You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO request is from Kate, who is looking for a western romance. Trigger warning for the following description:
I am woefully short on details, but I believe (like many b*tches who write into HaBO) that it was the first romance I ever read and it blew my tween mind.
It had to have been written in the ’80s/early ’90s. It was a western, and the heroine was some haughty rich girl in a stagecoach and the hero was the leader of a bandit gang that robbed and kidnapped her. There were some threats of rape among the gang, so the leader took her into a shack and pretended to rape her in order to “claim” her and thus protect her from the rest of the rabble…and that’s all I got.
I think I got caught reading it and that was the end of that!
Can we reunite Kate with her first romance?
Fair is the Rose by Megan McKinney
Yes, I love Fair is the Rose! It’s the second book in a series, book one (Lions and Lace) is a keeper, too.
Oh yes, I forgot that it was a sequel. I have such a strong memories of Fair is the Rose. When it came out in hardcover – 1993? – I was just starting as a reporter for a small town daily newspaper and I was sent to interview the author. She was doing a book signing at the library; she was in town to visit relatives. I asked her some really silly questions but she was nice – LOL. I’d read a hundred romances before that book and thousands since but I still have vivid memory pictures of that story: the scar on the palm of the MC’s hand and the bells on her shoes are two.
Oh man I loved Lions and Lace, to which this book (fair is the rose) is a sequel. Lions and lace was one of the first romances I ever read, if not THE first. I still love so many of the tropes: class differences, Irish accents, men who don’t know how to feelings, meddling family, and big tearjerker moments. Catnip abounds! Fair is the rise also has the delightful criminal but secretly not trope which I also love.
Oh my god, thank you!! I seriously have been wondering about this book for 20 years now. Buying immediately!!
I have heard about the series you talking about and have wondered myself. All of you seem to be amazed so looking like I have some to add to the collection. Amazon Prime will come in handy here. Thanks everyone.