I ended up with two ARCs of Victoria Dahl’s One Week as Lovers, her August release from Kensington. (Thanks, Kensington!) Given that Dahl’s heroines are usually on the neurotic, often-stalked side, and her heroes are often a bit tortured, let’s talk damage, shall we?
What’s your favorite or most enjoyed form of heroine neurosis, or hero damage? Conversely, what tortured devices make you want to throw things?
Me: I’m a total sucker for forbidden attraction, when one character’s personal code, no matter how flawed that code may be, will absolutely not allow them to act on what is one hell of a smoking case of the hotty mcwantingpants. If it’s based on pedophillic overtones, ick no thanks – same with really stupid foundation for said personal code. But when it’s done right, forbidding hotty mcwantingpants is deeeelicious. So if the neurosis/damage is based on trying to resist something that’s proving more and more difficult to ignore, and having to choose between predictably duty or breaking everything for the chance at the object of said wantingpants, I’m all over that.
Variations on the theme make me giddy, too, for example any Beauty and the Beast-type “Oh, noes, I is too ugly/scarred/well-endowed for her!” angst is always fun for my readerly eyes.
What about you? What’s your favorite angst? Leave a comment and you’re entered to win a random drawing for one of two ARC bound galleys of Dahl’s book. Comments are open for 24 hours. Ready, set, angst!
One Week as Lovers is available for preorder at IndieBound, BN.com, BAMM and Amazon.
“@Lynne Connolly: It’s not White Lies you’re thinking of, that one’s the spy with amnesia. I think Adam’s Fall is the one you mean.”
You’re right, it wasn’t “White Lies,” that was the one another author (can’t remember who) allegedly ripped off, who was it?
Just found it. “Come Lie With Me.” Hero in a wheelchair, thinks he’s crippled, heroine is his therapist. Love some old Linda Howard.
Like the majority here, I love tortured heroes – the lost souls. When only the heroine is able to break through the wall around his heart and make him believe he’s worthy of love – that’ll get me everytime. My all time favorite lost soul is Houston from Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath.
I love heroines that are clever, who go toe to toe with the hero.
I like dark and twisted pasts that come back to bite the hero on the ass but end up being overcome in the end. He is all icy and brooding at first glance but then the Emo Wall of Pain starts to crumble. There is almost always a confrontation between the heroine and the MegaEvilGuy or SeductiveSociopathicShrew where secrets and schemes are revealed.
I love campy time traveling vikings/knights/earls with hearts of gold. The Very Virile Viking is my favorite of this sort.
Bring on the angst, I say. Especially the I’ve-loved-you-forever-but-you-never-saw-me angst.
I love it when the H/H has this Big Hurt that’s haunted them all their lives and it turns out to be an ingrown toenail.
krsylu—totally agree. In my book it’s probably the best used trope. 🙂
I also like the Beauty and the Beast, hurt/broken either inside or out. But, I feel a particular glee when the role is reversed and the beast/broken one is the heroine and it’s up the hero to fix her. My favorite example of that is Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs.
Also love the rake, I’m a bad boy angle. Again, that secret *yippee* dance goes off in my head when it’s reversed and it’s the bad one is the gal. Hmmm, I see a theme here.
Hate the big misunderstanding or I’ve got this deep dark secret that I can’t share with you. Most of the time, I’m mind screaming, REALLY? COME ON!!! Don’t be an uncommunicative ass. Secret baby falls into that category since it’s a secret after all…
Did you all know that Chase has a new book scheduled for late this month? Am I the only clueless one? I just found out about it while browsing. I read the excerpt and I’m a bit confused… but still excited!
“hotty mcwantingpants”?? omg. howling. 😀
I love scarred heroes. Physically, emotionally…physically. She doesn’t have to be a beauty but I do like the beast. 😉
I am so totally on board with the hotty McWantingpants that there ought to be a ship docked in the street outside my house.
I’m in BIG Lurrrrve with the forbidden attraction of the ‘ohmygodimsohotforyouimightjustburstintoflames’ persuasion. Lots come to mind—Chase’s Lord Beelzebub of course, all of Kresley Cole’s Immortals, Lisa Kleypas’ Wallflower husbands (especially Lord St. Vincent) and Elizabeth Hoyt and the Fairy Tale Princes.
