Silhouette; Same Time, Next Year - Debbie Macomber; Hot Blooded - Carly Bishop

      Mills and Boon type books are an old favourite of mine, because they require so little effort to read they allow you to do nothing more than simply relax. At some point in the relatively recent past, in terms of the companies, Mills and Boon became a sub-publisher (not sure of the technical term) under the same people who publish silhouette books. They are relatively similar, following the same basic formula with the main difference being that Silhouette books are more often than not set in America while the Mills and Boon books tend to have heroines based in either Europe or Australia. The second difference is that Mills and Boon tend to be more traditional with rich do very little heroines and CEO's for leading men, while both partners tend to be working in the Silhouette books. Although I've read both and mind neither on the whole I've found I actually prefer MIlls and Boon books.
     I was in two minds about whether I should blog about these books, as I'm not entirely convinced I class them as real books, they're published for short periods of time only and as they were both published in the mid-90's the only places you'd find them nowadays are on ebay or in a Charity shop. As one of my original aims was to make my opinion of the books I read available to people who wanted to buy them I thought that I probably shouldn't post, however one of my other aims was to post about every book I read, and they may decide to reprint them at some point in the future so I thought why not. And hence there are two books being posted about together.
    There are two reasons I read these books in the past couple of weeks. The first reason is that I have exams for another week and have been in exam period for a while now, it wears me out and means I need a little bit of light relief every now and then. Secondly the book which I'm currently reading, The Riddle of the Sands, is incredibly slow paced and I just keep needing to take a break from it.

Hot Blooded - Carly Bishop
November 1995

     This book was ok. I actually tried to read it once before a couple of years ago, but got distracted and wandered off. Therefore I found it slightly repetitive as I started reading but that was left behind soon enough.
     My least favourite part of this book was that the way it was written it came across slightly muder-mystery styled. Murder mysteries aren't a style of book I particularly like so it had that detracted from it at the start. I also didn't particularly like the fact that they both had relatively important jobs in a research hospital yet never appeared to be working.
     I did quite like the essence of the story however, it fulfilled all of the basic required criteria, and I got something in the region of what I predicted I would. I was slightly disappointed with the ending because it didn't seem to complete, however I have the feeling that this is due to 'Hot Blooded' being the first of a trio of books. As I only have this one I'll never know if it completes itself fully, unless I manage to get hold of copies of 'Breathless' and 'Heart Throb' by the same author which were published in the successive months.
     The 'Pulse' series isn't my favourite of the series available to read, I think that could be because the hospital setting reminds me too much of watching episodes of Casualty on a saturday night. I prefer 'Desire' which tends to be much more fantastical.

Same Time, Next Year - Debbie Macomber
July 1995

    'Same Time, Next Year' was more the kind of book I love. I wasn't thrilled with it but it had the typical whirlwind romance/deep-seated attatchment that I was expecting. The storyline was fairly good for the first half of the book, but then the typical dilemna/major problem which always crops up in the second half of the book I felt was resolved far too easily and as a result was rendered lame.
    It was a book which once I picked up I didn't really want to put down, which can only be said to be to it's merit. As a result I finished reading it in about a day, luckily it was a friday, as I didn't put it down for the last time until about 00:30.
    I like the cover art this book has, as it more resembles that which was found on Mills and Boon in the 70's or 80's than many which can be found nowadays, and I think they really had some lovely covers then. Also I think that the picture actually shows people who are very similar to those described in the book. My only issue is that the female looks a bit like she is plotting something.

Rowen