On reviewing smut on what is a mostly YA book blog.

Thanks to the inimitable Miz Sarah MacLean and her creation Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, I have become a bit of a romance novel junkie. While this isn't something that I'm overly proud of, I figured I'd better come to terms with it and move on. I just recently accepted the fact that my blog features a majority of Young Adult books and if I can admit to myself and others that I mostly read, what are for me at my old age, children's books, than I should be able to suck it up and say "Why yes. Yes, I do read Victorian/Regency Porn." And I suppose Victorian/Regency porn isn't such a far cry from vampire porn and I READ that without a hiccup. Victorian porn isn't really all that different from Vampire Porn- people still get bitten, just politely.

Ok, we're getting off the point. THE POINT IS, I'm a YA book blogger whose current taste in ahem, literature, ahem, tends to lean a bit to the bawdy side and while that's all well and good, my blog followers are for the most part, young adults. As I have every intention of continuing to read and review YA books, I would just like to point out that I have no intention of censoring my reviews of romance novels in regards to my readers. I know, that sounds so snobbish and mean and that's NOT AT ALL HOW I MEAN IT. I just mean that, well, Life After Jane will frequently have posts about books with naughty bits and I don't want any nasty emails from enraged mothers.

So let's talk about mothers now, shall we?

I have always been a very big reader, thanks mostly to my mother. I really can't ever remember a time when books didn't feature prominently in my life. I learned early on that it's against the law for a mother to refuse to buy her child a book, (it really is, YOU CANNOT TELL AN EAGER YOUNG MIND THAT IT CAN NOT HAVE A BOOK. You just CAN'T!) so I exploited that to the best of my abilities. I've read so very many books thanks to my mum and truthfully I don't think she would have cared if I was reading about devil worship or worse- books that featured a leading lady wearing white after labor day, so long as I was reading. Even though she wouldn't have cared, I still could never have imagined letting my mother know I was reading romance novels. Thankfully, I wasn't, until recently, so there wasn't much to hide. Well.....except that one time....

The summer I turned sixteen, my mother packed me up, put me on a plane and sent me to Orlando to stay with my Aunt Jacquie. You might think that sounds like an awfully boring waste of a summer, but it wasn't, as my Aunt Jacquie is one of the coolest people on the face of the earth. It was a fabulous summer. We spent the majority of it tracking down new age stores and buying witchy things. She took me to Cassadaga where I got my fortune told. We went to open mic poetry nights at a coffee bar and smoked clove cigarettes. She helped me steal a Tori Amos concert poster off a bulletin board. It was awesome.

Aunt Jacquie is also a reader and she and my mother frequently butt heads about what constitutes a good book and she's the one that told me to never trust Mum when she says a book is great. Mom likes stuffy, long winded lit for the most part and my aunt's taste tended to be somewhat less stodgy. Aunt Jacquie had books on a little shelf in the guest room where I was staying and I needed something to read. So I picked up a perfectly harmless looking little paperback entitled The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty by one A.N. Roquelaure. And I read it. Then, once I was over the initial shock of what my young, innocent brain was taking in, I read the sequel Beauty's Punishment and it's sequel Beauty's Release. And I remember my aunt telling me "DO NOT TELL YOUR MOTHER I LET YOU READ THOSE."

This Sleeping Beauty series is an erotic fantasy trilogy written under a pseudonym of Miz Anne Rice- you know, the vampire lady and it contains many, many naughty bits. Well actually, it contains MOSTLY naughty bits with just a dash of plot. They were horribly written, tacky and debauched and I loved them. I still, to this day, like to gift the first book to unsuspecting friends just to be evil. But back then I NEVER would have told my mum...who's reading this now and thinking I'm stupid because she wouldn't have given a shit. But I knew then what I know now which is, DO NOT PISS OFF YOUR MOTHER (this is a general rule that will and should stay with you throughout your life. You can and will, do many many things in your life but so long as you adhere to this one simple rule, you'll never be able to do anything too untoward). So the sixteen year old me would NEVER have told my mother that I spent the summer smoking and reading porn. But I could of :)

That being said. I will try to mark book thoughts on romance novels as having naughty bits so that my young readers can make an informed decision about whether or not they would feel comfortable if their mother caught them reading a review of a book that has a half exposed breast on the cover. I'm not telling you to read them. I'm not telling you not to. And perhaps in the spirit of reverse psychology this will ultimately turn someone more towards reading books with naughty bits than if I hadn't said anything at all but this way I at least made a policy out of it.

Not all book thoughts here at Life After Jane are on Young Adult Books. If you chose to read further when a review is marked as having "naughty bits" be advised that you may PISS OFF YOUR MOTHER.

Isn't this fun?