If you follow my blog, you know my local RWA chapter is doing a Book Reading Bingo Challenge. Once a month (or so) I recommend books for a category or two.

Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me would fulfill either of the following categories:

• Dress for Success
• Eat, Drink, and Be Merry

The heroine (Min) needs to lose weight in order to fit into her maid-of-honor dress for her sister’s upcoming wedding.

The hero’s (Cal) courtship inadvertently takes the form of feeding her.

MIn and Cal are three-dimensional characters with plenty of backstory and great sidekicks. There are laugh out loud moments. There’s a great cat. She likes Elvis (Presley); he likes Elvis (Costello). Chicken Marsala is practically another character in the book.

Even if you’ve already filled your Eat, Drink, Be Merry and Dress for Success squares, you should read this book. You’ll be glad you did.

This category was much harder for me than it should have been.

I’ve already read Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice (as well as the other Jane Austen novels).

When I searched for titles on Goodreads , I was appalled by the list. You see, this reading challenge is about romance novels, and romance novels as defined by Romance Writers of America must have “an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.”

So how did the following titles make Goodreads’ list of romances adapted to TV or movie?

• Gone With the Wind (he leaves her)
• Wuthering Heights (I don’t even know where to begin as to why this isn’t even romantic, much less a romance)
• The TIme Traveler’s Wife (she dies)
• Love Story (she dies)

But I’ve read all these titles, so I couldn’t use them even if they were romances. And what’s so romantic about death?

I did ask the project coordinators for clarification on this square and they told me if the main story contained a romance, the book could count.  Other chapter members suggested I try looking at Lifetime or the Hallmark chanel’s line up.

I did manage to find an old Diana Palmer novel that had been turned into a made for TV movie.  The title was in my county library system’s data base, and voila. One more square down.

Today is National Cat Day.

One of my favorite fictional cats is Puff from an early Karen Robards novel, Night Magic. The hero is (of course) allergic to Puff, who is the heroine’s pet. The hero is a spy whose former code name was “Magic Dragon.” And (again, of course) the Russians* get the cat mixed up with the spy because of the song, “Puff, The Magic Dragon.”

*The book is from 1988. The Cold War ended in 1991. But then, Russian villains should once more be in vogue.

Another great cat in romance fiction is Elvis from Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me. A stray who wanders into the heroine’s apartment with the hero, Elvis becomes very protective of the woman he adopts, probably because he approves of her music: she has a thing for Elvis Presley. Elvis the Cat learns to operate the heroine’s CD player, including the volume control. He also knows the good guys from the bad.

Do you have a favorite cat from a romance novel?

I honestly thought I’d have half of my Book Bingo Challenge 2017 card filled out by now. Nope.

I think my problem is that I tend to re-read favorites (only one square allows a re-read) or I tend to read in the same categories. An author can be used only once. I tend to read my favorite author’s new releases, which eliminates them from the pool. The point of the challenge is to expand our knowledge of the romance genre by exploring sub-genres.

So far, the squares I have filled in are:

• Inspirational Romance
• Romantic Suspense
• RITA Winner
• Historical Romance
• Erotica
• YA Romance
• The Billionaire
• Paranormal Romance
• Time Travel

It’s time to see what else is on my Kindle.