GS vs. STA: You Can Love More Than One Person In Your Life

Sex, Straight UpThis request comes from Louisa, who is looking for a specific type of plot device – in the back story.

I’m looking for books that might counter-balance a very specific pet peeve
of mine. I call it the “I only THOUGHT I knew what love is” syndrome.

 

I’m talking about books where the Hero (It’s almost always the hero) has
lost a lady love, never thought he’d recover, and then he meets the
heroine, falls in love, and realizes at the end that what he had previously
thought was a happy, loving relationship was nothing compared to the depth
of his love for and sexual satisfaction with this new lady.

An example of what I’m looking for would be Kathleen O’Reilly’s Sex, Straight Up.
The depth of the previous relationship is never sacrificed on
the altar of a new love. The hero fully and genuinely loved his first wife,
and that love was never challenged or trivialized when he falls in love
again.

Any suggestions would be welcome! Thanks so much!

Ah, yes. The “Now I REALLY Know What Love Is” method of distinguishing the heroine from all those other pesky women in the hero’s backstory. It bugs me, too. Anyone have any ideas for Louisa?

 

Comments are Closed

  1. Las says:

    @LG
    I read Kiss of Snow, and the way the mating thing was handled was
    SPOILER
    *
    *
    *
    *
    since Hawke’s first mate died in childhood, the mating was never completed, so he was able to mate with Sienna. I had major problems with how the mating issue was handled in KoS and, while overall a good book, I wouldn’t recommend as a good example of a first-love death that’s handled well. I mean, Hawke’s first “mate” died when she was FIVE. She did not warrant the pages and pages and pages (across several books!) of angst that Hawke went through…it made him come across as severely emotionally stunted.

  2. I have a fondness for tortured widower heroes. Gabe from SEP’s Dream a Little Dream is the BEST. His first wife was his childhood sweetheart but he loved her deeply.

    This trope works well for me when the hero has trouble moving on or doesn’t believe he can fall in love again. I’d like to think that my husband would find it very, very difficult to replace me…I know the opposite would be true.

  3. susan says:

    Carla Kelly’s Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand features a widow who loved her husband. I keep thinking I know of others but my mind is blank.

  4. sans says:

    Rafe in Baby Love by Catherine Anderson is a good example of a widower who loved his first wife very deeply but didn’t let that interfere with his second marriage.

  5. SonomaLass says:

    I agree with many of these recommendations, especially Zoe Archer’s Rebel, Nora Roberts’ In the Garden trilogy, and the fabulous Butterfly Tattoo. I have to disagree about Kristin Higgins’ The Next Best Thing, however. I felt that she really de-valued the first marriage in getting the heroine to a point where she could love the second guy. To me, it’s a prime example of the OP’s complaint.

  6. Laura (in PA) says:

    I was also going to mention Blue Dahlia, but velocireader beat me to it. It’s the first in Nora Roberts’ In The Garden Trilogy, and the heroine loses her husband in the beginning. I had actually forgotten that the second in the trilogy, Black Rose, also had a widow, until Asia M. mentioned it above. That character also has a horrible marriage in between. But I loved that the heroine of Black Rose was in her 40s and a successful businesswoman when she found a man.

    This is one of my favorite of Roberts’ trilogies, as it has a common thread throughout the three where they’re dealing with a ghost. 🙂

  7. Emily says:

    I want to second Julia Quinn’s When He was Wicked. I love this book! Its Bridgerton #6, but I haven’t read every Bridgerton. (I sometimes find that family obnoxious). This is a great book. My only compalint is that the first husband might be a little too good. Also Francesca’s relationship with her second husband is portrayed as deeper, but part of that is she is older and more mature.
    (Also it bothers me how the other Bridgertons act like Francesca can’t handle anything because she’s a widow.)

  8. JacquiC says:

    And ANOTHER recommendation for The Butterfly Tattoo.  Such an awesome, sad, touching, really great book…  After finishing it, I wished I could go back and have the experience of reading it for the first time again.

