I like Harlequin Blazes. I even have a subscription. And some of the most reliably fun romance authors, like Sarah Mayberry, Kathleen O’Reilly, and Brenda Jackson, write Blazes.

Undeniably, there is a certain descriptive vocabulary you get used to if you read a lot of them. There are some words and phrases I can’t read — in any book — without thinking first of how they are used in a Blaze.

See how well you know Harlequin Blaze by choosing correct meaning for each word or phrase:

1. “Slick folds”

a. Our heroine has earned a rare high compliment from her origami club president

b. Our hero works at a laundromat

c. Someone is ready to par-tay

2. “Toe-curling”

a. In your digital reader, you have accidentally opened The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

b. In a boundary breaking romance, the hero suffers from claw toe

c. Someone is ready to par-tay

3. “Pebbled”

a. The heroine is shopping with her metrosexual best friend for leather totes

b. The hero grew up on the shore of Cape Cod

c. Someone is ready to par-tay

4. “Hot and tight”

a. The heroine’s new Spanx

b. The hero is suffering a myocardial infarction

c. Someone is in the middle of a par-tay

5. “Neatly trimmed thatch”

a. The heroine is having some roof work done

b. The hero’s beard

c. Someone is dressed for the par-tay

6. “A single thrust”

a. The heroine is an architect

b. The hero is a matador

c. Someone is in the middle of a par-tay

7. “Thick ridge”

a. The heroine is a geologist

b. The hero is heir to a potato chip empire

c. Someone wants to par-tay

8. “Milking”

a. The heroine is a wetnurse

b. The hero is a dairy farmer

c. Someone is nearing the end of the par-tay

9. “Pulsing core”

a. The heroine is at Pilates class

b. The hero is watching Journey to the Center of the Earth

c. Did someone say “par-tay”?

10. I can think of a few more (descriptions of how the hero moves, for example. He never just gets out of a chair. He always “moves in one fluid motion”, often with “predatory grace”.) What’s a word or phrase you’ve seen more than once?

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