Help A Bitch Out

HaBO: Radiant Like the Sun, Seductive Like the Night

This HaBO is from Simmi, who has been searching for this book for around a decade. Content warning for the description below:

I’ve been trying to remember the title for almost a decade now. I had downloaded a sample onto my Kindle to read and accidentally deleted it instead of buying it. I’ve struck out on finding it on the technology end – it was too long ago and I can’t find the account I was logged into.

I can’t remember any of the characters’ names but it was a historical romance – one set in London. There was another couple mentioned in the snippet that made me think this could possibly be a series, with their story being a previous book.

So now on to what I do remember.

It started out with a prologue set sometime when the heroine was young. It was just before she was about to go to London for her comeout and she was sneaking out to go to a hut they had on the property to dance. Apparently she loved to dance and this was the last opportunity she’d have. While she’s there she’s attacked by a man who tries to rape her. He doesn’t succeed, I don’t think, but her screams bring her family out and she’s considered ruined because all of them think she was sneaking out to meet the guy.

Flash forward a number of years and a different man and woman are having sex in the library. (These were the two that made me think there was a previous book) The butler or whomever interrupts to tell them that their guest has arrived – our heroine. For sake of clarity I’ll call the couple the husband and the wife.

I don’t remember the logistics of exactly how this happens but the two woman end up alone in a room together. Then the husband and the hero arrive together.

This is the part that really made me laugh because the book described them as so handsome that they literally expect every woman’s mouth to fall open. One of them is blonde and “radiant like the sun” and the other has black hair and is “seductive like the night”. Even the wife is struck speechless by the two of them together. Then the heroine turns around and greets them normally.

And the hero is flabbergasted and working really hard to keep a straight face because she is also the most beautiful woman he’s ever seen, but he’s also grumpy because she hasn’t seemed to notice his handsomeness but he can’t take his eyes off her.

There’s a POV shift to the heroine who is also internally screaming about how hot he is and mildly ticked off because he hasn’t reacted to how hot she is which all men do.

And that’s where the sample ends.

Who knows this one?

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  1. Batman says:

    Sorry, I have no clue what the book is but when I read “radiant like the sun, seductive like the night” I want to reply, “light as a feather, stiff as a board.”

  2. Kara says:

    Maybe The Hellion Bride by Catherine Coulter. It’s the second book in the Sherbrooke Series. Both Sherbrooke brothers are beautiful, I think Douglas, the oldest, I believe is blond and strict, while Ryder, the younger is a dark haired, fun loving rake. There’s also a ridiculously good looking cousin named Tony. Fun series, but very dated.

  3. Laurie says:

    Could it be one of the Naked Nobility series by Sally MacKenzie? I read them as a five book bundle so I can’t remember which one it is but it sounds very familiar. The titles are The Naked Duke, The Naked Marquis, etc. (Just keep substituting another member of the nobility)

  4. Ellie says:

    I am positive I have read this one, but I’m struggling true member more salient facts.
    I think that it might be part of Jillian Hunter’s Boscastle series. However, I was reading several interrelated series around that same time and it could probably be any of them.

  5. PamG says:

    All these members are stirring up my inner 12 year old boy. Hur.

  6. Emily A says:

    It sounds like it’s possibly The Rogue by Katharine Ashe.

  7. Jill-Marie says:

    I don’t think it’s “The Hellion Bride” because that takes place for a good part in Jamaica.

    But alas, asking the Google for results on “seductive like the night” and the other bring up only this HABO.

  8. Cathryn Jones says:

    Could it be one of the Cynster series by Stephanie Laurens?

  9. Karen says:

    Not the Naked series

  10. Simmi says:

    For some reason, I always seem to be traveling when my HaBO’s go up

    Nothing suggested so far seems to be exactly what I remember – though I’ve added several books to my reading list.

    Jill-Marie, that was completely my bad, I shouldn’t have put those two phrases in quotations. Thats what I remember but it was a long time ago and it may not be completely right

  11. Betsydub says:

    This has been percolating around in my brain for 4+ days, and I finally put together my vague hunches. I don’t own any of these titles & won’t be able to check out the paper copies at my library til mid next week, so I’m hoping another reader can confirm (or definitively refute) this before then.
    (Humongous thanks to my county’s library system’s online database, with its thorough annotations).
    Alexandra Hawkins wrote a 7-title “Lords of Vice” series. The first 2 titles came out in 2010, so that works with Simmi’s timeline. All of the Lords had unbelievably convenient nicknames based on their last names/title names and it made it hard (for me) to keep them differentiated all the way through 2013, when the 7th book was published: Sin, Reign, Dare, Vane, Saint, Hunter and last but not least, Frost (from “Chillingsworth”, of course…). And they were all stupendously good looking and irresistible to every woman they came across. My leaky memory insists that Sin was dark-haired, and in his book or one after he had married, his younger sister became involved with another of the Lords (Dare); she had kissed him five years earlier & then had been immediately packed off, in disgrace, to boarding school. Or maybe she was Frost’s sister (not remembering the prequel with the dancing & subsequent attack, though…). Anyway, the “sex in the library” part would fit right in with the first couple showing up in a later book.
    So I’m passing this on to anyone who can add anything definitive as regards the HaBO. I really hope one of these books is it:
    1) All Night With a Rogue
    2) Til Dawn With the Devil
    3) After Dark with a Scoundrel
    4) Sunrise With a Notorious Lord
    5) All Afternoon With a Scandalous Marquess
    6) Dusk With a Dangerous Duke
    7) Twilight With the Infamous Earl
    BTW, while I read them all, I recall the series quality as being wildly uneven.

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