Love Is Complicated by @JoanReeves #SmartGirlsReadRomance

We write about romance, passion, and love—all of which can be very complicated.

We tend to think people in days of old had an easier time with love and romance, but that's not true.

Love has always been complicated and bewildering, but like Quentin Crisp once said: "The war between the sexes is the only one in which both sides regularly sleep with the enemy."

I just finished writing Foolishly Yours, a book with a heroine who is puzzled by the feelings she has for a man she doesn't want to like. In fact, he's nothing like the kind of man she expects to bring home to her parents.

So why does she want him? I think  because Voltaire was right when he said: "All the reasons of man cannot outweigh a single feeling of a woman." 

Samantha—everyone calls her Sam—has feelings she doesn't understand, but they are too compelling to ignore, suppress, or banish.

In the beginning, she thinks it's simply desire, but desire, between the right man and woman, can pave the road to love.

What Is Love?

For millennia, people have tried to explain what love is. Poet Robert Frost said, "Love is the irresistible desire to be irresistibly desired."

Freud said, "One is very crazy when in love."

Director John Ford described love as, "Desperate madness."

The general consensus is that love is volatile and all-consuming.

The heart wants what the heart wants. 

Even feminist Gloria Steinem admitted that, "Some men and women seem to need each other."

So what happens in a romance novel? Author Theodore Deriser summed it up this way, "You walk into a room, see a woman, and something happens. It's chemical. What are you going to do about it?"

So what do Samantha Ruiz and Grayson Crawford do about their situation? You know they end up together, after all, it is a romance novel. But the fun is always finding out exactly how they overcome their challenges and get their happily ever after.

Foolishly Yours is available for pre-order now. It publishes February 28. Samantha and Grayson invite you to get your copy today.