Light, sexy period romance

[DreamSongs]

Sorry, that was A.N. Roquelaure and that might be a bit more than what you were hunting for.

[lady narcissa]

NPR did a survey this summer and from the votes has compiled a list of 100 swoon worthy romance novels. Lists like this are always a mixed bag. No one is ever going to love every novel and there are certainly some novels that might seem like romance novels to one person but be literary fiction or fantasy or young adult to another. Nevertheless, there are some good romance novels to be found on this list and to its credit, they are not all the new hot things but include some classic older ones as well:

http://www.npr.org/2015/07/29/426731847/happy-ever-after-100-swoon-worthy-romances

[Lyanna Stark]

So *bump* because I discussed this with @Chaldanya

In any case, it is time to get down and dirty in the Victorian rosebushes or what have you. Have some romance reviews and recommendations, and even better, anti-recommendations! They are almost twice as fun (scroll directly to them for the LOLs).

Unfortunately for the modernists, this features almost exclusively historicals, or faux historicals (i.e. fantasy/scifi stuff).

Yes, oh yes!

Courtney Milan has released a couple of new novels and novellas, and it's a bit uneven but she is still Milan and it is still basically read-worthy. She could prolly write a shopping list and fill it with Meaning. Unlike old-skool romance writers, and most modern ones too, she is not afraid of tackling somewhat controversial issues, like racism, battered women, PTSD, crushing poverty, rape victims (and not in the hero rapes heroine kind of rape, with Milan it is always A Bad Thing) etc. Milan's main signum is that her heroes are never arseholes, ever. They are decent human beings and sometimes more than that. For everyone who thinks romance novels are rapey alpha-men ravaging crying virgins, Milan is the antidote.

I bought the King's Man by Elizabeth Kingston as a joke, because it it cost me nearly nothing, was medieval, featured a hero called "Ranulf" (I mean seriously!) and that made me laugh in RL, but it turned out to be actually not shite. The heroine is plain and for those readers who dig the Jaime/Brienne storyline in ASOIAF, this one is definitely up your alley and then some. While it's not without its flaws (and the ending kinda clobbered me with its excess sugary sweetness) it was definitely different as far as romances go. Not the least because the heroine is totally secure and unashamed about actually being a sexual being. No prudish missishness here. She also forms friendships with other women, she has a complicated relationship with her mother, which is very much unlike most old-skool romance heroines, who are mostly unique little snowflakes.

Kingston's other novel, "Fallen Lady" as also pretty decent for the genre and had a not what you expected sort of twist. The whole premise is that the heroine is totally tormented by something in her past (which also turns out to not be what you think) and then the tables sort of turns when you find out the hero's family are also total and utter arseholes, and this makes it sort of delightful. It also features female friendship as an important component, which is nice. So both Kingston's novels pass the Bechdel test with flying colours, many times around.

For the paranormals, everything is normally shite, or kinda shite, or total utter shite. One of the few I have found who keeps a consistent quality over the shite-ness of paranormal is Bec McMaster. Even she doesn't always hit all the right notes, and her first entry in the London Steampunk series is kinda generic. It gets better around the mid-point of the series tho, only to be occasionally great and occasionally shite in the last installment, for which I am extremely unhappy because I really wanted to know how the royal drama would unfold. Also give us surly Byrnes or give us a Coldrush guard to the face.

For a more conventional historical, but without the bloody Dukes, Earls, Highlander Lairds and Marchoinesses... Marquieses...Marionettes...whatever, Theresa Romain's "The Sports of Baronets" features some barely hanging on nobility who are actually horse trainers. Features horses, race tracks and mystery and was actually quite amusing. Not a ball or ballgown in sight.

Gwendolyn Thomas "Spinter's Gambit" features a woman doing "man stuff" dressed up as a boy, and of course the hero doesn't realise he is a she. Oh the shenanigans. The story is still entertaining tho, and well put together. It also features serious subjects like commentary on equality, gay rights (or lack thereof) etc.

