Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches' Guide to Romance Novels Paperback – April 14, 2009

A funny and irreverent look at the romance genre and fandom. It's not really a guide per se, more of an exploration of tropes and trends. I especially enjoyed the section on how bad covers come to be. My only two criticisms are that the book is firmly rooted in the moment it was written, and already some parts feel dated just six years later, and the Kindle edition is poorly done, with several illustrations that are too tiny to decipher and other formatting problems that were not edited to suit the digital format.

Funny, no, I really mean it! Sharp, sharp, sharp! I've already given one copy to my Mom and another to a romance author friend. This book is full of industry insider info as well as genre defense and lots of good-natured making fun of those elements of romance worthy of laughing at. No holds barred! Voted Best Creative Euphemisms for You Know What!

Beyond Heaving Bosoms is a really fun book and the writers truly love their genre and are also quick to criticize its many flaws. If you've read ANY romance, you can quickly play along with their "Judge the Cover" game, or play with the mad lib included, or enjoy the choose-your-own-adventure style pieces in the back.

These ladies had fun with it.

And as long as you don't mind an irreverent, tongue-in-cheek look at the genre as a whole and how it has evolved over time, you will come out wiser for it and also highly amused along the way.

But don't read it in public. I tried to check out a friend's copy while we went walking. I nearly fell over laughing and probably shocked the people around me. Multiple times. Enjoy this one in a chair so you might at least have a shorter distance to the floor as you gasp for breath.

Yeah, it really is that fun. (But do realize, they swear, they warn you in advance but this isn't a prestigious peer-review. It's a down-and-dirty, in the mud, frank discussion about the romance genre. Still informative, but not gentle or kind about it.) Get it. It's amusing.

I fired up some music as I sat down to write this review, and what in the world of coincidental appropriateness should be the first song but, I Need a Lover that Won't Drive Me Crazy, by Pat Benatar. If that's not a serendipitous shuffle, I don't know what is. It put a smile on my face, or would have, if Beyond Heaving Bosoms: A Smart Bitches Guide to Romance Novels hadn't already pasted a smile there from the very first page.

What joy this book has been to read! A few points:

-Chapter names of AWESOMENESS
Right from the start, BHB begins as it means to go on by kicking chapter numbers to the curb and giving us chapter names made of pure brilliance. From chapter Cleavage through chapters Secret Cowboy Baby and Love Grotto, I loved them all. My favorite, however, had to be chapter Phallus, not just for the name (though, c'mon) but for its content, part of which was a serious look at the inner working of the genre and the ways in which it hamstrings itself in the larger publishing world. Which brings me to...

-Niceness and what it means for policing one's own genre
I stand firmly with the Smart Bitches on this one, plagiarism is not sexy. Nor is it something to overlook or gloss over in the name of "Can't we all just get along?". This isn't a Ladies Aid Society meeting in 1810, people. It's not about making nice in order to save face in society. Your work had better be your own goddamn work, and your attributions regarding the work of others had better be writ large and unambiguous. In a genre that's long been under siege as worthless trash, nothing signals the larger literary world that you STILL aren't ready for the big kids' table than circling the wagons around an obvious plagiarist.

And no amount of, "the author didn't know better" or "if it's on the Internet, (or public domain) it's not really stealing" will change that. Plagiarism isn't new. You know what you've written and what you haven't, full stop. And saying that things published online are fair game for poaching is like saying that pilfering your neighbor's outdoor holiday decorations is acceptable because, "they were out there in public, so that must mean they're free to take." It's bullshit and everyone knows it.

-Old school romance, its lingering stigma and romance as a denigrated genre
This is where I admit that, while I used to read romance novels for the pure fun of finding the sex scenes amid the implausible plot devices, I stopped reading them in my early 20s. I stopped because that was the heyday of the Rapist Hero and after a time I just found the idea of rape-is-a-gateway-to-romance all too oppressive and vile.

Sadly, that image of romance novels persists to this very day. It's part of the easy dismissal the genre gets from, well, pretty much every other genre out there. "Hey, I my read ______," the reader says. "But at least I don't read crappy bodice rippers/lady porn/your epithet here." As if implausible plots and sex scenes only existed in one genre.

Happily, the Smart Bitches are here to exorcise the ghosts of plot devices past, and boy do they ever.

-It's okay to love books about love, sex and sexuality
Really, it is. Like the old school Hero rampaging across the Heroines personal landscape, the common idea is that emotions are weak, therefore anything that celebrates emotions (or emotionally charged human pursuits like sex) must be correspondingly weak. The Smart Bitches drag those dusty old notions out into the yard for a good beating in the fresh air.

They point out that, unlike any other genre, romance novels alone focus on female sexuality as pivotal, not only to the plot, but to the heroine as a fully realized human being. They give us a view of romance not as the unloved step-child of publishing, but as the subversive renegade, daring to openly embrace what everyone privately knows but refuses to admit in polite company. And ain't that just the best thing ever?

-And finally, a quibble
If I had one quibble with this book (and I did) it was the lack of editorial oversight with regard to the use of there's vs. there're. Yes, I know it's common vernacular now to default to there's in all situations. I also know that language is fluid, that it changes as society changes. But damn it all, common or not, it's still incorrect, and what I can forgive in conversation I cannot in print. Not yet, anyway.

You kids, get out of my yard.

There you have it. I thoroughly enjoyed the Smart Bitches and their guide to romance novels; part academic treatise, part adolescent snicker-fest, both sides of my brain reached the last page highly satisfied.

Obviously this book is written for avid readers of romance by avid readers of romance. However, it can also appeal to those who don't read romance and make them want to start! I know this because I ended up reading much of this book out loud to my roommate and she (not a romance reader) found it just as funny and intriguing as I (definitely a romance reader). And after reading it to her, she immediately asked me to lend her ALL of the romance titles I own!

I didn't look to this book for suggestions on what to read--and I can see how people might be disappointed if that's what they were looking for (for the record, the Bitches DO give suggestions).

I was looking for someone to explain to me why I love romance so much even though I spend most of my time rolling my eyes at the stories. And I think this book did a wonderful job of explaining why romance is such a compelling and successful genre. It also makes fun of the genre without belittling it, which is a fine line to tread and these Bitches do it beautifully (if not tactfully). Plus, I'm endlessly impressed by their comprehensive knowledge of the genre.

This book was (for me) the perfect blend of irreverence and humor, literary and social criticism, and suggestions for what to read.