This Rec League was submitted by Kris Bock and we thought the cuteness of pets in romance would be most welcome:
Romances where animals have a strong role, beyond simply someone who happens to have a pet. There’s a fair number with dogs, but what about cats, ferrets, rabbits etc? (I’m talking about pets here, not shifters or animals as heroes.)
Sarah: Wild on my Mind by Laurel Kerr ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) takes place at a zoo with a rehab program, and the animals play massive roles, including a honey badger and a capybara.
And Charlie All Night ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ) has the adorable puppy who likes Billy Joel.
Amanda: Not necessarily a “pet” but who can forget about the lobster in When a Scot Ties the Knot.
Elyse: Ah the lobster.
Claudia: Oldie but goodie — Laura Kinsale’s Lessons in French has a pet bull (not a typo, it’s the heroine’s prized bull and her ticket to financial independence if I remember correctly.)
It’s a low-angst, sweet Kinsale and one that stood the test of time better, in my opinion.
Sarah: Oh, and the Kinsale with the hedgehog – Midsummer Moon. ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au )
Tara: Spindrift by Anna Burke is an f/f romance that has two veterinarians falling love.
Georgia Beers wrote an f/f trilogy called Puppy Love that all centers around an animal shelter. Rescued Heart, Run To You, and Dare to Stay are the three books in that series. ( A | BN )
Catherine: Her Magical Pet edited by Rachel Manija Brown, is an anthology of low-angst short stories featuring f/f couples and their pets. The stories are either romances or feature a romantic couple living their happy ever after, with magical pet. Very low stress to read!
Love in the Afternoon by Lisa Kleypas, ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ) features a heroine with a pet ferret. And I think a hedgehog, and other assorted critters.
Oh! I’ve been trying to remember this one! What about The Wallflower Wager by Tessa Dare? The heroine has many, many, many rescue animals…
Claudia: Yes she does!
Sneezy: Hahahahaha Fluffy and Rex!! Tessa Dare had me loving on those lobsters.
The Beast of Blackmoor, ( A | BN | K | AB ) and A Touch of Stone and Snow by Milla Vane both have animals with strong roles. I simp horsie and kitty very much.
Who wouldn’t a horsie liable to kick in the skull of your enemies, and a kitty who’d snuggle and cuddle you, then rip your other enemies limb from limb?
All of the books set in the Tortall universe by Tamora Pierce that I’ve read all fit the bill.
I haven’t read the Beka Cooper series, or the Numair Chronicles, though I know the Beka Cooper series features a very opinionated cat you’ll meet in the Song of the Lioness as well, and Numair Chronicles just started.
Plus it’s known from The Immortal series that Numair’s friend and teacher is an animal lover and researcher (I don’t remember if he’s also a vet) and he married a woman who could commune with animals and heal them.
Maya: Oh yes, big cosign on Faithful/Pounce in the Tortall universe!
What about the cat in Get a Life Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert? It is central to getting the two main characters together!!
EllenM: Second the Milla Vane animal recs!! Those were the first ones I thought of.
Which romances would you recommend?
Definitely the new Roan Parrish book, Better Than People. So many adorable cats and dogs in that one!
Georgette Heyer’s Lufra the Baluchistan hound from Frederica and Bouncer the irrepressible lurcher from The Reluctant Widow are hilarious and unforgettable.
There’s the wombatt in The Comfortable Courtesan. Plus various hedgehogs, cats, a mongoose, and Jezebel the pony in later episodes.
The hero in Elizabeth Hoyt’s To Beguile a Beast has on old dog called Lady Grey and they keep each other company in his old damp castle, it’s very sweet.
You mentioned Tessa Dare, but not the recent one with the goat birth scene! OK, I had to look up the title, it’s The Wallflower Wager and was reviewed on this site by Carrie S. Besides the goat, the heroine also has a rather large assortment of other rescue animals. In her review, Carrie mentions “a dog with no back legs who uses a cart for mobility, a litter of kittens, a river otter, a steer, a goat, three hens, and a hedgehog”. The problem of finding homes for all the rescues is part of what drives the plot in the beginning of the book.
Zeke in Family Man by Jayne Ann Krentz, an oldie from her golden period (imho). There’s a lot of things I loved in this book and Zeke and his dish were among the top (along with pesto; I’d never heard of pesto before reading this book and oh my what a wonderful discovery that was).
Tessa Dare’s lobsters and rescue animals are so great!
Lois McMaster Bujold – Beguilement and the rest of the Sharing Knife series features horses with strong personalities. Also the World of the Five Gods novels and Penric novellas have many animal cameos including a fluffy polar bear.
Puppy Love, Puppy Christmas, Puppy Kisses is a trilogy by Lucy Gilmore that features 3 sisters who have a business training and placing service dogs (of all kinds).
A number of years ago, someone on this site mentioned a romance book which ended with the heroine’s (normal non- shifter) pet cat jumping in front of the heroine to take a hit with an arrow. It was mentioned that such sacrificial behavior did not seem very cat-like.
I just read Jingle Wars (which was great and damn steamy!) and there is a donkey named Saint Nick that they dress up as a reindeer and they talk to a lot. He’s pretty cute.
Anyone But You by Jennifer Crusie has the hysterical, and depressed, Fred the basset hound who is instrumental in getting the couple together. The scenes with Fred learning to use the fire escape were priceless!
