We received this request from Amina! Thanks, Amina!
I just watched the 1998 version of Dangerous Liasons ( and I love the 1999 film Cruel Intentions.) I wondered if there were recommendations for books that visited either the theme— seduction as a bet, or rake seducing innocent— or adaptations of it.
Amanda: As someone whose favorite rom com is She’s All That, I am here for all the recs.
Sarah: Bet Me ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) is an obvious starter pick for this one. Literally what it says on the tin.
Amanda: Sara Ney’s The Studying Hours ( A ) starts with a bet. I really enjoyed it on audio.
Ellen: I KNOW I’ve read books that fit but I’m big time drawing a blank on this…
Amanda: Dig deep, Ellen! I feel like there are a lot of historicals like this.
Sneezy: I thiiiiiink Dukes are Forever by Bec McMaster ( A | BN | K | AB ) fits? But it’s part of the London Steampunk series, and doesn’t work as a standalone.
Ellen: WAIT one of the Bedwyn books definitely fits!! Slightly Tempted. Starts out as attempted seduction of the innocent for revenge purposes.
Catherine: What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) starts out intending to be a revenge seduction only the heroine goes ‘ok, I know you’re up to something, what’s your game?’ and he thinks better of it and they wind up joining forces.
Amanda: Oh! The Tycoon by Molly O’Keefe ( A ).
We know there are many more that fit! Tell us your suggestions below!
His Mistletoe Wager by Virginia Heath – I feel like I’m always recommending this underrated author. Great character development in a shortish novel.
Knave’s Wager by Loretta Chase – basically a Regency historical version of Dangerous Liaisons.
Does rake teaching innocent how to flirt/sex count for this? Because then I’d recommend “A Week To Be Wicked” by Tessa Dare and “The Trouble With True Love” by Laura Lee Guhrke. As far as movies go I feel like “10 Things I Hate About You” also fits into this category even though it’s not so much a bet than a deal between two of the male characters. I also thought “A Walk To Remember” had a bet of some sort but apparently it was just a failed promise not to fall in love (still there is the bad boy falls for innocent girl theme).
My problem with seduction bets is that it’s often (always?) tied with deception and the resolution after the inevitable dramatic reveal seldom feels satisfying to me.
THEN COMES SEDUCTION by Mary Balogh. This is one of her Huxtable books. I seem to remember a much earlier Balogh romance that also involved a man attempting to seduce a woman because of a wager, but I’m drawing a blank. There’s definitely one where a widow admits that her (unhappy) marriage had been the result of a wager her late husband accepted—but I’m think that would be the opposite of what this request is looking for!
Thank you for this rec request! I’ve been looking for things like Dangerous Liaisons since the late 80s and very rarely find them. That movie is amazing, although I wish they had kept Alan Rickman as the lead.
I got strong Dangerous Liaisons vibes from Barbara Samuel’s Lucien’s Fall. It’s not a bet, but the rake is determined to seduce the innocent heroine. She, however, while young, is far from naive or stupid.
I also recently read and loved an older Mary Balogh called The Notorious Rake. Again, it’s not about a bet, but the hero’s journey reminded me a bit of Valmont’s.
There is an old miniseries of Clarissa starring Sean Bean that you might like. The novel was clearly influenced by Dangerous Liaisons. The novel is a bloated, sprawling, extremely repetitive mess that I personally find fascinating but can’t in good conscience recommend. But you might like the miniseries if you can find it. Not as good as DL, but still good.
Seconding THEN COMES SEDUCTION. It’s the perfect “bet” book for those who aren’t a fan of deception subplots because the initial bet ends in the prologue when the hero stops himself from winning the bet. The rest of the book is basically his redemption arc.
Other than that I can’t really think of another because bet plots really aren’t my thing. Good luck in the rest of the search though .
@Amanda: I’m not sure I would categorize Molly O’Keefe’s THE TYCOON as a “wager” romance? To me, it’s really a “deception” romance in that the hero gets engaged to the heroine at the bidding of the heroine’s father—and the heroine is completely unaware that their relationship is a sham until she overhears her father and fiancé discussing it. She breaks off the engagement and then five years later, the hero has to redeem himself. Don’t get me wrong, I love THE TYCOON (especially the scene where the heroine demands the hero tell her who he voted for in the 2016 election…and makes it clear that the romance can’t continue if he voted for Trump!) and I love the “deception romance” trope (which I categorize as “fake relationship where only one person knows it’s fake”), which is a staple of Harlequin Presents, but that’s another Rec League for another day.