Kinda, sorta:

Marsha Canham: Her pirate stuff is PIRATE ROMANCE. Pirates. On ships. With demi-culverins! Which get to shoot things. That alone makes it difficult to dislike. The Iron Rose is the best of the lot, some of the others rank from eh to ok. Her Dragon Tree I really liked. Medieval run away wife who accidentally didn't murder her husband (yes) meets disgraced former Templar with a huge religious complex. Stuff Happens. It's also a slow burner which is nice, since the characters don't fall immediately in lust with each other. The villains are cardboardy evil tho, for the sake of being RLY EVUHL. Pale Moon Rider swaps pirates for swashbuckling highwaymen, and it still works. It's basically pirates on land, and a french heroine who is just wonderfully continental.

Grace Draven - Master of Crows: Fantasy romance! Has its moments, but if you don't like your romance novels with a huge, massive, hefty dose of sex, stay the hell away from this one. If you find that it has a tendency to slow down the plot to a crawl (I fall into this category) then prepare to speed read basically everything from the 40% mark or so. It does *have* plot after that, and it is sort of unusual in a way since again it features a plain jane with some super hot and awesomely powerful dude, with a resolution that at least I didn't completely expect.

Tessa Dare - When a Scot Ties the Knot. Well, this one was cheap, and recommended from "Smart Bitches Trashy Books". It's also totally crackpot, but it sort of works? Oh and it features lobster sex and research about lobster sex. In Scotland. Oh, someone got stuck in a swamp as well. Weird and wonderful, in a way, although I tend to really, really dislike Highland romance as a subgenre. Unless there are sheikhs in it, cos then it's a totally different thing. Highland Sheikhs are everything that is Right and Proper.

Stay the fuck away from:

Ruth Ann Nordin. I could not get through more than the first chapter of the freebie I got off Amazon. Good Lord Almighty it was awful. She didn't even abbreviate "Mister" as "Mr", and just AARRRGGH. It was the Worst.

Lucinda Brant's "Salt Bride". This features the arsehole of all arseholes as the hero and I just wished the heroine would punch him in his stupid face and leave on a ship to another continent. Unfortunately, this doesn't happen. I couldn't even really follow why she excused his arseholishness, I was blinded by the arseholishness. Stay the hell away from this regressive and sexist pile of poo-pants.

Marsha Canham's Medieval Trilogy is so, so annoying. It's outdated, ridiculous and stereotypical in every possible way. Shame, cos some of her other stuff is fun in a kind of campy way, but this shit should burrrrrrrn. Foot stomping heroines, all poor people are ugly, rake heroes, bodice ripping, all promiscuous women are Bad People(TM) and just...I could go on. I soldiered through, but it was tough going. Not as bad as Twilight, but definitely nothing that made me happy. Only delayed trains saved this one. To be fair to Canham, she handles the terminology of the era really well. When she includes names for pieces of armour, clothes etc. it meshes with the writing, unlike some other writers who will be named below. Historical know how doesn't save this from being a steaming pile of yuck tho.

Loretta Chase's "Lord of Scoundrels": Another massive arsehole hero who is a big, dumb crybaby of the most epic proportions imaginable. I was amazed he didn't have every STD under the sun, since he spent 95% of his waking hours with prostitutes. The heroine at one point shot him, and that was the highlight of the novel. After that, it went downhill. I only read this one cos it came highly recommended from romance novels rec sites, but I have no idea what crack those people are smoking. This is the WORST, and just offensive and incomprehensible. There is a glove scene (yes, glove, not love) which is supposed to be the Hottest Thing since Really Hot Tea, and it is just....WTF. Big Whiny Crybaby speaks in Foreign and the heroine just loses her mind. Honestly, she shouldn't marry this dude, she should get him into the Whambulance and herself onto a fast ship to the Americas. Yes.

