Valentines day is tomorrow!

Valentines day is tomorrow so I'm going to take a break from fantasy to talk about romance!

Romance novels were my first big reads. My mom collected them, and I used to borrow her books. This lead to me loving romance, and eventually I started collecting them too. They now constitute about half of my library.  I have a whole bookshelf for my traditional and historical romances. It's three shelves high, but 4 feet wide and double stacked. I keep my paranormal romances on the shelves with all my urban fantasy books.

My favorite romance authors haven't changed much over the past 20 years or so. I'm going to talk a bit about 2 of them and rec one book each.

Judith McNaught sent the romance world into a flutter. Her book Whitney My Love is considered to have created the regency historical genre. She has four series, two of which are modern and two of which are historical. I recommend reading all her books as they are fabulous, but my favorite is definitely Until You.  It's a historical romance with an amnesia plot, and it's great.

Julie Garwood has 24 new york times bestsellers. She started off with historical romances, and then expanded into modern thrillers. Her thrillers are connected to her historicals, with the characters being the descendants of the people from her earlier books. I love them deeply, because it's nice to know that the happier ever after went on and on.  I must recommend her thriller Heartbreaker, which starts off with the creepiest confession ever and is non stop awesome.