Where, I ask you, where is the romance in the souls of readers of Woman's Weekly? To celebrate 50 years of the Romantic Novelists' Association (a feisty organisation which I love, after having been to their conference earlier this summer, and which is definitely worth cheering) they were asked to vote for the best romantic novel of the last 50 years. After coming up with a shortlist of three - Barbara Taylor Bradford's A Woman of Substance, Trisha Ashley's Every Woman For Herself, and Linda Gillard's Star Gazing, this morning they voted for Gillard as their winner.

Now, these are all fine titles, I'm sure – BTB is clearly a legend in her own lifetime, Ashley has been shortlisted twice for the Melissa Nathan Award for Romantic Comedy, Star Gazing was shortlisted for the Romantic Novel of the Year award in 2009 (the story of a blind, middle-aged widow, it certainly sounds like unusual territory for romantic fiction, and looking at the extract from it here, it actually looks rather good). But the three most romantic novels of the last 50 years? Really?

Personally, I'd have made my 17-year-old self happy, I think, and gone for The Thorn Birds. Rereading it in December, it was way more melodramatic and swoony than I remembered it, but still, Meggie and Ralph's long-drawn-out, forbidden love won my heart as a teenager and perhaps because of that, it still tops the romance stakes for me today. Or – perhaps I've got a thing for lengthy waits before consummation? hmm – how about Love in the Time of Cholera? And on this theme, we could also have Captain Corelli's Mandolin (it wouldn't be my choice, but millions of readers certainly fell for Corelli and Pelagia).

At least the poll wasn't to find the most romantic novel ever, else, as usual, it would have been all about Austen – Mr Darcy always seems to come out top in this kind of thing. But I'm not sure it truly represents the best romantic writing of the last half century. What would your choice have been?