CONFESSIONS OF A MILLS AND BOON HOARDER

The entire book reading community was till recently talking....well at least in hushed tones, about the fifty shades of grey. Everywhere i went it was being discussed and i was feeling a little left out so i decided to read it too. Suffice to say that single-handedly Miss E.L.James has hacked at the roots of romantic literature and used it for firewood. For someone, who grew up in a world where Mr.Darcy was the ultimate dream man, it came as nothing less than a shock to realise that well the world and its women have moved on and how!! Call it what you will but fifty shades made me wish i was colour blind and reminded me of another genre of books that saw us through teenage and later. Mills and boon.

This world is kind of divided into two kinds of women. Those who read mills and boon, and the ones who hate the ones who read them. Oh no there is a third kind too....the closet readers. They have read it but what with their new found intellectual snobbery they like to believe it was a bad dream and that it never happened!

Well I have read these books and still like to and I have no qualms admitting that though they went a long way in screwing up my idea of a perfect man, i read them voraciously and hoard them still. I mean how was i to know that drop dead gorgeous looking Greek tycoons are a myth?? That these ruthless magnates with hearts of little boys were a figment of some warped woman’s mind?? Not only did they not exist Greek men by the time they amassed their fortunes were wrinkled and married half a dozen times already. Or that no man, Greek or otherwise, likes ordinary looking plain Janes? That’s exactly what the heroines in these books were....besides also being weak-willed, emotionally distraught, and clumsy as hell.....but hey guess what the hero loved all these qualities too. With a startling lack of self respect they willingly submit to the high handed attitude of the hero...I guess the fact that he is ruggedly handsome, powerful, stinking rich wouldn’t have something to do with it. Obviously not!!!....it’s true love that makes her so willingly subservient and how dare you suggest otherwise’

Anyway as always its rich man meets girl next door and after many trials and tribulations they live happily ever after. Ok fine I admit there is no story line here....if it’s there at all ... (agreed agreed it’s rare but known to happen)...it’s pretty flimsy and been repeated like a million times already. But there was something about these books that made us all believe in true love and happy-ever- afters....until of course the real world came crashing in and put paid to all the efforts!!!