17 Free Harlequin romances

[elf]

It's Harlequin's 60th anniversary this year, and to celebrate, they're giving away 17 free ebooks in a nice selection of formats: PDF, Mobi, MS Lit, ePub, and eReader. All without DRM, so you can read any of them on free-download software, or convert to other format of your choice. (Although I tagged this "temporary," I believe they're available all year.)

Our gift to you, it says.
"From steamy passion to tender romances to tales of suspenseful adventure, you'll find exactly what you're looking for with our wide variety of FREE books below! Simply click on your favorite format, download and read the 17 full books below—a total value of $60 U.S. dollars!"

Funny, a few weeks ago when it was only 16 books, it was still a $60 value. I suppose the Medical romance wouldn't be worth anything if they weren't giving it away. While I'd love to believe they'll add a book every week or two until the end of the year, I suspect it's more that the Medical Romances are a new line, and this is a way to promote them.

If you like mainstream romance--or you remember liking it in the past, and wanted to find out if you now think it's pointless tripe--here's your chance for a wide selection for free.

Quick partial reviews:
The Blaze title (Slow Hands) would be rated NC-17 if it were fanfic. Was yummy. Oh, and the lead girl? Not skinny. Yay for diversity in romance; Harlequins have branched out from what I remember from my teen years.

The Supernatural book (Kiss Me Deadly), if it were paper, I'd've thrown against the wall and not picked up again. But hey, maybe someone else likes witch/vampire romances with no trace of real occult lore.

Baby Bonanza and Price of Passion were both nicely steamy, and decent reads; ignore covers & titles; I think after 60 years, they've quite run out of clever titles and accurate covers.

Speed Dating was about what I remembered from Harlequins: dude says, "Hey, I need a pretend girlfriend/fiance for a while, how about you get to run with the party crowd for a while, and at the end of the season, we'll part amicably, and in the meantime I'll get my ex off my back?" And of course, they fall madly in love, and neither wants to tell the other they're not sticking to the "no commitments" bargain they made.

Homespun Bride was surprisingly inoffensive, for an "uplifting story of faith." I expected to flinch at overwhelming Christianity; I didn't. (Which makes me think that maybe the Christianity is just as accurate as the occultism.) There were sappy undertones of "the Lord's plan for us" and whatnot, but that was about all. My biggest complaint was the total lack of smut, but I suppose I can't expect that in a "faith-inspired" book.

I haven't read them all, but I'm not sure why not; they're short. I read a lot of long fanfic; I'm used to "a solid romance story" being 75,000 words. I think most of these top out at 50k words; some may be shorter.

Comments

[inkstone]

In general, I find the Nocturne books to be utterly, utterly terrible. YMMV, of course, but I've tried many and have never been able to finish one.

[elf]

I was definitely thinking, "If this is the free sample, I'm never paying for one of these." (Not that I would pay for any of them, 'cos I don't buy DRM'd ebooks. But I'm not picking up any paperbacks, either.)

Witch's blood is dangerous to vampires? One drop touching their skin will kill them? Unless they immediately drain someone to death? Erm.... and it went downhill from there. Glad to know the whole line is like that; it makes it easier for me to avoid them.

I'm working up the courage to read Irresistable Forces, the one Kimani book in the set. Those are the African-American romances, and considering what they do with their occult-themed romances and their faith-themed romances, I'm nervous about reading them. (OTOH, I'm enjoying the Blaze books, which are their "explicit sex" books.)

On the one side, books by African-American authors, about African-American characters, yay. Lots of them, with different subthemes. (Hot & steamy, traditional romance, young adult, "inspirational" (apparently, literary codeword for "Christian"), and a couple of others.) On the other side... Harlequin is straight, mainstream, packed with its own set of stereotypes. The protaganist men are all noble, handsome, clever and skilled; the women are all sensible, beautiful, honorable and competent. I'm not sure what happens when you add "and black" to those lists.

Um. This is quite a ramble in response to a one-line comment, isn't it? Sorry about that; apparently I've been thinking about Harlequins more than I noticed.

[inkstone]

Nah, it's okay. I have mixed feelings about Harlequin too. I like the fact they have an entire imprint devoted to AA romance but at the same time, I dislike the fact that it's a separate imprint from everything else. (How's that for conflicted?) It's just like brick & mortar stores where AA romances aren't shelved in the general romance section -- it's unfair and perpetuates this perception that it's somehow "different" from a regular romance. But it's not -- it's just that the characters and authors are black.

The less heteronormative stuff (...for Harlequin, anyway) can be found in the Spice line, which I notice had no freebies in the giveaway, but I guess they limited that to only their category lines. I see nothing from Mira, HQN or Luna either. But erotica and erotic romance isn't really my thing so when I've tried a Spice title, it's been kind of hit or miss for me. It also doesn't help that half the time you can't tell if you're getting an erotica novel or an erotic romance novel.

[elf]

I couldn't figure out what Spice, Mira, HQN or Luna were. The website offers so few of them I couldn't get themes from the descriptions. I assumed Spice might have hints of poly or BDSM or wild partying, only in a suburban-housewives kind of way. (The way some housewives get together for vibrator/sex-toy sales parties instead of Avon/Tupperware sale parties.)

I'm happy to notice an increase in condom use (when I read them as teens, condoms didn't exist; now they're everywhere), and a nice number of sympathetic gay characters in the background, although too many of them are the tragic uncle who was ostracized from the family.

They occasionally have short-term freebies in the other lines, through the main bookstore, but those have DRM and the process for installing it is... ridiculous.

I remember from my teen years, that while Our Heroine was always white, Our Hero was often dark-skinned, although IIRC never African American. But he could be Latino or Arabic; I remember a number of "native guide through the Brazilian jungle" stories, and a couple of "Wealthy sheikh businessman; poor secretary needs money for dying mother & enters agreement for fake marriage" or something like that.

But I've seen less of that recently; maybe they've decided that was too strongly stereotyped. So now there are less interracial couples (not that they ever paid attention to race issues), and a firm entrenchment in the idea that there are two "real" races (white and black) and a bunch of "exotic cultures" that are suitable for romantic hero origins. Sigh.

[jennem]

Note: All of these (except the very last book) are also available for free DL on Amazon.com for the Kindle.

[elf]

Right; I forgot to mention. They're also (mostly?) available through the Sony bookstore, and IIRC through Fictionwise.com. They may be available in other ebook stores; Harlequin is promoting these widely.

But all those places have DRM, and the Mobi version from Harlequin will read on Kindles. (I forget that people with Kindles are not likely to care about DRM if they're downloading straight to the Kindle. I am probably less-than-rational on the subject of DRM.)