I’m reasonably certain this idea came up in the comments at some point, when we were discussing tropes and what could possibly be the opposite of friends to lovers. However, I couldn’t find the original comment that sparked it.
Catherine: I am not entirely sure what Enemies with Benefits looks like, but Julie James does quite a lot of antagonistic but hot pairings which might count. Downside – she writes a lot of FBI agent heroes, which I suspect is going to be a dealbreaker for a lot of people right now. Practice Makes Perfect ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) is two attorneys, however.
Shana: I rarely read this trope but I have trouble imagining a better example than Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid ( A | BN | K | AB ). Hockey arch-rivals who secretly bang every time they’re in the same city.
Amanda: Yeah, I think the distinction here between enemies to lovers and enemies with benefits is that the latter takes longer for the main characters to like one another.
Oh and lots of hate boning.
Do you know of any romances like this?
I know a few fanfics like this, including one actually called “Enemies With Benefits”.
Enemies Like You by Joanna Chambers is a m/m romance about spies on opposing sides.
E times wit Benefits is the free introductory novella. Both still available and I I loved them
Would “Hate to Want You” by Alisha Rai fit the bill?
I liked Practice Makes Perfect when reading it, but I think it’s something of a problematic fave. I’m pretty sure JD would have voted for Trump. Suddenly One Summer is less problematic and also something of an enemies to lovers although the heroine wants to move to Trump Tower at first (yuck).
Maybe Poison Evidence by Rachel Grant?
Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry features the heroine’s best friend’s Baxter of an ex-boyfriend falling for heroine after said best friend leaves him to go find herself (and other hot man).
More recently, The Wedding Party by Jasmine Guillory does a really nice job of showing how both of them earned the enemies tag.
(As a side note, I really really REALLY hated Practice Makes Perfect. Like so much that I’ve never been able to read another Julie James book.
The hero is an expert in busting class-action lawsuits and the heroine’s specialty is defending companies against sexual harassment claims (but it’s okay because we keep being told she a feminist o_O).
SPOILER: they go open their own lawyer firm to defend the WalMart stand-in against sex discrimination lawsuits. FOR REALS, THAT IS THEIR HAPPY ENDING.)
*law firm – Don’t comment while mad about a book you read 10 years ago and still gives you Madeline Kahn “flames along the side of my face” feels.
There’s a lot of cross-over between enemies/antagonists-to-lovers and opposites-attract tropes, so some of these might have popped up elsewhere in other Rec Leagues. After reading (and loving!) Rachel Reid’s HEATED RIVALRY last year (it was my favorite book of 2019), I discovered that “m/m romances where the MCs are sports rivals but fall for each other anyway” is a bit of a jam for me. In addition to HEATED RIVALRY, I strongly recommend Taylor Fitzpatrick’s COMING IN FIRST PLACE (like HR, MCs are rival hockey players) and Elyse Springer’s HEELS OVER HEAD (MCs are training for a spot on the Olympic Diving team). And I second the recommendation of Joanna Chambers (co-written with Annika Martin) m/m ENEMIES WITH BENEFITS/ENEMIES LIKE YOU.
I am not a fan of the enemies to lovers trope in the traditional sense. Too much extended angst for me. That’s also why I have issues with many second chance romances too. However, what I do like are situations where people fall in love from opposite sides of a war. This crops up a lot in SF: Lois McMaster’s first novel Shards of Honor, Lindsay Buroker Encrypted/Decrypted (not all her books are great but these I really liked). Also, Susanna Kearsley´s latest historical which has been reviewed here , Bellwhether (and they don’t speak the same language which adds another complexity). I find these always interesting plotwise because you never know how the author is going to resolve the situation. It’s not just a question of clearing misunderstandings, which can be boring really.
Maybe The Spymaster’s Lady by Joanna Bourne? The hero and heroine are spies on opposite sides (he’s English, she’s French). They don’t hate each other, exactly, as they greatly respect each other’s abilities, but they are actively working against each other.
I’m not sure it entirely fits the request, but it’s a wonderful book with one of my all-time favorite heroines.
Following up on LN’s tangent re opposing warriors, AJ Demas’ Something Human is a lovely queer romance set in the alt-ancient Mediterranean.
@omphale Practice Makes Perfect is the one Julie James books that I don’t like. And I adore 7 of the 8 other books of hers, and semi-like the 8th (her first one, with the lawyer and the movie star, works for me with the snarkiness, but I find it otherwise difficult to suspend disbelief) enough to occasionally re-read.
