Excitement among romance authors has been mounting since the beginning of the year for the announcement of the overall winner of the Romantic Novelists’ Association Romantic Novel of the Year Award for 2009.
The RNA was set up in 1960. The idea behind the Association was to encourage superb writing and to give the much maligned genre of Romance Fiction respect in the writing community and beyond into a general readership. The award for the Romantic Novel of the Year also began in 1960, again to promote excellent writing and respectability of the genre.
The shortlist for the 2009 winner was announced during January from a longlist of 22 books, which in itself had been whittled down from a total of 156 novels submitted by a vast array of publishers, to battle it out for the award. The shortlist consisted of six of what was considered by the reader panel as the best writing in the romance literature genre of the previous year.
And the styles of the books are as diverse as one would expect – everything from coming-of-age romance to time slip novels, through to romantic family epics and weird links between characters. The settings of the plotlines are hugely diverse as well, including worldwide settings of Japan, India, Canada, Ireland, England and Scotland.
The shortlist, read by a panel of three judges, was:
- Before the Storm by Judith Lennox (Headline 2008, ISBN 978-0755331345). It is a family drama, set in both Cornwall and London during the first half of the Twentieth Century.
- East of the Sun by Julia Gregson (Orion 2008, ISBN 978-1409102519). The story is set in India in the early 1900’s and is based around three girls who arrive there with their own desires about how their lives will progress.
- Sophia’s Secret by Suzanna Kearsley (Allison &Busby 2008, ISBN 978-0749080785). This timeslip novel centres around the lives of two related women – one from 1707 and the other from the present day, who is writing about her ancestor.
- Star Gazing by Linda Gillard (Little Brown 2008, ISBN 978-0749938970) tells the story of a blind woman in Scotland who searches for love with a stranger she meets one night on her doorstep.
- Thanks for the Memories by Cecilia Ahern (Harper Collins 2008, ISBN 978-0007233694) A Casualty in hospital is given a blood transfusion and finds that her life is linked to the divorced blood donor who gave her a second chance at life in a way neither of them would ever have expected.
- The Last Concubine by Lesley Downer (Transworld 2008, ISBN 978-0593057537) is an epic love story, set in 1860’s Japan. A concubine has to unravel the mystery of her origins in order to escape the civil war which has erupted with the one she loves, but the secret threatens to completely destroy her.
Then, at the RNA Awards Luncheon, held on 10th February, at the Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington, London, the winner was announced. Julia Gregson’s East of the Sun scooped the title. The judges, by their own admission, had a difficult time with such a high standard of books on the shortlist, but eventually reached a unanimous decision and had nothing but praise for the winning entry.
So, if you want to curl up and become absorbed in the best in romance fiction, then you can do no better than to begin with the novels here. Whether the winner or not, each one of these books has the quality of excellence which got them on the shortlist in the first place. Each one deserves its place among the romantic elite – and, more importantly, deserves to be read!
Claire Cowling - I became a freelance writer in 2007, after a career in teaching, followed by a long period as a stay-at-home parent. My background has ...
