Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell Read Free Book Online

voice to make it an understatement.
    “It’s not a fat dress,” Min said, turning back to the mirror. “It doesn’t hide anything.”
    “Haven’t we talked about this?” Cal said, coming to stand behind her.
    “Yes, but my mother has talked since then,” Min said. “Also, there’s this mirror which tells me I don’t have much of a waistline.”
    “You have a waistline.” Cal put his hands on her hips. “It’s right here.” He slid his hands across her stomach and she shivered, watching him touch her in the mirror. With Cal’s hands on her, she looked different, good, and when he pulled her back against his chest, she relaxed into him and let her head fall back on his shoulder. “Very sexy dress,” he whispered into her ear, and then kissed her neck. She drew in her breath and he whispered, “Very sexy woman,” and moved his hand up to her neckline, drawing his finger down the edge of the silky fabric, making her shudder as the heat spread and she began to feel liquid everywhere.
    “I have to stop drinking wine when I’m with you,” she whispered to him in the mirror. “I start believing all this garbage you tell me.”
    — BET ME
BY JENNIFER CRUSIE, 2008
    In addition to owning ourselves, romance novels teach women to be confident in our strengths. Reading about heroines who have a continual need to please gets old, unless that heroine learns to please herself first. Selflessness is not an admirable trait when it means you give away everything about yourself, and that includes both men and women. I’m not saying selfishness is the key to being heroic—it surely is not. But molding yourself to the expectations of others is not heroic either, and misleads everyone, including you, and makes for a heroine about as exciting and passionate as plain yogurt at room temperature.
    The trick to being the heroine of your own story is being happy with who you are. Confidence and accomplishment are hot damn sexy.
    Certainly women are bombarded with messages that they should achieve perfection in the eyes of everyone around them, but the same messages are sent to men as well. The trick to being the heroine of your own story is being happy with who you are. Confidence and accomplishment are hot damn sexy.
    Just as there is no one single type of romance novel, there is no one way to read romance, and there’s no one way that readers use their romance-reading. Women read romance and bring it into their lives in many, many different ways. Identifying their own likes, desires, and senses of worth—and of being worth the effort so they don’t feel the need to settle for less than what they want—is only part of the value of romance for the reader. In addition to knowing ourselves, we also know happiness, and romance makes readers happy in a myriad of ways.
    Happiness, much like something spilling in the fridge, has a trickle-down effect, only much less sticky.
    Now, this is not to say that romance readers are unhappy. They are not miserable and seeking panacea and palliative emotional fluffing in their reading. Most romance readers are happy already—and their reading material increases their joy and allows them to bring it to others. Would you rather have your dinner with your happy mom or your unhappy mom, your happy wife or your unhappy wife? Happiness, much like something spilling in the fridge, has a trickle-down effect, only much less sticky.
    Romance readers bring their romance to life as they read it and find happiness, and they bring that happiness to their lives after they’re done reading. As Harlequin’s research has revealed, romance readers give themselves the gifts of time, quiet, peace, and hopeful optimism as they read—and they bring those gifts to others. In doing so, they recognize themselves and find validation and affirmation for their own desire for happiness.
    And, equally important, after they learn to identify what they want in a relationship, they learn they can and will find it.

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