Patience Bloom, an editor for Harlequin, chronicles her search for love in Romance Is My Day Job. The memoir commences in 1984 at a high school dance, when the bookish sophomore is ditched by Ken, her good-looking date. Sam, a popular, fun-loving senior, rescues Patience, the two of them taking to the dance floor and even posing as a couple for the event photographer.
The picture is all that remained from the thrill of that night. For the next 25 years, Patience endures a series of bad relationships as she moves around the United States (plus some time in Paris) until she lands in New York City and her job at Harlequin. By the time she turned 40, Patience--professionally successful, but still single--had concluded, "My life is nothing like these books, not even a little bit."
References to popular romance books and movies infuse Bloom's memoir as she offers a clever, humorous take on hero archetypes and compares them to the lessons she's learned, often the hard way, from her own romantic entanglements. When Sam contacts Patience via Facebook shortly after her 41st birthday, the two, living on different continents, court each other via Skype for four months. They share an intimacy that affirms Patience's faith in love, encouraging her to reflect upon her life and open her heart. But is Sam too good to be true? Once they meet face to face, will they be compatible? Suspense deepens as Bloom's beautifully rendered love story illustrates that real life can often be as engrossing as romance novels. --Kathleen Gerard, blogger at Reading Between the Lines