Tamara Leigh: Anything by this writer, who spends her time writing Medieval romances where she has obviously focused on used the Best Words and she knows all the Great Words. I wanted to smack her with her thesaurus since it just sounded poncy and silly. Of course nobody was stabbed with a dagger, no, here they are stabbed with a Misericorde. Obviously.  There are also poncy names for what is essentially "a dress" ("bilaud"). Also, there is so little chemistry between the characters I think it might end up in negative numbers. Also regressive, sexist in part (and Good Lord could the woman stop going on about hanging the bloody sheet out the window being a Central Thing to Medieval culture for the Love of Everything Holy). FML for getting this, even if it cost me like less than a dollar in total. This should burn, in a fire.

 

Happy Romancing!!

[Argonath Diver]

Hah! I recalled this thread from last year. I had clicked on it, hoping to find something appealing to give to the woman I was seeing at the time. She thought 50 Shades was great, and I was hoping, being a man completely, utterly clueless about romance novels, to find something to say "Here read this." Long story short, I clicked on that one Amazon blurb, and it summarily lit up my "Because you looked at..." stuff for months. I bought pots and pans, Amazon! Tech stuff all over!  And so many other books! I only lingered on that page longer because it was bloody hilarious!

 

Never got around to finding a good one for that gal, we didn't work out anyway, but I wanted to thank Lyanna for the ongoing entertainment of my Amazon recommendations Between that and the Wet For Nessie hilarity, this beautiful forum has crafted Amazon's realization of my fandom of gritty grimdark, fanciful YA adventures, and bizarre erotic fiction. I wouldn't be the same without you.

[Contrarius+]

20 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

@Chaldanya

Courtney Milan has released a couple of new novels and novellas, and it's a bit uneven but she is still Milan and it is still basically read-worthy. She could prolly write a shopping list and fill it with Meaning. Unlike old-skool romance writers, and most modern ones too, she is not afraid of tackling somewhat controversial issues, like racism, battered women, PTSD, crushing poverty, rape victims (and not in the hero rapes heroine kind of rape, with Milan it is always A Bad Thing) etc. Milan's main signum is that her heroes are never arseholes, ever. They are decent human beings and sometimes more than that. For everyone who thinks romance novels are rapey alpha-men ravaging crying virgins, Milan is the antidote.

Loved all your recs. And especially thanks for this about Courtney Milan! I've seen her name around, but haven't tried any. I don't mind rape-as-a-bad-thing, but I absolutely DESPISE rape-fantasy-romance. Talk about throwing books across the room.

 

You also mentioned Tessa Dare. I'm a fan because of her humor and characters.  I've read six of her books.

 

What do you think of Laura Kinsale? Over all, I rather enjoyed The Prince of Midnight, which I thought was a bit off-the-wall.

eta -- I was just reading some Milan blurbs and came across her upcoming book Hold Me. I will SO read that book -- transgender woman as the heroine!

[Darth Richard II]

*pops in*

Outlander is terrible martial rape justification porn and should be burned

*pops out*

[Contrarius+]

7 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

*pops in*

Outlander is terrible martial rape justification porn and should be burned

*pops out*

NO book should be burned. Feel free to throw it with great force, however.

[Darth Richard II]

I didn't mean it literally.

 

[Contrarius+]

9 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

I didn't mean it literally.

 

Should not even be joked about, unless you are freezing to death in the middle of the woods in the middle of winter in an isolated cabin with no electricity and no axe to cut firewood.

[Darth Richard II]

Sure but then why do I have one of my most despised novels with me in a cabin in the woods?

[Contrarius+]

2 minutes ago, Darth Richard II said:

Sure but then why do I have one of my most despised novels with me in a cabin in the woods?

Because the previous occupant left it there, of course.

 

Or maybe you brought it with you on purpose so you'd have an excuse to burn it.

[Darth Richard II]

Nah I could grab a bunch of Ann Coulter books from the bargain bin to burn if i needed fuel THAT badly.

[Contrarius+]

Ha!

[Lyanna Stark]

19 hours ago, Contrarius+ said:

Loved all your recs. And especially thanks for this about Courtney Milan! I've seen her name around, but haven't tried any. I don't mind rape-as-a-bad-thing, but I absolutely DESPISE rape-fantasy-romance. Talk about throwing books across the room.

