When did this happen?

I like to read. I am a fast reader. Or that is, if I am into a book, I read a lot in a day. Just ask Dianne when I came to visit the Doodle last time-I started and finished Breaking Dawn in between all the craziness of hosting the crop, etc.

I am going to admit something here that not a lot of people know, but when I was a teenager I started to read....(gulp!)...Harlequin romance books. I know....I know! Not the most enlightening read, but I did enjoy them. In fact I read them faithfully well into my 20's. So every now and then I get a hankering for a good old sappy romance. Predictable happy ending. Romance. Hunky dude. All good things in my book. What I remember about the genre was that I was truly not a Harlequin reader, but a Silhouette reader. Specifically the Silhouette "Special Edition". They were a bit longer than the regular ones, a bit more plot and most importantly, more romance! Well, the other day I was walking down the book/magazine aisle at WalMart and I got a hankering. So I picked up a couple of titles that looked interesting. WalMart didn't offer any Silhouette titles, only Harlequin. They were all of the "thinner" variety that I remember not liking as much as my "Special Editions"-but "what the heck", I thought. (Feel free to laugh at me at any moment of this story!) I started reading the book-a "suspense" romance. It started off OK, but the plot was extremely thin. The resolution of the suspense was boring. They only kissed two times. And not for very long. There was no "you-know-what" happening at all. AND there was no big moment at the end where they pledged love and devotion. Never once did either of them say or think the word "love". Huh?!? I put the book down and sat looking at it disgusted. What just happened here? I gave them four of my favorite dollars for this? I could have watched a couple of re-runs of Friends and had more romance!

So, my questions to my blogging universe is this: Have all books in this genre dialed it down and turned into Romance-Lite? Is WalMart only selling the PG versions of these books? When did this happen?

I'm gonna have to pop Love Actually in the DVD player to try to cancel out this negative romantic episode! Bleech!