Another Man's Wife

The cover of Dallas Schulze's Silhouette Intimate Moments "A Family Circle" Heartbreakers collection title: Another Man's Wife, proclaims all of those affiliations, along with the caption "Widow in Distress" and the pop-up, "Prize Surprise! See Inside for Details." It's not particularly thought-provoking literature. In fact, I waited until I finished Murder in the Cathedral so this review wouldn't sit alone embarrassing me.
I buy up cheesey-looking romance novels at library book sales and read them for entertainment. Sometimes, as is the case with The Golden Unicorn (see January review) most of the entertaiment comes from mockery (what?, everybody was a murderer and really somebody else's father?), sometimes from crazy-wild escapism (every female wanna-be professor should read The Last Viking at some point), and on rare occasion from caring about the characters. Based on the very pink, very busy cover, I expected Another Man's Wife to be one of the former and was pleasantly surprised to find it one of the latter. Mind you, the book is still formulaic, the characters perfect, and the few plot twists absurd, but I cried about them, which means the writing is working.

My one analytical question: what does it mean that the subject of romantic fantasies are increasingly not vikings and pirates but rather men romantic because they are dependable fathers? Is stable reliability so rare as to be just the stuff of fantasy?

Note of amusement from Harlequin's disclaimer: [All characters], "are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author."