I can think of books with every type of formula trope that I’ve loved, but there are def. some that I’ll pick up when I don’t know the author’s work, and some that I won’t. Once author trust is established, I’m all over it no matter how cliched the secret baby (and oh god, how I hate secret babies. But Susan Anderson wrote one in her Marines series that I loved.)
Romantic tension builders I like: friends to lovers, Big Brother’s BFF, “she’s all alone in the world, do I protect or ravish?” which leads to my shameful love of guardian/ward stories, and greater love of historical career girl stories (one of my favorites is Dahl’s most recent historical, virgin “widow” and all), modern career girl stories as long as she doesn’t give up her career in the name of lurve (god, how poor = virtuous stories annoy me). I love paranormals because I adore the “fated mate” trope, aka “how can I want someone I kind of despise so badly?” and I love it when the heroine kind of scares the hero with her badassyness (Midnight’s Daughter, Karen Chance; most Kresley Coles). I especially adore the genre-role switches, Dear Author has a great post about that in Kresley Cole novels – how the females have a strong community, etc, and the males are often the loner/virgin/outcasts, as opposed to the old skool romances where the woman is in constant fear of social outcast status.
And I like almost all varieties of noblemen disguised as pirates. Yum.
Dislikes: children. Seriously, it takes a hell of an author to make me be okay with a secret baby, kids from a former marriage, snarky teen nephew or niece, mostly because the dialog seems fake and the kids seem like window dressing. And, to some extent, because when you have children, I think you’re always going to be more committed to them than to your new spouse. I don’t like 3rd parties in my HEA, even if the 3rd party is a child (books that end with the heroine pregnant irritate me as well, frankly. It’s like no love is complete without being sealed with a damn baby).
@Alpha Lyra – you nailed my least favorite, the “we’re not grown ups enough to actually communicate for 5 minutes so let’s have 400 pages of dumb angst.” Arghhhhh….
These comments are FUNNY stuff.
My favorite is the marriage-of-convenience where they fall for each other. Love it.
My favorite angst is: “A long time ago/we used to be friends (or even better lovers/spouses)/but I haven’t thought of you lately at all” and now we HATEZ each other; but we don’t really hatez each other, we’z just fron’in cuz we’z been hurtz and we’z all skeered to open our hearts again.
One trope I’m so incredibly sick of I could vomit—the previously married to a bastard widow. I know, I know—for centuries, marriage was nothing more than a contractual exchange of property (aka, daughters/wives) between men, be they rich or poor and said men were allowed to get away with murder (literally, in some cases). But c’mon! Couldn’t there have been a few couples who managed to forge some sort of amicable relations, possibly even falling in love with each other, after the fact? (Incidentally, I was so happy to Beth from THE MADNESS OF LORD IAN MACKENZIE broke with this trend and actually loved her previous husband, despite the brevity of their marriage).
I’m a Beauty/Beast fan. LOS, To Beguile a Beast, and so many others. Love it!
I also love my brother/relative’s BFF – as in Victoria Dahl’s Talk Me Down. A big dollop of “I shouldn’t be attracted to her, oh but I am!” is excellent mixed with her self assurance.
Another fav is when an author is effective with a realistic parenting situation. Erin McCarthy’s Flat Out Sexy is a great example. She’s a single mom and balances her kids and her attraction to him. He’s supportive of her as a mom. There’s no magic disappearing of the kids so that they can have a romance. They’re meeting up at 2pm to have that hour before the kids come home from school… hot!
I’m not a secret baby fan. I HATE it when the conflict could be solved with one page of dialog if the main characters would just TALK TO EACH OTHER.
Definitely another fan of the beauty and the beast – so long as he isn’t melodrama city over his looks. Internal scars are even more delicious. Paging Carlyle’s Bentley Rutledge TTT.
Also love the older brother of her bff/bff of her older brother kind of off-limits. Those always seem to exude great chemistry and humorous false starts.
