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 comes to us from Jen, who is trying to find a category romance:
This is Jen (I write reviews over at the Book Queen) and I was wondering if the Bitchery could help me out with a book I was looking for. We were talking about #TropesYouHate on Twitter, and Sarah Maclean said, “I’m of the humble opinion that every bit of the plot has to impact the romance. I love romantic suspense where one character thinks the other character is the villain. Because then it’s all just tied up in snogging.”
This comment made me remember a category romance from the late 80s/early 90s that I read where the heroine is convinced the hero is a villain. My guess is that it was either a Harlequin Superromance or maybe a Silhoutte Intimate Moments?
In this story, the main character is a woman who falls in love with a man who has been working undercover in a drug cartel. I’m pretty sure he was a Border Patrol agent, or maybe DEA. She must be blonde, because he gives her a Spanish nickname, something like Geura? I feel like it definitely started with a G.
Anyways, she cannot forgive herself for falling in love with him when he was still undercover; but at some point, his Mom or his sister points out that the heroine must have secretly sensed all along he was a good guy and seen past this disguise.
As I describe this–it is sounding like it has a super high potential to be crazy-racist, but I’d still love to find this one!
Sarah: If he gave her a nickname like that, I wonder if it was “guerra,” which means “battle” or “war.” But hey, speaking of racist, “Guera” is Mexican slang.
Oh, boy.
I live on the Mexican border and “Guera”, at least around here, refers to light skinned or white people. It’s a very common slang phrase around these parts. My brother was married to a Mexican for a little while and was called “Guero” by her family. Alas, I have no idea what this book might be.
Gosh! In India, white or light skinned people are called gora.
Maybe ‘guapa’ ?
Maybe an old Anne Stuart? She likes having questionable heroes and I know I read a couple of hers with a Latin American setting.
Could it be Kathleen Creighton’s Demon Lover? A Silhouette Intimate Moments from 1985 (now available as an ebook). The description fits, and he calls her “Guerita”, which Creighton translates as “little fair one”.
Linda Turner’s Shadows in the Night. She’s a border patrol agent, he’s DEA or something. She gets captured by the gang he’s infiltrating and there’s a faux rape that my younger self was kind of fascinated by. The hero’s name was Ross de la Garza, which may be the name you’re remembering.
Sorry, I’m not going to remember the name of the book or the author, but this sounds like a book I read where the gal was a border patrol agent/maybe undercover and the guy knew this as he was undercover with in the drug ring. Due to events, she ends up being taken by him/with him to a place in the Gulf of Baja CA area where he and these bad guys hang out near a fishing village. Can’t remember what happened, but she gets away/he helps her get away and then as you say she feels horrible to have fallen for this scumbag guy. I vaguely remember something about a mom or sister as you describe, but more remember that she felt pressure from her mom/family about her job and not being girly enough. Since this was back in the day, her having a traditional male job was a bigger deal than would be today. Do they still have those sites where a good search can be done? Sometimes more clue are helpful there. Good luck!
To Susan Reader.
You got it for the book I just described. As soon as I saw the name Kathleen Creighton it rang a bell for me.
It sounds like it could be either Demon Lover of Shadows in the Night! I’m going to download Demon Lover right now and report back. If it’s not that, I’ll track down Shadows in the Night as a used copy. I’m sure it must be one of those.
It is DEFINITELY Demon Lover! He calls her “Guerita” pretty early on in the book, and the added detail from Susan up above sounds exactly right. When I reread it, I’ll write a throwback review! THE SMART BITCHES ARE AWESOME!
Güero/a güerito/a
(sorry can’t help it. the lack of dots was driving me nuts) Super common nickname.
Sarah, I don’t know that güero is an inherently racist term. (I could very easily be wrong.) I hear it as a descriptive term for skin/hair color. Absolutely weighted with colorism, and surely can be used with racist intent. I hear it used much like pelón (baldy I suppose) and gordo and flako – physical descriptors used as nicknames and endearments. (not always painless are they?)
Not sure I’m saying what I want to. Or that I read your note correctly heh.
For context – I speak Spanish as a second language, married into a Mexican family, now in California. So much mexi-cali dialect in my life! So many bad jokes about One Way streets. But none of that means I understand all the nuances of this one word.
I don’t know either, but this reminds me of the mid-80s bodice ripper trend of Spanish heroes invariably calling their heroines querida.
Just to clarify, I definitely was the one who first suggested the book has a high potential to be racist.
From what I remembered of the plot:She’s a beautiful blonde lady who falls in love with a man she thinks is a smuggler or coyote, but then it’s all okay when she finds out he’s American all along! <—– I mean. That plot alone is pretty yucky, and I was just assuming the whole white lady writes romance about drug smugglers in the 80s would add a whole other level. It's not just the nickname he gives her (which doesn't have the diacretical marks in the book, so you should avoid it if it drives you crazy. It's just in italics), it's the entire thing that made me suggest it had the potential to be racist.
Either way….I'll definitely write a throwback review of this one once I have a chance to read it. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised.
@Jen: That’s absolutely true, and I apologize that it wasn’t clear in the formatting. My apologies.
As for , depending on the context and region, it can be an endearment like sweetheart or a reference to one’s mistress, but it’s root is different than .
apparently I can’t use Querida and Guera are not the same at all