Mills and Boon

All girls have read it at some point of time ot the other... and yet very few come out of the 'closet' as it were and admit to have read it and to some extent enjoyed it. Well I decided to join the ranks of the few(may our tribe increase) and admit to liking certain kinds of MBs (as we 'addicts' like to call them). For the uninitiated, MB's (so called because their publisher is Mills and Boon - though others have come into the market too.. e.g Harlequin etc) are short Romantic novels which invariably have a happy ending. They are the genre that first gave rise to the cliche of "tall, dark and handsome" :-) Invariably, in every book, a rich or at the very least a drop dead gorgeous guy, who has usually given up all thoughts of settlng down, meets (in varying circumstances) a good looking every-day-sort-of-girl and falls hard for her. The girls are not always gorgeous but in many instances are very like the average girl. They are aimed only at a female audience and aim at inducing a kind of a sense of well-being and happiness - a kind of a 'feel-good-factor' among the readers. :-)

This is precisely what has me going back time and again to MBs whenever I wish to read something, but have very little time to devote to it. Typically an MB takes about an hour to get through. MBs are thus meant for the 'tired girl who wants a book to read but is not recommended for the eager girl who wants to read a book.'

I suggest that everybody should try reading this genre once. This genre... with all its cliches and predictability... actually makes for some amusing reading.