This Rec League was recently emailed to us by Zuzus and we wanted to run it rather quickly, given how we’re about to be knee-deep in holiday romances and Hallmark movies:
Are there any books or movies where the heroine escapes a stifling small town to find life, love, and happiness in the big city? With holiday season around the corner, I’d be interested in anything that switches the tired “city people are cold and heartless, country people are the moral backbone of America” schtick.
Amanda: I’ve dubbed this the “reverse Hallmark.”
Shana: Ok, not sure this exactly fits the request, but Served Hot by Annabeth Albert ( A | BN | K | AB ) is a m/m set in Portland, where one of the heroes is from small town conservative Idaho, and coming out of a closeted relationship. The other other hero is a barista. Hello, catnip.
It’s been a while since I read it, so I’m not sure how much focus is on his small town roots. But it’s super sweet.
I recently read Three for All by Elia Winters, which is a m/m/f super thoughtful polyamorous romance set small town MA. It’s about the throuple deciding whether to follow their dreams and move back to NYC. BUT we don’t actually see them all in the city until the epilogue. So while it’s super validating of big city life, I’m not sure it fits the reverse-Hallmark brief.
Claudia: I think The Lord I Left qualifies! Heroine Alice leaves her small village to live in London as a sex worker and is very put out by having to return because of a family emergency. She returns to the big city as soon as possible even if staying put would mean a very comfortable (if boring) life.
Sneezy: Her Big City Neighbor, first book in the Cider Bar Sisters by Jackie Lau!
Amy leaves her small town and all the problems with family taking her for granted and a shitty ex to move to Toronto where her Great Aunt has left her a house. Victor is her neighbour, and if Amy is a golden retriever, he is a grumpy cat. There’s some really beautiful stuff in there about long term grief, and Amy really enjoying Toronto, discovering all the cool and delicious nooks and crannies.
Amy is also an engineer, if anyone is looking for a hard-science gal romance.
Amanda: Topic adjacent: Cream of the Crop by Alice Clayton ( A | BN | K | G | AB ). The heroine works in NYC and loves it. She falls in love with a hunky dairy farmer, but doesn’t lose her love for the city. If I recall, at the end of the book, she splits her time between Manhattan and the Hudson Valley.
What books would you recommend? Let us know in the comments below!
Love Lettering by Kate Clayborne. Heroine moves from small town suburbs to NYC. She didn’t necessarily leave because she found her small town stifling, but for ~personal reasons~ that are spoilers. But learning to love city life is a pretty big backdrop of the story. I know it’s a super popular book (which is totally worth the hype; I loved it) but it is the book that immediately jumped in my head.
Seconding Her Big City Neighbor and Love Lettering!
I think there’s a subplot in Intermediate Thermodynamics by Susannah Nix, where Esther is living in Los Angeles (and enjoying it) and is resisting pressure from her mother to move back home, although I think home was suburban Seattle or somewhere else rather than a very small town, but definitely somewhere that would have left her world feeling smaller.
Oh, The Chocolate Kiss by Laura Florand! Magalie used to live in a small town in the south of France and has been living in Paris for a bit before the start of the book, but rarely ventures off the island in the Seine where she lives with her aunts. She starts to explore the rest of the city during the course of the book, so there’s definitely celebration of urban life.
HIDDEN TREASURES by Judith Arnold. I don’t feel 100% confident in this rec, b/c it’s been a very long time since I’ve read it, but I think this may be close to feel the reader is looking for. I actually remember it starts out very Hallmark. The heroine is a big city girl who is convinced she’s going to be happy with small town life. When she finds a treasure buried in her backyard, the hero gets involved. He’s from this small town and is only visiting and wants to get back out as soon as possible. I remember it being fun in a lighthearted, fluffy way, but the thing that sticks out in my mind 10+ years later (slight spoiler alert) is that the heroine realizes she really isn’t meant for small town life and moves back to a big city (New York or Boston I think) and the hero follows her there and they live happily ever after.
It made a big impression on me b/c of course I was convinced it was going to be “see how great small towns are” stuff.
I think Truly by Ruthie Knox fits this one. Heroine just wants to get back to Wisconsin, hero wants to show her how great NYC is. Love ensues.
