The greatest and most profilic romance author you’ve never heard of, D’Ancey LaGuarde, is the subject of this collecrion of blurbs, extracts, quizzes, tips and commentary curated by Alice Fraser,

Finding his works through a glitch in the space-time continuum, Fraser allows us to enter the world of pirates, creamy breasts, seal people. octopods, and dazzling dukes from all historical time periods.

It’s utterly hilarious from the first page, conjuring up an author in cape and monocle who details the sexual habits of his heroes, heroines, and creatures in the most florid of ways, while the synopses cause bursts of laughter as you wade through the oeuvre of an author who writes a book every few days, self-publishes, and stocks them in the most curious of places.

As the book progresses it all becomes more and more ridiculous, with both authors providing footnotes until Fraser eventually confesses that she made it all up.

A Passion for Passion is the weird heart of romance, the power of the penis, and the heaving breast of the ingenue. It is “an extreme commitment to silliness in the name of nothing more that celebrating the stupid things that make us happy”.

An obsession with horses and with Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who appears in all sorts of guises through the D’Ancey catalogue, jostles with the traditional and the throuple, the vampiric and the alien.

There are even some illustrations of D’Ancey book covers, brilliantly conveyed and also prone to causing a stifled giggle. Written like a serious academic tract, Fraser’s book is one I found hard to put down, and the depiction of “Romance, Mystery, Science Fictioon and Historico-superanatural bang-fests” is just sublime.

If you enjoy sensual romance with the impossibly rippled abs of the hero and his hands that can circle a woman’s impossibly small waist while being drawn to her impossibly large bust (one book is rated “B for boobs”) then you will appreciate how daft this book is, and how far the idea can be taken.

Download it in “all good newsagents and bad bookshops”, find it “on a park bench near you” dig “into the dunes at high tide” or seek out “a disused phone box”.

I even guffawed at the quotes from reviews: “The most graphic description of a leopard’s penis we’ve ever seen – The Guardian”, and the “taxonimies of dukes” that reveals the stereotypes beloved of the likes of Mills and Boon.

A Passion for Passion is the guidebook you never knew you wanted to the prolific writings of D’Ancey LaGuarde, whose celebration of diversity and obsession with the judicious placement of the finger populates his life’s work.

Delightfully mucky and murky and attractively weird and wacky, this book may make a good present for the person you seek to surprise.

I don't read a lot of out-and-out humour books, perhaps a little burnt by too many TV tie-ins as a kid (though things like The Mary Whitehouse Experience Encyclopedia perhaps have outlived their source material). I am no stranger however to both taking a minor in-joke and extending it way beyond its seemingly natural lifespan, and Alice Fraser's work on the Bugle, Gargle and Last Post podcasts. And so from The Last Post - an ambitiously daft daily satirical news podcast from a parallel universe that Fraser ran in the news-free year of 2020 came the running joke of D'Ancey LaGuarde, and bite-sized blurbs of their ridiculous micro-genre romance novels. It is a bit that loving pastiched Regency and romantasy genres amongst others and relied heavily on Fraser's rat-a-tat delivery and generous if absurd writing.

A Passion For Passion is therefore both a collection of about fifty of those blurbs, with occasional excerpts from these fictional fictional books, combined with the occasional discussion of the pleasures of the romance genre (and feminist readings of such). There are also a few mock-up covers, a comprehension quiz and a postscript from the fictional author. It is very much a grab bag which probably works best as something to dip into: there are only so many fake blurbs for romance novels about half-vampire, half-merman Lord's romancing a governess than you can read in a row. Fraser does have a very gifted way with words and comic rhythm though, and it was interesting reading this after Space Opera to see how to finely load a paragraph with gags* and have each of them land, rather than just try to overwhelm the reader with jokes hoping some will work. There's both a huge amount of imaginative work in this, and it is in itself just frippery, but I have to say it made me laugh an awful lot

*And indeed a well-timed footnote.

A love letter to romance... I haven't finished this, partly as I have a copy on the way, mainly as I think this is something best taken slowly. As with poetry and short stories, if I read too much of the short segments in this book there is a risk of them blurring a little and taking away from the enjoyment.

The book is in celebration of D'Ancey, the author created by Alice for The Last Post and other podcasts, and a celebration of romantic fiction. It alternates between the plot overviews of D'Ancey books and sections from Alice on the different sub-genre of romantic writing. An affectionate and humorous look at this area of fiction, one (as with many genre) constantly overlooked by more 'serious' reviewers. A funny and fun celebration of D'Ancey and romance.

I look forward to my finished copy, and to having it in store.

It was okay. The intro read very silly and a little dismissive of the genre despite it being in theory a love letter to the genre

A super fun, and very unique, comedy non-fiction book, A Passion for Passion mixes passages of biting yet informative romance novel appreciation with parody romance novel blurbs.

Based on Fraser's comedy podcast bit D'ancey LaGuarde, a romance novelist from another dimension whose blurbs Fraser shares with her captivated audience, A Passion for Passion at once makes fun of, and truly appreciates the erotic romance genre. A short, fun, occasionally laugh-out-loud read, this is a brilliant gift-book for the romance readers amongst us.

This loses 1 star, just because it is so repetitive. That is definitely the nature of a book like this, but it did make sitting to read it in the traditional sense, by which I mean reading the thing page after page as you would any other book, a little bit of a chore! 4 stars.

I really enjoyed reading this book, it was a beautiful love-letter to romance fiction and really enjoyed getting to read this. It was strongly written and enjoyed the overall feel in this type of book. I was invested in what was presented from Alice Fraser’s writing style and glad I read this.

I absolutely enjoyed this book! I love all things romance and romance novels and so felt this was a great book celebrating all of that the genre has to offer!