Romance Buzzwords: A Game Recycled

When I was blogging as a Vagabond, we had great fun playing the Romance Buzzwords game. I’m recycling it here with some minor changes. The OED defines a buzzword as “a catchword or expression currently fashionable.” I think you will agree that the fifteen words on the list qualify as “romance buzzwords.”

So, here’s the game. List a title of a romance you have read that uses the word. Just to keep us all honest, we will include authors’ names as well. You may use a variant form of the word (for example, scandal/scandalous/scandalizing). The more titles, the merrier the game; but if you can think of only a few, share those. You don’t have to list fifteen. To encourage you, I’ll add that when the Vagabonds played the game (with a slightly different list), Julie found a single author who had used all the words.

The only rules are that the title must use one of the words from the list, and it must be a book you have read or plan to read. All of my examples are from my 2010 list, so most of them fall in the “plan to read” category. I could have listed other titles from the list for most of the words.

To make it more fun, a random poster will win a book with one of our list words in the title.

The List
1. Bride (The Elusive Bride, Stephanie Laurens)
2. Duke (In Bed with the Duke, Christina Dodd)
3. Kiss (A Kiss at Midnight, Eloisa James)
4. Lady (Never Less Than a Lady, Mary Jo Putney)
5. Love (Ten Things I Love About You, Julia Quinn))
6. Magic (Lake Magic, Kimberly Fisk)
7. Mistress (Mistress by Mistake, Maggie Robinson)
8. Night (Promise Me Tonight, Sara Lindsey)
9. Passion (The Darkest Passion, Gena Showalter)
10. Scandal (Secrets of a Scandalous Bride, Sophia Nash)
11. Secret (The Secret Duke, Jo Beverley)
12. Seduction (Proof by Seduction, Courtney Milan)
13. Surrender (The Surrender of a Lady, Tiffany Clare)
14. Temptation (Twice Tempted by a Rogue, Tessa Dare)
15. Wicked (Wicked Intentions, Elizabeth Hoyt)

Please share your buzzword titles, my friends. And if you have any thoughts on why these particular words are so popular, we would all love to hear those too.