I enjoy romance, especially historical - but for me it's got to be properly researched and (a)containing few anachronisms and (b) appropriate dialogue and vocabulary for the characters - in other words, if they're English aristocrats from the nineteenth century,
please don't have them sounding like contemporary Americans. Just a couple of examples from Writers Whose Work I Will Never Read Again:
- the heroine in a Regency novel travels - by coach - from London to Derbyshire and back in an afternoon. You'd be hard-pressed to do it NOW by CAR in an afternoon.
- the hero in a Regency novel eats biscuits (ie the American sort) for breakfast.
- the heroine, also in a Regency novel, is a single lady who lives alone; invites her neighbours, all of a lower social class to her, around for tea every day and they all first-name each other; and she even invites her butler (who's an aristocrat in disguise, but she doesn't know this) to use her first name and dine with her.
- the hero is illegitimate - without a doubt born outside wedlock - and yet inherits the title on his father's death because there's no legitimate son.
I'm not saying that I
approve of the social values here; I'm simply (ranting) pointing out that in the era concerned none of these things would have happened. And... well... Catherine Coulter and Judith McNaught are both on my 'never again' list for reasons (a) and (b) above. Well, plus that McNaught wrote a book in which rape and spousal abuse is clearly considered to be okay if the hero is rich enough and claims to love the heroine enough.
My own never-to-be-missed authors in the historical genre:
Mary Balogh
Jo Beverly
Mary Jo Putney (before she went all paranormal)
Joan Ross Ewing/Julia Ross
Loretta Chase
Carla Kelly
Edith Layton
I do like a limited amount of paranormal, in particular:
Maggie Shayne (vampire series only)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
Wendy
