I first discovered The Pink Carnation series in high school, as a sophomore starting to forge my identity, and using books as my guide to self-discovery. Wandering around in my favorite independent bookstore one spring day in 2006, I was using the oft- condemned method of finding a new book: by which cover intrigued me most. My attention became riveted on a gorgeous spine with pink letters… The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig. The front cover was even more promising and as I read the blurb on the back I decided to purchase the book. But HEY! It looks like a series, I’ll buy the next one too! There was no way I could pass it up.

My mother has blessed me with many things: her height, her wit, and her love of British literature and their accompanying BBC miniseries. So when I recognized the reference to the Scarlet Pimpernel in Lauren’s book it felt like kismet.

The sun seemed to shine brighter and the air seemed to blow more sweetly as I walked down the cobblestone streets with my new treasures. The details are hazy about where I sat (or which homework I neglected) while reading these books but I know that I averaged one a day and was laughing constantly. All I could talk about during lunch with my friends was the new series I’d started.

I never read Harry Potter growing up so I missed out on the wait-all-night-for-the-book-to-come-out-and-then-call-in-sick-to-read-it-right-away craze, so pre-ordering the latest book in a series or going to the bookstore on book launch day was a new experience for me. It was as if I had joined a new group of friends: Lauren, Eloise, Amy, Henrietta, and the other heroines as time went on. (Except maybe Mary… we definitely would not see eye to eye.) The brilliant writing of the series heralded a brand-new truth for me that proved to be very formative. Smart women could write, or read, anything they wanted and still sound intelligent! Romance novels were foreign to me as a 16 year old so the Pink Carnation series was my first foray into bodice-ripping, bosom-heaving fun. But the obvious research that went into the books coupled with Lauren’s clever prose erased my preconceived notions of the Romance Novel.

For me, the series was a metaphor for being a woman: a woman who could be comprised of all sorts of things and not fit into a specific category (think Alanis Morissette’s lyrics “I’m a bitch, I’m a lover…”). It was validation that I could be whoever I wanted to be and to a teenager with lukewarm self-confidence that was exactly what I needed to hear. Um, read. So I let my freak flag fly and aced my classes while laughing obnoxiously about off color jokes. I still read Austen and Dickens but I expanded to some of the contemporary romance authors suggested on Lauren’s website. I embraced my offbeat side and learned to love the word “juxtaposition.”