@DiscoDollyDeb: I would say it’s adjacent. The “bet” part isn’t so much a wager, but the hero is being offered something to seduce the heroine. Obviously, all of this is revealed super early on and is the foundation for redemption.
There’s another early Balogh (although not the one I was referring to in my comment above—I’m still looking for that), THE DOUBLE WAGER, where both the hero and heroine make wagers about each other.
A good subversion of the trope is the contemporary-with-a-touch-of-magic “Rainshadow Road”, by Lisa Kleypas. Hero Sam is asked by Heroine Lucy’s ex-boyfriend to date her (the seduction is implied) and take her mind off the fact that said ex dumped her for her sister. Sam agrees, then promptly meets Lucy for lunch and *tells her the truth*, and so their relationship begins on a note of “I am going to be honest with you because I like you and don’t want to lie to you”.
One of Courtney Milan’s books kinda fits. In The Heiress Effect the hero is told he has to humiliate the heroine in order to get the votes he needs in parliament. He tells her about this almost though, and they join forces to get the votes.
The Duke’s Wager by Edith Layton – reviewed here by Candy
@cleo – correction, The Duke’s Wager was reviewed by SB Sarah, not Candy, in 2009. The review doesn’t mention a bet but the title sure does and I vaguely remember the bet.
If I can mention one of my own, T’s Trial. Hero makes a bet with the heroine that he can maneuver his way into a sold-out museum exhibit and if he does, she has to go to dinner with him. Which, of course, leads to other things.
Suzanne Enoch’s The Rake is about the consequences of such a bet.
Elyse Springer’s World Turned Upside Down is an m/m set in Antarctica. Someone bets one of the heroes he can’t seduce the other, but it quickly stops being about the bet.
Mary Balogh’s “A Summer To Remember” also has the hero wagering early in the story that he’ll be able to get engaged to the most boring and proper lady his friends can think of within two weeks. Not sure this counts, since the goal of the wager is not seduction and therefore there’s not all that much redemption necessary (though the hero does realize that wagering on another person the way he did is dehumanizing and something to be ashamed of).
Bet Me by Jennifer Crusie. It’s a contemporary so don’t know if it fits. Very funny
I saw both the play on Broadway with Alan Rickman (a lifetime ago!) as well as the movie and recommend the original novel. Hardly a romance but not just another fusty classic. Makes an interesting contrast to the contemporary books mentioned. Also a good reminder that plus ca change…
The Wicked cousin by Stella Riley. The hero has a reputation for never refusing a wager. Having become tired of his reputation, he comes back to England and in order to avoid being drawn into lots of silly wagers, he enters into a private wager with a friend which will preclude him accepting other ones. The wager is that he cannot make himself acceptable enough that a respectable parent will permit him to pay addresses to his daughter. He has of course not intention of winning.
Stella Riley takes the usual tropes and makes something special out of them in that series and her characters are great.
I’ve been trying to come up with books where it’s not a man making a bet about seducing a woman and have only come up with a couple m/m titles.
Are there any where a woman makes the bet? I hope there’s at least one out there.
The Seduction by Julia Ross came to mind right after Chase’s Knave’s Wager, which I loved.
Theresa Romain has one, and again the heroine works it out/overhears early on. She turns it back on the hero and they also independently and together turn it back on the villain. The bet was getting the bluestocking to attend the hero’s scandalous house party and stay for the full two weeks. The heroine actually only accepts because she wants to learn to be more adventurous.
But can I remember the title?
Found it! Season for Surrender.
The other Balogh is The Incurable Matchmaker.
I used to enjoy this trope a lot, but it tends to be on the unsavory side. (OK for me in fiction, but definitely not for everyone.) I remember liking The Duke’s Wager, but Torquay and Bessacarr are pretty slimy.
I always liked Joan Overfield’s The Viscount’s Vixen, because the stakes are lower. He doesn’t bet he can seduce her, but that he can get her to go to the Prince’s ball at Carlton House. She’s aware of the bet from early on, though he doesn’t know she knows.