OMG, YES! That’s one big reason why I have a hard time getting into Hallmark movies.
I just finished the Travis series by Lisa Kleypas. In the first book, Sugar Daddy, (I promise it’s not what the title suggests), the heroine spends her teenage years in a trailer park in a small town. Eventually, the story and the rest of the books take place mostly in Houston and thereabouts. I didn’t think I would ever love a contemporary romance that much, but I did greatly enjoy this series. (Some trigger warnings for the second book, but I still enjoyed it for the most part.)
Are there any examples out there of a compromise between big and small town living where the couple moves to the suburbs or a medium-sized city as their happy ending? It doesn’t have to be just New York-sized cities or twee Christmas villages!
This might not quite fit, but I enjoy the movie, The Holiday, with Jack Black and Cameron Diaz. A wealthy LA gal swaps houses over the holidays with a young lady who lives in an English cottage. They are each trying to get way from bad relationships. Both women have adjustments at first, but both find the charm of the place they’re in, even if they don’t want to stay there. I know it’s not a perfect film, but it’s one I go back to. I especially love the storyline of Kate Winslet and Eli Wallach. Charming!
It’s historical but the heroine in Dreaming of You by Lisa Kleypas struggles with whether to marry the literal guy next door or leave her small town and hang out with Derek Craven in London. Also I just read The Billionaire’s Wake-Up-Call Girl (it’s better than the title sounds I swear) by Annika Martin and in that, the heroine is going to have to leave NYC due to financial difficulties and she desperately wants to stay in the city.
Thank you so much for these – I get tired of some romance houses just publishing stories where the small town is this perfect, quirky, angelic haven and the big city is awful and wicked.
We Met in December by Rosie Curtis maybe kinda of fits into this, as the heroine moves to London from a smaller city in the UK, to get a job in the field she wants and to leave behind a messy situation with her ex-boyfriend who cheated on with another co-worker. This isn’t exactly the focus of the novel, and its mainly backstory for the heroine.
In A Match Made for Thanksgiving by Jackie Lau, the hero is concerned that presuing a serious, long term relationship will mean having to move back his small Ontario hometown from Toronto.
There’s definitely an old Harlequin Blaze that fits this pretty well, particularly because the heroine encounters resistance from her family when she chooses to leave, and she does an excellent job calmly but firmly sticking her ground, setting boundaries, and doing what’s right for herself. Iirc, she had been guilt-tripped into staying for a long time by her sister? or maybe mother? But damnit, I can’t remember which book it is. I thought it was something by Kathleen O’Reilly, but I can’t work out which book it would have been.
I was also thinking of an old Harlequin Blaze title, Acting on Impulse by Vicki Lewis Thompson, they even go home for a holiday and the hero enjoys small town life but the heroine is still attached to big city as I remember it (may have mixed up with another, long long time ago)
On the lighter/ YA side, I think Hex and the City (Enchanted, Inc. #1) by Shanna Swendson and Boy Meets Girl (Boy #2) by Meg Cabot works pretty well for this.
Yay for Her Big City Neighbor! Jackie Lau is an auto-buy for me! She also wrote Tempting Her Neighbor as Laura Jardine, in which the hero has just played the Hallmark card by fleeing Toronto and the heroine is the sex-positive girl with the “bad” reputation dreaming of big city life.
Sabrina Bowen Coming in From the Cold – Heroine moved to a farm house in Vermont with a boyfriend and is stuck holding the bag (and feeding the hens) at the start of the novel, when ex-boyfriend has wandered off. The story is all based in the small town, but she does leave with the hero.
For historicals, Jayne Krentz/Amanda Quick
The Ultimate Pi Day Party by Jackie Lau is another good one. The heroine is from a small town and has moved to Toronto.
Oh damn, I just read this RecLeague post and now I think I need to completely change NaNoWriMo ideas.
I know I am very late to the party on this Rec League but I would recommend For Better or Worse by Lauren Layne – second in The Wedding Belles series. Heroine falls in love with NYC before ever meeting hero and has no plans to leave.
And I should add because my thought seemed incomplete – that the heroine doesn’t change plans – the hero loves NYC too