Free Everything I Know About Love I Learned From Romance Novels by Sarah Wendell Page A

himself. Otherwise it seems kind of false and I doubt that it will stick.”
    Phin, the mayor of Temptation, Ohio, is caught between the heroine, Sophie, who is filming a rather impressive racy movie in his town, and the town council, who will pass any ordinance to put a stop to the spicy filmmaking. A reader who goes by Brussel Sprout says that she loves Phin because he’s “witty and observant and resistant and hot, hot, hot. The heroes I love best are observant and powerful. And they have to have integrity. They can make mistakes and cock it up, but deep down, they have to be true to themselves.”
    Part of the charm of Crusie’s heroes, particularly these two, is that they are befuddled and bothered by their emotions and have to navigate that confusion. Crusie’s heroes narrate some of their own stories, so the reader learns about the heroine and the hero in equal measure.
    DAIN
    Lord of Scoundrels
    By Loretta Chase
    Lord of Scoundrels
is, as you may have already read, a book used by many of us romance readers to change the minds of those who sniff disdainfully at the genre but are still curious about it enough to try one. Dain, the hero, is a complete nightmare as a person until he meets Jessica, the heroine. As reader Jay puts it, “His snarling self-sufficiency starts to melt at his first contact with Jessica, and despite all of his blustering denial, he is clearly captivated. Watching him realize it and struggle to regain his equilibrium is so satisfying. It is the story of his journey to becoming the hero worthy of Jess’s strength and love.”
    Among the leaders of the Dain Fangirl Club is Candy, the cofounder of
Smart Bitches,
who loves this book in a million different exclamation-point-strewn ways. When I asked her why she liked Dain so much, she said, “Dain works so well for me because the book opens with his awful childhood. Most heroes with massive asshole streaks (I know that phrase can be read in a completely different way than I meant it, but I’m totally leaving that in there because it makes me laugh) spring from the pages fully-formed, like Minerva from Zeus’s head, except with bigger cocks and more forceful kissing proclivities. But we get to see Dain when he was young and squishy and vulnerable. Proto-Dain isn’t an asshole. Proto-Dain sought love and approval and affection. Adult Dain is what he is because Proto-Dain’s gentler impulses were hammered out of him.
    “I also love Dain because while he’s a massive jerk, he has principles and boundaries…Dain grew into a sensitive man who ultimately had too much empathy and humanity to step over the line into brutality, which so many other romance heroes have.
    “Speaking of sensitivity: another reason why I love Dain so much is that Chase quite clearly shows us, without ever telling us, that Dain is really high-strung underneath his fearsome exterior. When Jessica bothers him and his brain becomes totally disordered and he becomes borderline obsessive, or when he’s confronted by his illegitimate child and all he wants is to get him away as fast as he can? If Dain could see a shrink today, the shrink would probably diagnose him with an anxiety disorder and coax him through some cognitive behavioral therapy. Dain’s growth is much more believable and organic because Jessica also behaves convincingly: she consistently confronts him with his irrationality and holds him accountable for his bad behavior, and best of all, Dain eventually learns.
    “And last, but not least, I love Dain because he has a sense of humor, and because he’s funny without necessarily meaning to be. His personal dictionary, for example, in which he categorizes and defines various classes of people? Funny as hell. And the whip-smart, whip-quick banter between him and Jessica still stands as some of my favorite examples of dialogue in any romance novel, ever. Also, while Dain is arrogant, he isn’t self-important and he doesn’t take himself too seriously, which is