Celebrating the Writes of #Spring...#FirstRomanceRead #Harlequin

Spring is about renewal. It's a beginning. A fresh start. It's also about making magic. You never forget the first time you...

• Read a romance
• Went skiing
• Had a child
• Wrote a book
• Shared a first kiss
• Published a book
• Had a best seller

These are the moments that stand out for me when I think of those magical firsts. I debated a little what I wanted to share today--would it be a book? A first for a character? Or would it be something more personal? I decided the split the difference.

Escape from Desire

My grandmother used to read Harlequin romances to me when I was a kid. She didn't like picture books, so she would read me her romances. She loved Harlequin, read them up to the day she died. I used to give her subscriptions to her favorite series...and the Presents line remained her primary go to from the first. In 1983, I read my very first Harlequin on my own. I remember being shocked by the fact that the characters didn't nap or clean as often as my grandmother used to say they did and even more shocking...I loved the story so much I wanted to read another and another and another.

That first romance novel was Escape from Desire by Penny Jordan.

Escape from Desire

What I remember most about the book was the adventure. Tamara went to the Caribbean to vacation, little did she know she would find herself captured by rebels or that her only hope was Zach Fletcher, a man who was also a prisoner.

Their flight through the jungle had me on the edge of my seat and their passionate clinch amidst all the danger seemed natural, even then. But the spider bite Tamara got? That creeped me out. Worse was when Tamara finally woke up in a hospital and Zach was gone. My heart broke for her. When she turned up pregnant, that shocked me--it was a first for me in any book. Worse, when she found herself facing Zach again and they had all this passion and tension and secret between them...my pulse raced.

I've never looked back from my love of romances. Not once. Hard to believe that I read this book thirty years ago, but like Tamara, I went on my magical vacation and my life was changed forever.