This Rec League was sent in by Nushie and it’s a great topic for the romance community:
Sarah: There are a few Nora heroines who set hard lines with toxic parents. The mother in the Born In trilogy is a nightmare, and the heroines in Born in Fire and Born in Ice negotiate boundaries, though I think the heroine from Fire is the one who is like NOPE NO TALKING.I’m looking for romances where the heroine stands up for herself and is willing to (or already has) cut off her toxic family/friends/exes. I want a heroine that puts her happiness first – I don’t think that’s an outrageous request, but I’m having trouble coming up with many examples in romances. I’ve read way too many books where the heroine is nobly sacrificing herself, paying for an ungrateful family member’s sin. So many heroines justify putting up with emotional abuse, theft, sabotage, and outright malice; their anthem may as well be, “But it’s family.” This is ultimately used to showcase how ‘good’ a woman she is; I refuse to accept that a heroine has to sacrifice to deserve a happy ending.
My rec is The Obsession by Nora Roberts. At a young age, the heroine reports her serial killer father to the police. She does not feel guilty about cutting contact with her mother, who continues to support her imprisoned husband.
Amanda: Perhaps the hero, Samson, in The Right Swipe. He makes the conscious decision to leave his football career because of how the leagues treats CTE prevention/diagnosis.
There’s a family element as his dad was a football player.
Maya: OHHHHHH Up in Smoke by Tessa Bailey has the heroine protecting herself from her abusive stepfather. He’s the worst, but she hits him with a frying pan at one point.
But also trigger warning for child abuse.
Amanda: This whole topic, I feel, should come with a warning.
Sarah: Yeah – there’s often an upsetting reason for setting that boundary in place
Catherine: Hold Me by Courtney Milan, has a trans heroine who has cut off the toxic bits of her family and kept the good bits. And during the book, she is also learning to set boundaries with friends, so that might be a good rec.
Sneezy: Oh, MAN! This topic hits me HARD! Emotional and physical abuse is so NORMALIZED in Asian and immigrant communities within families. Often it’s the child who’s blamed if they try to draw boundaries, and I can’t tell you how many of my friends buy their parents’ narratives that their success is owed to their parents hitting them and emotionally abusing them. Much feel. Much rage. I flail.
Anyway, in Ayesha at Last, Khalid, the hero, eventually draws boundaries with his mom by moving out. He still stays in contact with her, and is firm and gentle in the way he stands his ground. We see him building up to that in the way he calls out her shitty she was to his sister, and clearly stating what while he wants her in his life, his decisions are his to make. I don’t remember Ayesha’s relationship with her family being equally contentious, but she does have an immature cousin who does shitty things. They talk it out, her cousin apologizes and makes amends. I remember this book being a feel-good novel for me, but it definitely needs a lot of warning labels, including teenage abortion and underage forced marriage.
I think The Wallflower Wager works as well, because Penny wouldn’t accept her brother siding with her abuser, and cuts him out of her life until he stops. Although, I have mixed feelings on the reconciliation. On one hand, it feels too easy, on the other, I completely relate to wanting to reform and hold onto familial connections when given the chance
The Chai Factor fits, too. Amira and her mom both stands up to her grandma’s homophobic attitude. Amira also calls out and shuts down Duncan’s brother’s Islamophobia and Duncan’s own complicity to it. When she talks with Duncan’s brother directly, she sees that he’s a straight forward person, and revising his worldview is hard for him. Instead of patting him on the head, she’s all, “My humanity’s not up for debate, BAI!!!!!” Which is just yessssssssss
Ellen: I think The Wallflower Wager might fit for this, too. The heroine sets some pretty clear boundaries with her older brother (who ends up doing right by her but she still sets a very firm boundary first).
Shana: Sadly, I can only think of the many books I’ve read that failed in this area. It’s one of my pet peeves. I can second Ayesha At Last. While it take a long time, Khalid does definitely set some boundaries with his mom.
Sneezy: I just remembered The Duchess Deal! Emma told her father she didn’t have to forgive him, and she isn’t for what he’s done to her, no matter what demon told him he was going to burn in hell.
What romances would you recommend?
My first instinct is to stick with Nora Roberts, so I skimmed her back list. Private Scandals (heroine has an ex and colleague that are both horrid and she doesn’t forgive either); Inner Harbor – book 3 of the Quinn series (heroine learning to cut off her toxic sister is an important part of the book but I don’t think she starts able to do it, so keep that in mind); Black Rose – book 2 of a trilogy (heroine has a vile ex-husband and there is a very satisfying scene where she gets him to dig his own grave); Midnight Bayou (heroine has a toxic mother and I think I remember her being clear in her refusal to deal with her). There are two others I don’t remember as well but are more recent: Vision In White, which I think involves the heroine setting boundaries with a toxic mother, and The Perfect Hope, which involves a cheating bastard ex – but I don’t remember that being a huge part of the story.