Really, really hate secrets though. When one or the other lies about why they’re pushing the other away, I want to toss the book. So long as there’s some honesty over the conflict I can stomach most angst. Straight-up lying kills it every time.
I love the best friends forever but she’s totally in love with him then decides to get over him and move on… THEN he realizes what he’s been missing all alone … My Best Friend’s Lover is a good example
I love it when my hero is all messed up and the girl he saves fixes him up emotionally and mentally. It’s always the big bad tough guys that fall into this category, but I love it nonetheless.
Please count me in for the drawing.
I’m with Jocelyn on the children thing, and especially when the book ends with the heroine pregnant. That just usually ends up making me sad for them, that they never got time to be an established couple together before having it derailed by a baby. The other thing I hate? Amnesia. Dear Lord, how I hate the amnesia books.
I lurve the B&B type books (Goddess of the Rose was gorgeous, Cry Wolf made me ache for them). And also ones where the hero/heroine are equally powerful, but in ways that they may not recognize in each other. Like Warprize or Poison Study.
Wow, all these beauty and the beast fans. Add me to the pile. I think one of my favorites in that vein has to be Laura Kinsale’s The Prince of Midnight.
I also kind of dig the Native American/half breed thing – not fitting in type to any society book. Haven’t seen too many of those lately, but when those are done well *swoon*
I like it when there are real barriers to the relationship, and I have to wonder how the author will make it all work out. Nancy Butler had a trad Regency in the much missed (by me at any rate) Signet line where the heroine, Ursula, an aristocratic widow, dangles after after a rich duke because she’s tied of being poor. Of course, she then visits one of his country estates and falls for Will, his steward. Back in those days, class barriers were real. There’s a great scene where Will tells Ursula to “stop rescuing the things that matter to me, or I shall go mad with wanting you.” Loved, loved, loved that expression of seemingly hopeless longing—definitely a case of hotty mcwantingpants.
Reading all the posts above mine, I’m once again struck by how many people love tropes I avoid. It’s wonderful, though, that we can all find something satisfying in the romance genre.
Spamword: sat69—Lots of potential responses to that, but I’m not sure I want to go there.
Looking for scarred (emotionally & physically) heroes, I highly recommend Elizabeth Hoyt’s Four Horseman series: 4 soldiers return to England after surviving a massacre in the colonies. The heroines are well done too. Can’t wait for the final book in the series to come out later this year!
Interesting topic given that the last two books I’ve read have tortured heroes. I just finished Elizabeth Hoyt’s “To Beguile a Beast”, and loved the hero and how she showed his vulnerable side through the love of his pet dog, and am currently reading Samantha James’S Secret Passion of Simon Blackwell.
Again another hero with physical and psychological damage who finds himself falling in love with a heroine he neither loved nor wanted but now discovers he can’t live without.
I love it when the hero and the heroine are enemies or dislike the other but in the end they fall in love.
I think I love redemption stories best and I like to write them, I also love unconventional heroes, so Kinsale comes to mind and Robin Schone.
I hate big misunderstandings and heroes whose whole conflict is based on the terrible certainty their big manly love sword could never be taken by such a sweet virginal heroine.
I’m into the forbidden love angst too. On the other hand, I hate hate hate the martyr syndrome, especially if it’s combined with TSTL.
Forbidden attraction works for me, but I also draw the line when it involves pedophiles (vampire or not). Also, any that have the female lead damaged due to rape or abuse – who needs that in fiction?
Laura Kinsale’s “For My Lady’s Heart” comes to mind. There was angst done right. A hero tormented by an ex-wife’s lunatic religious rantings and his pledge to her that he would be celibate at her urging because he was too young and naive to know better until he met the dispossessed lady not inexperienced in the way of lust and longing. She gives him the go ahead to indulge in earthly delights and the added gift of telling him his wife is dead…executed by the church for being a witch which absolves him of his vow to her. Good stuff.
I love forbidden romances! Special weakness for the innocent girl and playboy/rogue characters. Or, enemies to lovers stories. sigh.
