Why Romance by Augusta Reilly?Great Thoughts

Each year on Valentine’s Day, I invite an author to share thoughts on love and romance in books. This year, I am thrilled to welcome author August Reilly to share her thoughts. I literally had goosebumps when I read her post. So perfectly beautiful! Augusta’s recent romance novel, Why I Held Your Hand, is wonderful.

Here is Augusta Reilly:

“What I need right now is a good romance.”

We all know that a romance novel makes for a great escape. And we all know that we are living in escape-worthy times. But why not escape into a fantasy novel? Or how about a good old-fashioned mystery? Why is it that, of all the literary escape routes available to us, romance always seems to be the road most taken?

Because it’s not an escape. It’s a need. We hunger for love like we hunger for food. In Greek mythology, the god of love, Eros, is one of the primordial gods, right there at the time of creation beside the gods of earth and sky. In Western culture, our creation story follows two star-crossed lovers through a garden of unparalleled splendor, where loving companionship is provided as a life-sustaining need, in the same basket as food and water.

Somewhere in your love story is your own personal Garden of Eden. It’s the chapter where you first fall in love with him, those twenty rapturous pages when you’re so happy and fulfilled that you’re sure that his love is all you’ll ever need.

Maybe you haven’t gotten to that chapter yet. Maybe that chapter is a thousand pages behind you. And while your love may be deeper and stronger than ever, you’d give anything for the chance to return to the garden, to break through the gates and reread that chapter again for the first time.

So next time you find yourself guiltily eyeing that regency on the third shelf, rest assured that you’re not escaping. You’re fulfilling a fundamental need. You’re seizing your chance to return to the garden, even if just for a few glorious hours. So go ahead, read away. You quite literally need a good romance right now.

Why I Held Your Hand

The heat is high and the laughs are plentiful in this steamy romantic comedy by Augusta Reilly.

Laura Delaney loves her small mountain hometown of North Powell with its quaint charm, stately Victorian homes and surrounding hiking trails. Unfortunately, when it comes to attracting travel dollars, it can no longer compete with the flashy hot springs and ski slopes of nearby competitors. That’s why she hires a hotshot marketing team to figure out how to inject the old magic back into North Powell’s sagging tourist trade. What she doesn’t expect is for the team to include David Harper. Smart, funny, handsome, and amazing in bed, he’s the perfect man. All she needs to do now is keep their relationship under wraps until the project is over.

But that’s easier said than done when she’s assigned to work with Spence Markham, the company’s offbeat “idea man” and David’s professional nemesis. When Spence suggests hosting a Dickens Festival to revitalize the town’s winter economy, Laura is thrilled. She’s even more thrilled when Spence falls in love with Powell House, the dilapidated Victorian she hopes to turn into a town museum. But is Spence falling in love with Laura as well? Soon, what started as a simple assignment becomes a tale of two possible futures. But which one will Laura choose?

About Augusta Reilly

Augusta Reilly has been writing for women’s magazines and literary publications for two decades. In her earlier years, she was a prolifically (if not proudly) published pulp fiction author whose anonymous literary masterpieces included ‘I Had The New Year’s Baby With Santa!’, ‘Prom Night in the County Morgue!’, ‘My Husband’s Sperm Were Kidnapped and Held For Ransom!’, ‘My Son the Pimp!’, and countless other titles, all of which ended in an exclamation point. She lives in beautiful Douglas County, Colorado with her husband, three cats, and way too many kids. Learn more at augustareilly.com