Since the requester recommended The Obsession, these might not be news. Sorry if that’s the case.
Just realized I should maybe mention that I didn’t mean a literal grave in Black Rose; it is entirely metaphorical. Still fun to read.
Jane Ashford’s Heir to the Duke features a young woman who desperately longs to break from her over controlling family and be her own person. The review here gave it a B+, and I adore the climactic scene with the grandmother.
And another Nora recommendation – The Witness. In the setup for the main part of the story the heroine chooses to go against her mother’s demands and do the right thing. As a result the mother cuts her off.
Oh, and another one – The Liar. The heroine discovers that her husband was a con man and rebuilds her self esteem by paying off the debts he left her.
Maybe it’s too obvious but Pride & Prejudice? Elizabeth and her father are constantly setting (or trying to set) boundaries with Mrs. Bennet, who is awful. I also thought of Penny Reid’s “Beard” series, where the father is a scheming jackass and they are constantly keeping him at arm’s length.
In the spirit of “write what you know,” toxic families are a recurring theme of mine, so if you’ll forgive the self-promo:
Ivy in Ten Thousand Hours has a sister who uses her children to manipulate Ivy, who ultimately takes drastic, life-changing steps to end the petty tyrant’s reign. (The kids are neglected while in their mother’s “care” but not physically harmed.)
The Stage Mom from Hell is the only family Gin in Silent Song has left, but when Mom’s actions are exposed as an actual safety hazard to Gin and the people she chooses to have in her life, Mom finally gets the heave-ho.
In Lauren Danes’ Back to You (The Hurley Boys #3), the heroine is a former model with eating issues due to her abusive mother. She has set boundaries: she supports the mother financially, as long as she stays away from her family.
Pretty much all of Lauren Dane’s contemporaries deal with found/chosen family and surviving/coming to terms with/cutting out abusive/toxic birth family.
Ink & Chrome trilogy
Whiskey Sharp trilogy
I literally finished one last night that was a bit of a mixed bag on this, but some of it worked well. It was The Devil In The Saddle by Julia London. The heroine has just gone through some shit (her dad died, and she walked in on her fiance in flagrante delicto with a bridesmaid), and is trying to figure out her life, and makes some decisions, such as going back to school and opening a special-needs dance studio, that are designed to move her forward and grant her some self-efficacy. Meanwhile, the hero acts like kind of an ass about this; he thinks that since they’re in lurve she should dropping everything and moving with him. I mostly liked the hero, but when he did this, I just went, “Really, dude?” and to the heroine’s credit, she tells him, “I need to figure some shit out on my own, and this is how I go about it”. In addition, the Cheating Ex-Fiance tries to bulldog his way back into his life (almost literally, he buys her an apology puppy, which she keeps, because puppydog), and finally, she agrees to see him, tells him that she forgives him, but they’re fully done, and if he keeps up his antics, it’s restraining order time. So, yeah, mixed bag. Heroine figuring out her shit, but hero needed to grovel a bit more and respect the boundaries that she was trying to set.
The Mackilligan sisters in Shelly Laurenston’s Honey Badgers series. The first one is Hot and Badgered. Their father is a con artist and criminal. The sisters are actively trying to stay away from him and lowkey hopes he gets offed. This is all presented with typical Laurenston humor and zaniness.
In fantasy-romance,a couple of Sharon Shinn heroines are like this. Senneth from ‘Mystic and Rider’ refuses to even use her family name. Also Corene from her Elemental Blessings series(whom we meet as a young girl in the first book, Troubled Waters) her mother is a horror. In her own book, Jeweled Fire’ she nopes the hell out.
Sugar by Siressia Glass is a contemporary with a body- and sex-positive heroine who learns to cut off toxic members of her family. It doesn’t happen until the end, but it sure is satisfying when it does.
This isn’t 100% what you’re looking for, but I love Ilona Andrews’ HIDDEN LEGACY series for their hyper-competent, boundary-enforcing women. I was doing a lot of research on boundaries at the same time I was doing a re-read of the first trilogy and I realized that the heroine, Nevada, has EXCELLENT boundaries. I don’t want to give too much away, but she’s great at telling people “no” and calling people out when they mess with her or put her in danger (especially the hero).
She doesn’t do a lot of cutting toxic people out of her life and she tends to put her family before herself for Reasons, which is why this isn’t 100% on point, but if you’re looking for badass manifestations of good boundaries, Nevada and her madcap clan are a very good time.
For classics/historicals, The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery (one of her few books for adults), is a sweet romance about a woman who learns she is dying then ditches her terrible family to have some fun. It is great to see her stand up to them.
