Romance week starts with Passion’s Blood!

Well helloooooo there! It’s Romance Week here at Seriously Sarah. I’m going to kick start with a kind of romance book you probably had never seen before!

The ILLUSTRATED romance book!

Heck yes.

This is Passion’s Blood by Cherif Fortin and Lynn Sanders.

Here’s the copy/paste description of the book:

Lady Leanna is a flame-haired beauty loved by her betrothed, Prince Emric, desired by his loathsome brother, Prince Bran. Although in love with Emric, Leanna has still not made her peace with the knowledge that this arrangement was forced upon her.

Prince Emric, noble and courageous, rides to war, ignorant of his brother’s dark treachery.

In a net of betrayal and violence, the young lovers must preserve their faith, and Leanna must keep Emric alive with her love and the magical powers she herself does not fully understand . . .

How can you not resist romance books with odd/posh character names and PASSHIONE (double points if you know where I got that spelling from)!

A fun fact! Do you see the guy on the cover? That’s Cherif Fortin! He collaborates with the photographer Lynn Sanders and I don’t know how but the both of them turn the photographs into beautiful art pieces.

YES, he is a model AND an artist (and photographer). Heck, the both of them are artists and photographers too so it’s like major awesome combo.

Besides romance book covers, in their portfolio, they do family portrait work or whatever people commission them to do (at least from what I saw years ago, depending if they changed their website).

Obviously it takes a lot of moolah because they’re really, really pretty.

You can see the inner pages here because I’m not going to show the other pages when the official website has given enough previews of the style. It’s like being considerate to the artist, you know?

Now… there’s quite a bit (read that as a lot) of illustrations in the book and the pages with just words looks like as if it were printed on some ‘old paper’ yellowish texture to suit the whole theme.

Okay compared to typical romance books, this is comparatively short but HEY, a picture is like a thousand words, right? So it should have… I’m not counting how many pages of illustrations it has but it’s got enough okay?

Where did I get this book? $35.69 at Open Trolley , I call that my “alternate universe” Amazon because it’s has cheaper shipping and pretty much has whatever book I need if it’s not available at Borders or Kinokuniya.

Now… for those who do read romance books and know what’s the “required” scenes in them (yes, there is a template!)… Heh, heh… Well, it would be telling if I described what pictures are in there, wouldn’t I?

Pfft, okay. It’s all pretty Pg13, the ILLUSTRATIONS, that is. Sorta.

Still… I don’t think you’d give this book to some young kid even if it’s technically a “picture book”… If you like painted artworks and romance, get Passion’s Blood! They’re having another book out in this style in September called There Be Dragons.

It’s a pretty nifty book although I prefer my normal words only book for the stories instead (I’m partial to time travelling romance stories, more on this later in the week).

If you know a friend who likes romance books, this is certainly a good book to give as a present. Just… Well, don’t read the book in an MRT or something because you’re definitely going to get weird looks from the people next to you.