the reader in a quiet corner

The reason that this book is my favorite romance of all time is because it was totally different from the romances I read, back in the day when I really liked reading romances.

Heroines were not Mean Girls, like Sugar Beth was. Really. Heroines were goody-two-shoes, who had troubled pasts, but they were also spunky (who still says spunky?), and everybody just luurrrved them. Not Sugar Beth. And what kind of heroine's name is Sugar Beth? I almost didn't read this book for that, no kidding. Thank God for the 'dark prince' description of Mr Colin Byrne. Ooh-lala, he's my all-time favorite hero for being an Englishman through-and-through living in the South of America. A gothic hero living in modern times (and I didn't even like gothic heroes). But then, he's not really gothic if he's funny, right?

But SEP made a fantastical premise, and created a very romantic story out of two people you would not have thought should end up together. Sugar Beth was a mean girl, who went to college and left behind her southern hometown, it seemed, for good. Colin was Sugar Beth's English English teacher, 15 years ago. Now, how creepy is a student-teacher relationship? But with SEP's humor, she just made it all work.

This book was funny, dramatic, and fantastic and realistic at the same time. I would read this over and over.