My new favorite phrase. : )
I love a secretly soft-hearted, huge, scarred, hulking brute of a hero combined with angst caused by social ineptness or just plain disregard for society as a whole. And the heroine who matches is A) nurturing enought to care for him despite his bluster, or B) fiesty enough to take on the world and drag him along with her; or C) so tortured and dark in her own right that the hero is compelled to protect her and teach her about the softer side of life (in his own awkward way, of course).
I dislike lover/spouse/one-night-stand reunited romances. I don’t know why but they just make me feel a little green around the gills.
Man, I’m generating a sizable list of books to look for from this thread.
I remember being really wowed when an author turned what should have driven me nuts into a really interesting character trait: in “The Beast” by Judith Ivory, the heroine is so astoundingly gorgeous, and knows it, but sees it as a double-edged sword. She uses it to her advantage often, but tires of it.
Also, love the hasty marriages of convenience, where the h/h don’t really get to know one another until after the vows have been said. Favorite example of this is in “Outlander” by Diana Gabaldon. Conversely, I’m so sick of the marriage of convenience/arranged marriage where the heroine explicitly tells the hero that she won’t sleep with him without love. Seen that so many times…
I hate when characters fall in love too fast. That said, I love a good marriage of convenience-turned-love-marriage.
I also hate what we are supposed to believe are deep emotional wounds that are solved in a day via the power of true luurve.
Oo, and martyr complexes—no more doormat heroines (or heros).
Hmmmm…. some of my favorite angst(s), in no particular order
—Emotionally wounded characters who think that they are incapable of loving/being loved.
-Big fan of the “Ack, my best friend is hot! When did that happen?” storyline.
—Characters who have to come to terms with themselves and their own pasts before they can allow themselves to feel… well, what they are pretty clearly already feeling but stomping on heartily (see above re: cannot act on the hottie mcwantingpants—except instead of a personal code, it’s several boatloads of past trauma).
Argh. Now I want to go re-read various examples, and it’s really time for me to head off and get some sleep…
JD
My favorite angst is the screwed up childhood (weren’t we all screwed up by something in childhood?). Anything from my parents weren’t good parents and so I won’t be a good mother/father and can’t get married, to I don’t believe in marriage for love because of my volotaile family, etc (obviously these work best in historicals).
I can’t wait for Dahls next book!
Second comment, so ignore this one if it wins a book: I really like PTSD characters of any stripe. A great many of the good parts of Miss Wonderful were PTSD-related. I like that Patricia Briggs’ Mercy has panic attacks, and that they affect the plot. I like twitchy-nervous Nora Roberts heroines (usually the heroines) and heroes you don’t touch while they’re sleeping because they will a) throw you across the room and b) feel really, really sorry for you afterward but c) they warned you, you idiot. It annoys me if done poorly, because I know folks who are dealing with it, but still.
Fav: Any angst due to past damage leading to the heroine/hero feeling they are unlovable.
Actually come to think of it, I quite like all angst as long as it’s done well. As long as they don’t drift to TSTL territory, I’m good.
I really get hot for the forbidden. Some examples are the widow who fights the attraction to the deceased husband’s best friend who was hot for her for years.
I also love the twist where a best friend or roommate has been dating someone but the guy is really into the heroine but the heroine resists to not hurt the best friend or roommate…this one is touchy but when written well, I love it.
Also like the regencies where the hero falls for the forbidden heroine has one of those horrible pasts that won’t allow her to be in his “perfect” world. Like she was a housekeeper or was a stage actress.
love these kind of stories.
liking the cougar tales books’
the ugly duckling stories are good tooo
Definitely the “rescue” theme – gets me every time. I love it when the hero rescues the heroine and (very often, the heroine rescues him right back).
I’m looking forward to this book – please count me in for the giveaway!!
I love the whole, “I was emotionally/physically/whatever damaged and must now be cold, emotionless and aloof, because the strength of my emotions will kill you.” and then the heroine must show how his loving her won’t be her death sentence.
Examples: Judd from Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh and Rhage from Lover Eternal by JR Ward
Also, the heroine proposing marriage the hero in order to save herself for some reason.
Examples: Jessica from Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase and Evie from The Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas
I adored Broken Wing by Judith James because the hero was messed up for a very real reason. It was such a beautiful story, far and away the best Romance I have ever read.