Having just tracked down the Nonesuch on archive.org, I present to you an incomplete list of Regencies with this trope (the Layton book isn’t on it, so…), all of which I’m sure I read back in the day:
https://web.archive.org/web/20110829114901/http://www.thenonesuch.com/motives.html#Wagers
The list also seems to be missing Nancy Richards-Akers, who had three in this category, of which my favorite was Lord Fortune’s Prize (the others being, as I recall, The Lilac Garland and The Devil’s Wager.) In Lord Fortune’s Prize, the hero encounters the heroine and thinks she’d be fun to seduce (see? unsavory), but feels guilty and tries to rescue her when her vile uncle puts her up as the prize in a gambling tournament. In The Lilac Garland, the hero previously humiliated the heroine on a bet (or a dare?) during her first season, then encounters her some time later and tries to court her. There’s also a wager in The Devil’s Wager, when the hero’s quite drunk
(Also, I liked The Seduction by Julia Ross, mentioned above.)
Sophfronia scott “AN UNFORGIVABLE LOVE” which I know I read a review from here on the Bitchery. It’s Dangerous Liasions reinvented for Harlem in the 1940.
I can’t recall the review, but I bought and read it, so…
Amanda Quick “SCANDAL”: hero is determined to seduce heroine to complete his revenge against her family. If you’ve read Quick’s single-title, you know the heroine is about to turn everything sideways, but she’ll only learn his original purpose in the last third of the book. Historical, published 1991.
n+1-thing “THE DEVIL´S WAGER”. absolutely not my style, but I enjoyed it
I have a vague memory of a Jenna Petersen with the whole “Seduction of an innocent” as revenge, but I read it over ten years ago, and I hesitate to recommend a book I can’t remember a thing about.
“The Ugly Duchess” by Eloisa James. I haven’t read many of her books, but I think it is my favorite. The heroine is not beautiful or even pretty – her mother makes her wear unflattering clothes in colors that look terrible on her. I also seem to recall a bet from the hero’s dad that he couldn’t marry her – hero compromises her when he gets drunk and they’re caught kissing, then he promptly runs off on the wedding night to be a spy or the like on the Continent, and she becomes a fashion icon in society.
I’m sorry to be neurotic, but I just had to note that Clarissa was published decades before Dangerous Liaisons, so if there was influence (and there definitely may have been; I’ve never read Dangerous Liaisons), it would have been Richardson influencing Laclos.
And I would definitely recommend Clarissa if you love long novels! It’s also fascinating to read the novel with some of the commentary about its publication history — relevant to this rec league, Richardson was trying to send a moral message about the immoral rake preying on his innocent pious heroine, and he grew increasingly upset when he realized that his readers preferred the charming rake to the proselytizing heroine.
@SusanH I found the miniseries on youtube. Will watch later when work is finished. Thanks for the tip.
Adding the link if anybody else wants to watch:
@SusanH WAIT WHAT?! I never knew Alan Rickman was supposed to be the lead in Dangerous Liaisons! I will never think upon this movie again without a lingering sense of dissatisfaction.
@JaneGaillyn – I should have remembered that Clarissa came first!
@Laura – When the play premiered in London, it started Rickman, Lindsay Duncan, and Juliet Stevenson. I would have loved to be in that audience! Since Rickman was a complete unknown in the US before Die Hard, they went with Malkovich for the film version. There used to be a few clips of the play up on YouTube, but I don’t know if they’re still there.
Another adjacent book is Judith Ivory’s The Proposition, in which two society wastrels bet the impoverished heroine that she can’t polish the speech and behavior of a rat catcher enough to have him welcomed to a ball. She is an expert in phonetics and has used her knowledge to polish young women from the country before their seasons, so she takes the bet.
@Vivi2 – awesome! Finally one where a woman takes the bet (even if it’s not to seduce)
I just read one with a bet! One Night for Seduction by Erica Ridley, first in the Wicked Dukes series. The Duke bets her cousin that he can find a man willing to marry her by Season’s end. But then he falls in love with her himself, of course.
I am not sure this exactly counts, but Nine Rules To Break When Romancing a Rake involves a bet on the part of the hero. Some unsavory fellow bets that he will become engaged to the heroine and the hero bets that the villain won’t win her over because he thinks the heroine would never accept such a poor match for herself. Later, it seems that the reason that the hero is showing interest in the heroine is only to turn her head so he can win (I think he may have already cancelled the bet by that point and we know he is in love with her, but she doesn’t know that yet and is hurt).
Code of Honor by Andrea Pickens starts with the hero making a bet he can seduce the heroine, but after meeting her at a ball realizes she is an “innocent” and not open to an affair like the person who led him into the bet made him believe. He goes and scratches out the bet and announces he does not seduce innocents, but, of course, later the heroine hears only about the bet and not how he renounced it. Since he is a known rake, she feels she fell into his trap. There is a mystery too. I haven’t read it in years, so I can’t say if it holds up, but when I read it about 20 years ago, I loved it.