The other day one of the top stories on NPR Books was Romance Novels, Hairless Chests, and 'Everything I Know about Love' -- who could resist an article with a title like that?  While reading the story, I realized I recognized the author's name -- Sarah Wendell -- and the name of her blog -- Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Wendell was one of two bloggers on SBTB that discovered plagiarism in romance author Cassie Edwards's books a few years back.  While reading one of her more recent books, they found a passage -- a conversation -- that seemed out of place.  It was too dry and factual for pillow talk, so they checked it out -- and found that it was plagiarized from a magazine article on black-footed ferets.

Having found one example of plagiarism in one of her romance novels, the bloggers kept digging, and found plenty more in that book and three others.  Only a year or two after some other high-profile plagiarism cases (e.g., Kaavya Viswanathan), it was big news for a few days.  Cassie Edwards claimed she didn't know it was plagiarism (?!), her publisher expressed concern, etc. etc.  I don't recall if they ever pulled her books, though.

Being an ex-Edwards fan (I read her books in junior high and high school), I was scandalized along with everyone else when this happened in 2008.  Recognizing the connection made me pretty interested in Wendell's book.  Anyone who can be unashamed of reading romance, yet irreverent enough to sniff out plagiarism or poke fun at the genre, is worth reading, in my opinion!