But oof, every time I try to re-read Practice Makes Perfect thinking that I love her other books so much that I must be forgetting how much I hate this particular one, I get partway through, and just can’t go on.
(So what I am saying, it you could safely give her later books a shot – I think Practice is an outlier).
Otherwise on topic, probably her It Happened One Wedding might be the closest she has to enemies with benefits, but by the time they start with the beneficence, they are semi-friends.
I’d say there’s some of this vibe in Sherry Thomas’s HIS AT NIGHT and a little bit in her THE LUCKIEST LADY IN LONDON.
I think Jennifer Dawson’s The Name of the Game fits the bill.
Mia Vincy’s latest historical “A Dangerous Kind of Lady” fits this description. The hero and heroine were promised to each other as children and the Hero has been away for years. They have an antagonistic relationship because she needs to marry or she will be disowned and he refuses be trapped, but they can’t seem to keep their hands off each other. Just a warning, neither one of these characters are likable at first, but over time we see behind their walls and thorns to their true hearts and vulnerabilities. I loved this book.
Vi Keeland’s newest book, “The Rivals” definitely fits into the hate-boning category.
LN, I second your recommendation of Shards of Honor by Bujold. They are actually enemies,as in on opposite sides of a war, but they aren’t “enemies” in the the sense of the word when too often used in romances, where people just hate each other and snark a lot. Bujold’s writing is a masterpiece. I recommend this book on audio. Another book with enemies to lovers is Primary Inversion by Catherine Asaro, another wonderful SF author!
I enjoy stories of adversaries that learn to respect, like, and then love each other.
I just remembered two more science fiction romance books that could fit this trope, both by Linnea Sinclair: Finders Keepers and Games of Command. I love her books but haven’t seen anything new in years.
I think Christina Lauren’s Beautiful Bastard is the ultimate enemies with benefits book
Re Julie James. Practice Makes Perfect truly is her worst book by a lot. I definitely recommend trying out another one, and I recommend Suddenly Last Summer, It Happened One Wedding or A Lot Like Love. Again many involve BI agents so avoid if you need to.
I would second Hate to Want You by Alisha Rai and Her Best Worst Mistake by Sarah Mayberry. Also Beautiful Bastard by Christina Lauren.
I have to agree about Practice Makes Perfect. When I read it in 2009, I really liked it, but I reread it last year and was so mad. JD is the worst type of Conservative Republican. At one point, he rants about how white men have to work twice as hard to get the same respect as women because Payton ended up on a list of female lawyers under 30 to watch out for. Also, the “dark moment” involves a lie he told their boss about Payton several years earlier that could have caused problems with her career. I agree with @Sydneysider that he may have voted for Trump in 2016–I don’t think he’d vote for him this year, but he’d be one of those people writing in a conservative rather than voting for Biden. (If he didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, it is solely because Payton and his friend Tyler convinced him it was a bad idea, forcing him to vote for Gary Johnson.) As much as I don’t like JD, I am still waiting for Tyler’s book. He showed up again in It Happened One Wedding as the guy Sydney doesn’t choose, and I really want him to get his HEA, which would give us a chance to see if JD has changed in the last 10 years.
I do think that the FBI/US Attorney series fits the bill, especially Something About You, which involves a lot of brooding on the hero’s part because he doesn’t want to like the heroine, who he believes got him transferred from Chicago to Nebraska three years earlier.
Some Like It Scandalous by Maya Rodale may work too. It is the 2nd book in her Gilded Age Girls Club book and involves two people who cannot stand each other. There’s a fake engagement, which of course becomes real when they start making out and have hot as fuck carriage sex. The next book, An Heiress to Remember probably fits too. It’s a second chance romance, but they hate each other for like 60% of the book (even when they start making out). The heroine is also on the older side for a historical romance–she’s 36 (gasp!) and divorced from a loathsome Duke.
Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean (her newest Barenuckle Bastards book) definitely fits. Grace is more than happy to hook up with Ewan, but is adamant that she will not fall in love with him again. I confess it took me a while to get into the book (I don’t think I was in the right mood for it), but eventually I loved it. I predicted parts of the ending, but was genuinely surprised (and satisfied) with how it played out.
I also LOATHED Practice Makes Perfect. Heroine should have sued the “hero”. What he did is that bad. He’s also just a hateful, horrible person. If reading about someone who is privileged in pretty much every way treating people like crap is going to set you off, DO NOT READ THIS BOOK.