 

You also mentioned Tessa Dare. I'm a fan because of her humor and characters.  I've read six of her books.

 

What do you think of Laura Kinsale? Over all, I rather enjoyed The Prince of Midnight, which I thought was a bit off-the-wall.

eta -- I was just reading some Milan blurbs and came across her upcoming book Hold Me. I will SO read that book -- transgender woman as the heroine!

Thank you! and thanks to Direwolves as well, glad you liked the recs.

Have only read one Tessa Dare, cos I tend to get stuff either through recs or because of amazon price dumping. Or they are Courtney Milan (altho I havent tried Milan's modern era work, I tend to stick with historicals most of the time, altho perhaps I ought to change that). The only Tessa Dare I read was surprisingly ok and despite the occasionally cracktastic plot. it had some nice character portraits.

Have only read "Midsummer Moon" by Kinsale, which was amusing but also totally cracktastic and occasionally well over the top. For being so wonky it had some surprisingly lame sex scenes tho. Haven't tried "Prince of Midnight" but I might, since it features highwaymen (basically pirates on land!) and it's fairly cheap, too.

Although I have to say, you can often "date" the romance novel after how the sex scenes (if any) are written. It's especially obvious with writers with a huge back catalog, like Marsha Canham. The older ones are far more stereotypical and extremely unrealistic PIV sex with rainbows all over the page, basically, while the newer ones (say from the last 5-8 years or so) tend to suffer far less from this, be somewhat more realistic (note: somewhat!) with fewer rainbows and less emphasis on totally unrealistic descriptions of well, just about anything that falls into the "horizontal tango" area.

I did read some Elizabeth Hoyt tho, which was somewhere between "eh" and "ok". There is another one of hers that come highly recommended, which has the LOLertastic name "Dearest Rogue" (Good Grief. It only lacks Fabio on the cover.) but SBTB liked it and it features both a blind heroine and a somewhat disabled hero, which is unusual (and makes the title even more effing incomprehensible), and that's normally at least a fairly good mark of quality.

 

[Chaldanya]

@Lyanna Stark  

You rang?

I don't know if it's just because I was tired and grumpy but I could not get into Fallen Lady by Elizabeth Winston.  I already hate the hero and there's entirely too much internal pondering and pontificating - give me something to work with FFS.  I'm a skim reader and pages of not-dialogue and not-action bores me to tears!  But himself is out tonight and I've got fresh bedding on the bed so maybe I'll give it another whirl.

There's some good recs in here and some new names for me to try.  I can't really understand the love for Loretta Chase tbh I've hate read a few of her books and her characters just need a cup of tea, a calm down and a reminder that they are British.

There is one author that I read Julie Anne Long - her Pennyroyal series is quite good.  But there's one book in there (What I Did for a Duke) that I have to rewrite as I'm reading it because the heroine is 21 and the hero is 38 and it skeeves me out - so I just age him downwards by about 10 years.

N

 

ps I quite liked Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt but as is the way with these series I like or adore one book and the rest are just meh.

 

[Lyanna Stark]

33 minutes ago, Chaldanya said:

@Lyanna Stark  

You rang?

I don't know if it's just because I was tired and grumpy but I could not get into Fallen Lady by Elizabeth Winston.  I already hate the hero and there's entirely too much internal pondering and pontificating - give me something to work with FFS.

 

He's a snooty ponce to start with, but he sort of mellows and gets the hell over himself. You also get explained why he is a total snooty ponce. Also, someone throws up on him at one point which is hilarious. It's not exactly an action novel tho, absolutely not.

33 minutes ago, Chaldanya said:

There's some good recs in here and some new names for me to try.  I can't really understand the love for Loretta Chase tbh I've hate read a few of her books and her characters just need a cup of tea, a calm down and a reminder that they are British.

There is one author that I read Julie Anne Long - her Pennyroyal series is quite good.  But there's one book in there (What I Did for a Duke) that I have to rewrite as I'm reading it because the heroine is 21 and the hero is 38 and it skeeves me out - so I just age him downwards by about 10 years.