Charlaine Harris has a couple of series where the heroine puts herself first:
Sookie Stackhouse like Quinn, but stops seeing him because of his family issues.
Harper Connelly and her adopted brother will have nothing to do with Harper’s biological/abusive dad.
Mariana Zapata’s Wall of Winnipeg has a heroine with a shitty set of sisters who she has cut off, and an awesome scene where the h dishes out some retrospective revenge on her behalf, but there’s still some craziness with her mom. I liked that particular one although some of her other books definitely show some interesting family dynamics.
HER NAUGHTY HOLIDAY by Tiffany Reisz fits the bill perfectly! This is the second book in her MEN AT WORK trilogy (they are all superb category romances!), and there is a scene at Thanksgiving that makes me want to stand up and applaud the heroine. She finds her grit and it’s glorious!!!
I recommend reading the entire series in order, but books 3 and 5, NECESSARY RESTORATIONS and RESTORED, of Kate Canterbary’s Walsh Family series, feature a heroine (the same h&h appear in both books) who is a musical prodigy but has been completely marginalized and ostracized by her utterly uninterested family. There’s no abuse, but no praise and no affection either. What I like is that finally the heroine realizes she has to disengage: a relationship cannot be forged when one party has no interest in the other.
Lisa Kleypas’ Travis contemporary romances are really good for this. ‘Blue Eyed Devil’ deals with the heroine’s recovery from an abusive ex (and no, her trauma isn’t magically healed by the hero’s wang) while learning to set strong boundaries with an emotionally abusive and gas-lighting boss. In ‘Smooth Talking Stranger’, the heroine has to cut off her narcissistic mother. Both books read as if some research went into them.
If I may mention one of my own books, in Tib’s Temptation, the heroine Sara has shaken the dust of her non supportive, abusive family from her feet and headed out on her own. Therefore, when she finds a super good man, Tib, she can’t believe she is capable of being loved. Alas, this book is the third of a six part series (in the first two the heroes have fled bad families and not looked back) and to really enjoy it, you’d need at least to read book 2, C’s Comeuppance.
Most of Jennifer Crusie’s books have boundary-setting relationships in one form or another, whether it’s between family members, reinforcing boundaries with the ex with a baseball bat if neccessary, or between the main couple.
This is m/m romance, but “Faith & Fidelity” by Tere Michaels. Evan puts up with his in-laws’ terrible behavior (the drinking on his father-in-law’s part, the smothering behavior of his mother-in-law and how she constantly exposes his kids to her own emotional distress and grief over the death of her daughter/their mother, which distresses and exhausts them). The story amplifies that and ultimately his in-laws try to take his children away from him when it comes to light that he’s not just friends, but in a relationship with Matt. Definitely some queerphobic attitudes there and also them blaming Evan for his wife’s death (she dies, off the page, in a car accident while he was at work; the book opens with her funeral, so it’s heavy feels from page one). He has a really good, supportive relationship with his sister-in-law. Evan ends up setting boundaries with them and conditions on them seeing their grandkids because he’s not going to have his children traumatized further. I love the whole “Faith, Love & Devotion” series, but “Faith & Fidelity” has a really special place in my heart.
So, I have a super bad head cold-and I’m so stuffed up I feel dizzy. But I LOVE this request. Once my head clears I hope I can add some recommendations-but I totally agree-I would love to read more books where the protagonists are like “my family isn’t supporting me, screw them!”. I’m getting really turned off by the family doesn’t approve trope-maybe because if my family would have disapproved of my choice of husband, I honestly wouldn’t have cared. I guess I don’t understand those kind of ties to family.
Nushie said “So many heroines justify putting up with emotional abuse, theft, sabotage, and outright malice; their anthem may as well be, “But it’s family.” This is ultimately used to showcase how ‘good’ a woman she is; I refuse to accept that a heroine has to sacrifice to deserve a happy ending.”
I could not agree more. I give authors lots of leeway to establish a story arc, this is my least favorite.
I was going to suggest the Honey Badger series but @Tina beat me to it. 🙂 The Dragon Kin series also has characters who have set family boundaries or walked away from family members. Second and third all the Nora recommendations.
Amy Andrews’ “Nothing but Trouble” has a heroine who set very hard boundaries with her father, albeit not without consequences. And Chance of a Lifetime series has characters setting boundaries.
Most of the ones I thought of were already mentioned. Particularly strong seconding for Jane Ashford’s Heir to the Duke, Montgomery’s Blue Castle (one of my all-time favourite books), and Tiffany Reisz’s Her Naughty Holiday.