  9. Caty M says:

    Another one with a widow heroine which I think may fit the bill is Susan Mallery’s Beth and the Bachelor. It’s an old Silhouette Special Edition, published in about 2000, give or take a year or two.  Heroine was very happily married for ?16-18 years (she has teenage kids) but lost her husband in a car crash, and when her friend sets her up a couple of years later she has a lot of angst about whether it’s okay to fall in love again.

  10. JacquiC says:

    Another one that comes to mind is Robyn Carr’s Virgin River (the first one in the series).  Mel, the heroine, was widowed and trying to work through her grief when she meets the hero, Jack.  It’s been a while since I read this one, but I don’t recall any sense in which her feelings for her dead husband are diminished or unfavourably compared to her feelings for the hero.

  11. henofthewoods says:

    The middle story from “Cupid Cat” – Cat Scratch Fever presents a widower who loved his wife without making her into a saint or devil. The story is by Connie Brockway and the first wife was handled very well. I haven’t read much of her work, but I liked the story quite a bit. (The heroine’s back-story was a little over the top, but the relationship worked and the small child was more than a plot-moppet.)
    Mary Balogh – Simply Perfect – the hero broke up with his first love and the heroine was dumped by her first love. I’ll try to avoid the spoilers, but the past relationships are not swept aside, the heroine’s former love is not completely awful, the romantic past of the hero doesn’t make him distrustful – the book is about adults. The book is part of a long series (first the six Slightly books about the Bedwyns, then the next set of spin-offs with four or five titles) so you may not want to dive in cold.

  12. For a woman who truly loved her deceased husband, I would recommend “When He Was Wicked,” by Julia Quinn.

  13. Moth says:

    If no one’s suggested it, “Madam, Will You Talk?” by Mary Stewart has this. It’s an older romantic suspense book from the 60s (?). (which means just some kissing and the romance doesn’t kick in until a little later in the book—still, VERY good book). Heroine was widowed and when she meets new love she gives a great speech basically about how what she had with her husband was real and special but that doesn’t mean she can’t ever try to build something just as special again.

  14. Moth says:

    Oh, and in the “Stuff to Avoid” column I would say Kristan Higgins’ “The Next Best Thing.” Because the title actually conveys what I feel is the truth about the relationship. The heroine falls for her late husband’s brother, but she treats him like a sad door prize. AND she can’t really open herself to a relationship with the second brother until she’s discovered her late husband wasn’t the perfect saint she thought he was. (He didn’t cheat or anything huge like that, but it still irked me that she couldn’t have a new relationship until the late husband had been taken down a peg).

  15. catinbody says:

    Then Came Heaven by LaVyrle Spencer starts with the death of the hero’s first wife and actually moves through his grief for her into his relationship with his second wife.  Despite where it starts, it doesn’t dwell overly on his first wife.  The hero is a very matter-of-fact individual, and almost everything about his first wife is seen through his perspective, so it doesn’t get overly sentimental, which actually probably made it even more poignant. 

    It’s amazing like everything she wrote.

  16. Donna says:

    @jill

    I have a fondness for tortured widower heroes. Gabe from SEP’s Dream a Little Dream is the BEST. His first wife was his childhood sweetheart but he loved her deeply.

    I’m in the middle of this & I have to agree to the nth power!

  17. Lovecow2000 says:

    @ AgTigress Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!  I’d been trying to find Son of the Morning  for years and years!  For some reason I’d thought Iris Johansen had written it.  🙂 Thank you for the HABO.

  18. AgTigress says:

    If no one’s suggested it, “Madam, Will You Talk?” by Mary Stewart has this. It’s an older romantic suspense book from the 60s (?).

    Brilliant example, Moth, and such an exciting, atmospheric story.  It is one of Mary Stewart’s earliest novels, if not the very first—published 1955.

  19. AgTigress says:

    @Lovecow2000:  glad to help!

    Son of the Morning is a remarkable, powerful novel.  I normally can’t stand time-travel stories, I avoid medieval Scottish settings, I have no patience with stuff about the Knights Templar, or with ‘the world must be saved from the ultimate Evil’ trope — but I still love that book because it is done so well, with the most amazing character arc for the heroine, who develops, convincingly, from a rather diffident scholar into a tough street-fighter and intrepid time-traveller because of the extreme events and challenges that she faces. 