If you like this trope I really recommend Evernight by Kristen Callihan. It’s the fifth book in her Darkest London series (steampunk/paranormal). You’ll benefit from reading the earlier books in the series but it isn’t required. The main characters, Will Thorne and Holly Evernight, are masterfully fleshed out – they start out justifiably hating each other (Thorne more than Holly), but attraction and then love grows between them. Callihan’s writing is just so good. The characters are quick-witted, but it’s also a very emotional book. I’ve reread this book a bunch of times and it never fails to give me all the feels. The entire series is pretty strong, though this book is the best by far, in my opinion.
I agree with the Practice Makes Perfect comments. It was my least favorite and the only one I have not reread. I also agree with Something About You having the enemies with benefits overtone. It and Just the Sexiest Man Alive are two of my favorites of hers.
I had probably tuned Tyler out because of my lack of love for Practice. The other characters I wanted future stories for were Kate, Jeremy, Val and even Scott from Just the Sexiest Man Alive.
For the trope, I thought of a few of Kresley Cole’s Immortals After Dark series: Holly and Cade, Ry and Sabine, Bowen and Mari…even Nikolai and Myst. While the level of animosity varies between the couples, the benefits and heat are definitely there.
Watching by Calle J Brookes (the first book in her PAVAD series) features a hero who hates his boss because he thinks the boss is corrupt, and the boss’s daughter, who he thinks is a Daddy’s girl. She is angry with him for dismissing her as only on the job because of her father.
I’m not a fan of ‘angry’ tropes, so this is one that has to be done well. It’s too easy for it to come across as two whiny people who won’t use their words.
WHERE DEATH MEETS THE DEVIL by L.J. Hayward. It’s an m/m story between an assassin and a former soldier now agent for a fictious almost-governmental organization (based in Australia or NZ, I can’t remember).
It’s fairly well-done. There’s a lot of mind-trickery in that book, the relationship between the guys stays ambiguous even at the end. (Note: there’s a slew of novellas & sequel, so they eventually reach an entente.)
Younger me LOOOOVED Max and Kyle in Living Single. Their on-again, off-again secret relationship with “someone I hate” is probably the best version of enemies with benefits I know of – but there’s no HEA.
I seem to be in the minority, but I really disliked Heated Rivalry – too much hate sex and not enough character development for my taste.
I did really like Goalie Interference by Avon Gale and Piper Vaughn, which is about rival goalies competing for the same starting goalie spot.
Some enemies-to-lovers romances I’ve enjoyed are:
This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
An Unnatural Vice by KJ Charles (and and A Seditious Affair, although that one’s kinda lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers)
The Earl I Ruined by Scarlett Peckham
The Ruin of a Rake by Cat Sebastian
And while the romance isn’t the main focus, Aliette de Bodard’s The House of Binding Thorns also has a really good enemies-to-lovers romance.
Calle J. Brookes’s WATCHING, recommended by @BellaInAus at comment #24, is currently free in the kindle store.
I will third Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid. It’s one of my go-to re-reads and a big favorite.
@Andrea, HOW COULD I FORGET AN UNNATURAL VICE! Absolutely one of my favorite Charles books.
And I’m glad I’m not the only one here who hated Practice Makes Perfect. I’ll also say that I had read some other James books before that and enjoyed them, but I think an author who presents a ‘feminist’ character literally screwing over working class women to advance her career is a trust-breaker for me.
Wow Practice Makes Perfect sounds awful. He sounds like a nightmare. Maybe they got divorced and he found the reddit subforum. In Just the Sexiest Man Alive, the heroine was defending a client in a sexual harrassment. Seems to be a pattern.
I recommend Joanna Bourne’s book. My Lord and Spymaster is the least good of them, but it’s enemies to lovers. The hero is a bit too controlling, but the strength of the heroine makes them a good match.
Lauren Layne’s Hard Sell works well for this trope.
I feel like Buffy’s sixth season, and the resulting fanfiction, may be your best bet for this trope!
Another Joanna Bourne book, The Black Hawk has a hero and heroine on opposite sides of a war, for anyone who is looking for that. I think this is a lot of people’s favorite book by her, but not mine because it took so long(years and years!) to get to the HEA. ymmv
Since Julie James is in the air I saw today that Passionflix is making a movie of the first book in the FBI series, Something About You. I wonder if they’ll update it for 2020.
Oh my gosh, this will teach me to mention a book I haven’t reread in a while! I had honestly forgotten everything about Practice Makes Perfect except that it was two lawyers and there was good banter and a suitably antagonistic relationship at the start. That does sound like it’s a nightmare. I’m so sorry, guys!