N

 

ps I quite liked Raven Prince by Elizabeth Hoyt but as is the way with these series I like or adore one book and the rest are just meh.

 

Ooooh nice ones.

Loretta Chase I also can't understand. There is just nothing reasonable anywhere with her stuff. I'm also allergic to the whole "every woman who likes sex is evil, cold hearted and a total witch". Normally this is the hero's ex, and it's totally fine for the the hero to have had both previous relationships and a relationship with Evil Witch(TM) woman. Not to mention this would mean, realistically, that everyone and their dogs would have multiple STDs.

(This is also why Milan is good. She even writes specifically about this and deals with it realistically.)

[Chaldanya]

6 minutes ago, Lyanna Stark said:

(This is also why Milan is good. She even writes specifically about this and deals with it realistically.)

I love the stuff that Milan tackles (disclaimer: I've only read 4 books), but just wish it was in the hands of a slightly more consistent writer. I was waiting with bated breath for the Countess book of the Sinister Brothers but when it came to it the emotional pay off was a let down.  However, the theme running through this particular series (women's rights) is worth the admission price alone.  It's very rare to get a bit of substance to a light historical romance but Milan does admirably well with it.  Not sure if I'll rush out and buy everything else she writes but I'll definitely keep an eye out

N

ps: also you are all baaarrrstards! you made me go on Amazon. There goes the boy's uni fund.

[Lyanna Stark]

18 minutes ago, Chaldanya said:

I love the stuff that Milan tackles (disclaimer: I've only read 4 books), but just wish it was in the hands of a slightly more consistent writer. I was waiting with bated breath for the Countess book of the Sinister Brothers but when it came to it the emotional pay off was a let down.  However, the theme running through this particular series (women's rights) is worth the admission price alone.  It's very rare to get a bit of substance to a light historical romance but Milan does admirably well with it.  Not sure if I'll rush out and buy everything else she writes but I'll definitely keep an eye out

N

ps: also you are all baaarrrstards! you made me go on Amazon. There goes the boy's uni fund.

Yes, some things are better than others. I found her "Once Upon a Marquess" to be borderline pandering, with uneven pacing, a non engaging hero and with way too modern language usage. Granted, just like the first novel in her Brother Sinister series, it is more of a setup for works to come, and the one about the lost sister seems more promising (and somewhat crackpottery too). The companion novella "Her Every Wish" (why the stupid name tho??) featuring a working class heroine and hero I liked far better.

On the other hand, she wrote "The Heiress Effect" so I cannot ever dislike her. Jane might potentially be The best romance heroine ever written. She has literally no fucks left to give, is uncompromising with who she is even when it does not suit people, carries a small fortune of cash in her decolletage and I love that she basically sticks money in people's faces openly as bribes.

The "Un" series is not bad either (yes "un", "unlocked, "unclaimed" and some other "un"), but not as memorable as the Brothers Sinister, perhaps. 

Amazon kindle section is the little Death. I am waiting for server updates all afternoon, so you know what's gonna happen.

[Chaldanya]

I adore Jane.  I just wish her hero had been a bit more "there".

N

[Contrarius+]

7 hours ago, Lyanna Stark said:

Have only read one Tessa Dare, cos I tend to get stuff either through recs or because of amazon price dumping. Or they are Courtney Milan (altho I havent tried Milan's modern era work, I tend to stick with historicals most of the time, altho perhaps I ought to change that). The only Tessa Dare I read was surprisingly ok and despite the occasionally cracktastic plot. it had some nice character portraits.

I like the "cracktastic" terminology. Yes, certainly Dare and Kinsale fit that description -- which is fine with me. I like a little crack in my romance. ;-) (The Prince of Midnight even includes a brief abduction by the Marquis de Sade! And our Hero is a partially deaf hermit ex-highwayman with vertigo and a tame wolf!)

I read Milan's Unlocked novella yesterday and enjoyed it. Started on The Duchess War. I'm desperately avoiding work this week, ya see. ;-)