    When Linda Howard is good, she is very, very good.  When she is bad, well, the less said, the better!  😉

  20. Terri says:

    @Gabrielle – I totally thought of “Texas! Chase” too. It’s one of my favorites because of the characterization of Marcie (the heroine). She’s strong and doesn’t put up with Chase’s asshattery without calling him on it.

    I don’t know if I would go so far as to say that it falls in the GS category, but Nicole Jordan’s “The Heart Breaker” has a hero who enters into a marriage of convenience with the heroine, even though he’s super-angsty over the loss of wife #1. He spends a great deal of the book being a jerk to the heroine because he’s tormented by the memory of/love for his first wife. The story isn’t great, but the love scenes are so purple that it is an inadvertently hilarious read. One single scene includes the following phrases: “stiffened teats,” “searing steel,” and “the wet velvet of her.”

  21. susan says:

    Another widow from a good marriage is Beth in The Madness of Lord Ian McKenzie. I love that book!

  22. Anony Miss says:

    Just hear-hear-ing the OP’s question, because I think the last five books I read with graphic hubba-hubba scenes included the Hero’s ruminations on how THIS laying-in (ahem) was NOTHING like the others, he NEVER had such a PROFOUND huminahumina, etc.

    Maybe the last 10 books.

    Or 20.

    it

    gets

    old

  23. With my customary modesty, my first book DEDICATION had a hero who’d genuinely loved and mourned his first wife. And with further customary modesty, a revised e-version of DEDICATION will come out … sometime next year.

  24. Amanda says:

    The Sharing Knife series by Lois McMaster Bujold is a good example of this.

    Two characters, Dag and Arkady, are men who had first marriages that didn’t last (for different reasons) and neither denigrates what they had in that first relationship.

    They each find new partners, but that doesn’t mean the first wife was any less important. Dag and his wife, Fawn, are the main characters, but Arkady is an interesting character later in the book.

  25. tikaanidog says:

    Ah, Amanda, you beat me to it! I Looooove that series.

  26. In Diedre Knight’s BUTTERFLY TATTOO, the hero falls in love again – with a woman – after his male partner dies. (The hero is bisexual.)  It’s beautifully, beautifully done.

    Second this. It’s such a beautiful moving book, and the m/m relationship is shown as deeply and movingly as the second (hetero) one.

  27. cbackson says:

    This really strikes a chord with me – I’m divorced, and so I hate that idea that you can only truly love one person ever and all other loves will be revealed to have been pale shadows of the REAL true love once you find that person. 

    I mean, I really, really loved my husband.  Sure, he turned out to be an utter douchenozzle, but I truly loved him and I don’t think that when I (knock on fiberboard) fall in love again some day, I’ll discover that I was laboring under a false impression for all those years.

    Personally, I’ve been looking for romances that actually contained realistic depictions of divorce – it seems so much of the time that if a heroine is divorced, the ex-husband must have been physically/emotionally abusive or must have screwed his secretary in the heroine’s bed.  Much as a despise him, my ex-husband wasn’t a mustache-twirling villain; it’d be nice to read something a bit more nuanced.

  28. Vicki says:

    Yeah, it would be nice to read a well balanced divorce. It can happen, especially if kids are involved. As I have said to my husband’s first wife (who is now a good friend and my kids love her), you can be the two greatest people in the world and just not belong together. Though I will admit that there was some unhappiness with the dissolution of their marriage and it did take about two years after I met her for us to start becoming good friends.

    Sadly, so many of the romances, if there is a divorce, the ex-husband was abusive or the ex-wife was shallow, expensive, and unfaithful. It would be nice to find one where it just didn’t work out and now we are moving on.

  29. Hell Cat says:

    I just wanted to thank the bitchery for recommending Butterfly Tattoo. I actually purchased it on ebook forms so I can read it when school starts. I’ve got quite a collection of books already, but the premise of the book really called me since I was in the mood for something completely different.

    Hopefully, I’ll enjoy the heck out of it.

  30. kkw says:

    I know I’ve read some romances with more realistic divorces, it’s rare enough that they stand out in my head, except that I, er, can’t actually recall any titles.  Crap.  I’m pretty sure there are some Nora Roberts ones, and maybe Susan Wiggs (although I don’t like her contemporaries nearly as much as her historicals)?  I’m afraid all I really have to offer is hope – they are out there.