I just finished Kelly Bowen’s A Duke to Remember, where the heroine has been hired to find the longlost heir to a dukedom so he can get his mother, the duchess, out of Bedlam, where his ambitious cousin had stashed her because she insisted the real heir was alive. When she finds him, she learns that he went missing because his parents committed him to Bedlam at the age of ten. He is conflicted about giving up his new life to return to London in order to rescue her from the fate she had condemned him to, and also uncertain he can forgive her. I thought Bowen handled this well. There’s no Satisfying Confrontation, but also no Touching Reconciliation, and as someone who has been no contact with her parents for over ten years (for far less heinous reasons!), the way this was resolved felt realistic to me.
This is the most timely present ever, and the best one I’ve gotten this season! Thank you so much for all the recs! All of them are going straight to my TBR list, but there are some that I’ve already read – all old favorites that I’ve forgotten. I never realized that giving their MCs this agency is what I loved so much about those books.
To everyone who recommended other Nora Roberts books, thank you! She was one of my first ventures into the romance genres, so I glommed every book of hers I could get a hold of when I was in high school. But there are several that you guys mentioned that I don’t think I’ve read. So I’m going to go over her backlist and see what I’ve missed.
@Lisa, I think I read The Blue Castle by LM Montgomery when I was in 5th grade, and I loved it. Now that I think about it, it was one of the first romances I read. And there are so many themes in that book that I love to this day. Thank you for reminding me about an old favorite!
Not a romance read, but a seriously good one on this topic that i just finished is Educated by Tara Westover. Seriously loved it.
Also, the way Nora Roberts portrayed women standing their ground and being badass women when I was a teenager reading her in the 90s (and 2000s) had a super positive influence on me growing up – it’s the reason she is still my favourite author. I agree that Born in Fire is a great rec for this topic.
Radiance by Grace Draven comes to mind. Also the Winston Brothers series with their father being who they distance themselves from. Also Scarlet does the same with her father Razor(same series). Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang. Maybe the bromance club? Idk I do feel like the protagonist in that has clear boundaries that she didn’t renegade on exactly but she did feel a bit more sympathetic to him at the end. Up to y’all. Rock redemption from Nalini Singh (but not the entire series since in Rock Hard that dude is pressured to forgive his dirt bag father and does). Hearts of Blue. It only happens in the movies by holly burne. Lead by Kylie Scott.
Oh! Also Wicked Whiskey Love. Laws of Attraction. And possibly Scrooge McFuck.
@Emily Mathews, YES! I also read Nora Roberts as a teenager in the 2000s, and I don’t think I would have continued reading in the genre without her. For every heroine who was “defiant,” but ultimately gave into bad treatment, there was a Nora heroine that was badass in name and in action. I won’t lie and say I didn’t enjoy my share of old skool (Catherine Coulter and Elizabeth Lowell to name a couple), but there was definitely plenty of teeth grinding in the process.
The family in The Blue Castle is the WORST EVER. They treat the heroine like absolute garbage and when she runs off they lose their sh** because it makes them look bad, not because they’re worried about her. She gets a couple of new friends and a reclusive hero with a backwoods cabin and two cats. And new clothes and a chic ’20s haircut. I want her life is all I’m saying.
Not sure whether this would count completely, but Heyer’s Black Sheep has a heroine who tells off her stuffy older brother, and is clear that she doesn’t love her father because he didn’t love her. However she remains tied to her niece and her older sister until the end, when she breaks free with the help of the hero, who is absolutely pragmatic about his awful relatives.
I love this theme. In Victoria Thompson’s Gaslight Mystery series, set in New York during the Gilded Age, the heroine has already cut off her wealthy but toxic family when the first book starts, and is living on her own on the Lower East Side and working as a midwife. There are a couple of dozen of books in the series, and I’ve only read the first one, Murder on Aster Place, but I really enjoyed it. TW/CW for sexual abuse theme in the mystery plot.
I know I’ve read a lot of historicals where the heroine’s family is trying to marry her off to someone horrible, and the hero helps her escape the situation. A few that spring to mind are “The Unofficial Suitor” by Charlotte Louise Dolan, “A Breath of Scandal” by Elizabeth Essex”, and “The Work of Art” by Mimi Matthews.
I am going to toss out some old titles first: Mercedes Lackey Arrows of the Queen and the Last Herald Mage series both looked at family disapproval and child abuse. Both characters came to understand that chosen family is sometimes better than blood family. While these aren’t romances, both series have romantic elements.
I just finished Megan Frampton’s “Never a Bride” which has a strong, boundary setting heroine. When the hero tries to rush in and “fix” things behind her back, she tells him it is unacceptable and to back off. Then she handles it.
Also, “The Secret of Happy Ever After” by Lucy Dillon has a heroine who finally confronts her past after taking a stand.