Sunday, December 13, 2009

Romance: Fairy Tale Weddings by Debbie Macomber


Sometime soon I plan to write a few posts about fairy tales and romance novels, a big topic actually, but one that I'm rather weak at since I don't read much in the genre.

For now, I wanted to point out the current bestseller released a few weeks ago: Fairy Tale Weddings: Cindy and the Prince\Some Kind of Wonderful by Debbie Macomber. This is a paperback reprint of two of bestselling novelist Macomber's earlier novels that directly drew inspiration from Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, arguably the most popular tales used for inspiration in the romance genre.

Here's the publisher's description:

Fairy Tales Can Come True

Cindy and the Prince

Thorndike Prince—handsome, levelheaded, successful—is a high-ranking New York City executive. Cindy Territo is the janitor who cleans his office after hours. There's no reason they'd ever meet, no reason he'd even notice her—until, on a whim and a dare, Cindy crashes his company's Christmas ball. She dances with her Prince and then, like a proper Cinderella, flees at midnight, leaving her heart behind….

Some Kind of Wonderful

Beautiful inside and out, New York socialite Judy Lovin values family over fortune and fame. So when her father's business collapses and his most powerful enemy offers to help—in exchange for Judy's company—she agrees to join John McFarland on his remote Caribbean island. It isn't long before she discovers that John's far from the beast he seems to be!

SurLaLune has a page of Fairy Tale Romance Novels rather hidden on the site. I have a hard time keeping the page current thanks to the prolific nature of the genre as well as the difficulty in finding them unless they have overt references to the tales in their titles. After all, many romance novels arguably use similar themes to fairy tales, especially Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast with Ugly Duckling as another source of inspiration, too. The titles also go out of print quickly due to the nature of the romance genre, although ebook readers are changing that somewhat. I've noticed that Harlequin, Mills & Boon and others are taking advantage of ebook publishing which benefits their short print runs by keeping books "in print" longer. Even Macomber's book is available as an ebook although it isn't listed as an edition under the paper title for some reason.

But all of this is more relevant to future posts, not Macomber's book specifically. Still, I am always interested to see how many authors have gotten their start in the genre and used fairy tales during that start. Macomber is one of the many.

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