  31. T says:

    Tangled by Mary Balogh has this precise plot, heroine loved passionately her first husband,. They grew up with their second husband around and the balance of the second marriage has a lot to do with their personality dynamics. One of her more angsty books, and one i love though i warn you it seems to be a miss to lots of people.

    Another oldie but a great one, The Painted Lady by Lucia Grahame, which is also angsty.

  32. Gabrielle says:

    I, too, can remember one or two good portrayals of amiable divorce, but of course can’t remember titles either!  I distinctly recall one where they end up back together, having broken up because of guilt and grief over losing one of their 3 sons.  Great, a personal HABO assignment…

  33. Marla says:

    This isn’t a romance novel, but has some intertwined romantic subplots that are very nicely done: Ken Follet’s The Eye of the Needle. One of the characters is a police detective grieving for his wife, who was an ambulance driver in London recently killed in the Blitz. He thinks to himself something like “He knew there were many women he could love and respect…” [but he’s looking for a really extraordinary person like his late wife]. I just loved that line, because of the throw-away nature of females in many suspense/action novels. They’re usually treated as a prize of some sort, whereas Follet has always written in quite a feminist style, even in his early years. I like the way the character believes that “many” women are deserving of love and respect, not just one or two.

  34. Dark Dream by Daphne Clair, an old HP that may be released again with the Treasury releases.  You never know exactly what Clair might do to you, plotwise, but in this case it’s quite a sweet story where the hero loved his first wife deeply but has no trouble loving the heroine.  He does have issues with her being pregnant, though, since his first wife died in childbirth.

  35. Carin says:

    @LG – About Kiss of Snow – Las has it right, but I was ok with the explanation where she wasn’t.  He still had a deep and abiding (though not sexual) love for his first mate, he still mourned her, and I didn’t feel like his love for her was lessened.  YMMV

  36. roserita says:

    Whoever recommended Carla Kelly’s Mrs. Drew plays her hand made me go hunt for her Mrs. McVinnie’s London season, about a woman who lost her soldier husband in the Napoleonic Wars: “And I would gladly trip over your boots in the dark again, Tom,” and then falls in love with a naval captain.  As long as I recommending old(er) books, there’s also Elsie Lee’s The Nabob’s widow.  The heroine was much younger than her first husband, but there’s no doubt how much she cared for him.

  37. Linda Hilton says:

    Shyly raising my hand along with the others who have mentioned their own works.  My little-distributed but award-winning Firefly feature a devastated widower hero who finds love again.  When it was published in 1988 my editor required me to remove the “conversations” he has with his late wife about his newfound love because she thought they made him sound crazy; when I republish Firefly digitally later this year those conversations will be restored.

    And as a widow myself, I personally know you can find a second love without diminishing the first.

  38. cleo says:

    Since someone else mentioned a mystery series, I’ll mention Barbara Hambly’s Benjamin January series – it’s set in 19th C Louisiana.  The hero is a widower – the first couple books deal with his grief, and in the later books he falls in love again.  I think the first book is A Free Man of Color

  39. clew says:

    After all, my erstwhile love,

    My no-longer-cherished—

    Need we say it was not love

    Just because it perished?

    —Millay

  40. James Lynch says:

    I’ve noticed that a lot of historical romanced have a widower (a cliche in itself) whose first wife died in childbirth, setting him up to both love again and to have the kids/family he lost with the first wife.

    An example is LADY SOPHIA’S LOVER by Lisa Kleypas, in which widower Ross (whose wife died in childbirth) finds his new/true love with the titular Sophia.  What’s interesting is that while the characters never put down the first wife, there are unspoken commentaries that basically say Sophia is better.  (At one point Sophia is jealous her husband still has feelings for his first wife, but she says nothing; Ross says his first wife was far more delicate than Sophia, and during some wild sex thinks that his first would *never* do the stuff Sophia’s doing.)  I think it’s a little insulting: The characters never speak ill of the first wife, but Kleypas makes it clear that Sophia is a definite upgrade.

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