrior Grey Eagle and how he's fucking wasted on this white woman who's improbably named Alisha.  Definitely do not thrill to see her end every sentence with an exclamation point!  You will absolutely fail to gasp with excitement as they have the same transformative sex over and over and over again and then misunderstand one another in the morning, many times!  You may actually be surprised that it isn't as racist as you're expecting it to be!  (I mean, it's racist.  But it's not as racist as we thought it was going to be.)

Buckle up, buttercup –we’re doing this.  This is happening.  This episode we cover “The Flame and the Flower”, Kathleen Woodiwiss’ 1972 steaming cesspit.  This is the face that launched a thousand sh!ts; the first bodice ripper.  And it is awful.  And we are furious at it. 

This book contains intense scenes of sexual assault (the worst kind, it thinks it’s a ravishment but believe me, it’s stone cold rape.)  It’s also got emotional abuse and some truly weird expressions of racism.  Also it’s boring.  Seriously, do not read it if you’re triggered by anything like that because this book is FULL OF IT and also terrible, so honestly don’t read it in general.  Just listen to us drip scorn on it, you’ll be better off.