I also read a historical this year where the heroine saves a really ugly dog from kids and the dog becomes attached to the hero. She gives the dog a grandiose name, and the dog refuses to be left behind by the hero,whom it adores. I think the hero is a social trend setter and inadvertently sets a fashion for riding in your carriage with a dog. I can’t think of the name of the book! Anyone?
Robin Owens’ Celta series takes place in another world where people from Earth immigrated long ago and the descendants have developed psychic powers. The fun animal part is that animals, frequently cats, form bonds a person and then can communicate with that person through telepathy. They are still cats, with cat concerns, but now you hear what they are thinking. The Celta series are romances and the FamCats (as they are called because they are family) are a hoot.
Jayne Castle (a/k/a Jayne Ann Krentz) has a series of books taking place on Harmony (similar set up to the Robin Owens books), and the animals there are called “dust bunnies” because that is what they look like that are native to Harmony. They aren’t called pets but they attach themselves to particular people and are a hoot.
One of my favourite scenes ever is a “mission impossible” style heist commited by an animal mage and his 2 ferrets and a chinese ferret badger in Ilona Andrew’s book White Hot. Actually the first 3 books in the Hidden Legacy series has several wonderful animal scenes, mostly due to that animal mage and his little daughter and are a comfort read for me.
Dodger the ferret plays a supporting role in most of Lisa Kleypas’s Hathaway books, not just Love in the Afternoon.
Lady Danbury’s cat, Malcolm, is one of my favorite parts of Julia Quinn’s How to Marry a Marquis.
Only a Kiss by Mary Balogh has a hero attempting to assert his masculinity by rejecting a particularly ugly dog, with predictable Balogh-ian understatement.
Strange Love by Ann Aguirre features an alien abduction and a talking dog (the translator nanodes mean that the heroine and her dog can finally understand each other). One of my absolute favorite books this year!
The Parfit Knight by Stella Riley has a parrot that has a memorable role in the book. Also for one brief shining hilarious paragraph it has a POV.
@Carrie G: sounds like Georgette Heyer’s Arabella
Joanna Bourne’s My Lord and Spymaster features Kedger the ferret.
Loretta Chase’s Mr. Impossible has Marigold the mongoose. And just about anything of Jennifer Crusie’s is going to have animals as characters.
@Maria F– of course! I can’t believe it slipped my mind. Thank you!
Jennifer Crusie’s Bet Me has an Elvis-loving cat that defends the heroine from her skeevy ex-boyfriend.
@PatriciaM dust bunnies! Came here to mention them as well. Much like them, when you see my teeth, it’s too late…
Ooh, I have actual contributions for this one. Go, me.
The Trouble With Mistletoe by Jill Shalvis – the heroine runs a pet goods store, and also does some pet-sitting and training, the hero has just inherited a cat and has no idea what to do with her. And boy, she is VERY cat.
Tessa Dare actually has several books with good animals in them. The Duchess Deal has Breeches the cat, who is a hellion (again, VERY CAT), and in a moment that amused me, the hero threatens someone with the cat in a later book. Romancing the Duke has what I think was a white ferret named Snowball, who, again, is an adorable little hellraiser.
I recently read The Duke With the Dragon Tattoo by Kerrigan Byrne. The heroine keeps and rehabs animals that have been injured, and names them for tyrants, because an animal named after Attila the Hun would find it too embarrassing not to get better. When the pirates abscond with her, she has just rescued a litter of kittens, and the kitties pretty much take over the ship. All the pirates end up bonding with them and they all get named some variation of “Cat”, but in various languages.
The book I’m currently reading, Poppy Redfern and the Midnight Murders, has a good little corgi on the cover. Her name is Bess, and she is definitely a Very Good Girl.
For non cat/dog animal characters, I offer Roscoe the parrot from WHAT THE PARROT SAW [High Seas #4]. He believes he’s the ship’s cat, and the entire ship supports the parrot in this because he’s an excellent mouser.
Pompom the bichon is the third castaway in CASTAWAY DREAMS [High Seas #2] and is always held up by the practical surgeon hero as an example of Edible Items on the island. Pompom and the heroine, Daphne, convince him otherwise.
The “Heart” series by Robin D. Owen. Heart Thief is my favorite. There are cats that talk by telepathy. I think all pets do.This series is fantastic.
Sarah Titles’ romances feature multiple and often adorably elderly basset hounds, one of which is named Dolly Parton.
Can we count the not-possessed finch in Swordheart?
I’m going with Sir Pup, Lilith’s delightful hellhound from Meljean Brook’s Guardian’s series. He first appears as a puppy in Demon
Angel and reappears pretty regularly through the series. Whether he’s chilling in his slobbery pitbull/mastiff form or defending the innocent as his slavering hellhound self, he is the epitome of a very good boy.
Coquette the heroic little Papillon in A Lady’s Secret by Jo Beverley, and Tabitha the fierce cat-rabbit of Hesse (really a Manx cat) in The Secret Wedding, also by Jo Beverley.
@Merle second this! Also Tab the civette from Paladins Grace. “Who’s a handsome stripey boy”
Do K9 series count?? DD Ayers, Piper J. Drake, and Katie Ruggle all write series involving K9 dogs. I may or may not have gone through a phase.
In Sherry Thomas’s Ravishing the Heiress a pet dormouse plays a memorable role. She belongs to the sad part of the book, though, so maybe not belonging on a list devoted to pure pet joy.
Elsa Jade’s Mach One (#1 in Cowboys of Carbon County) is about a cyborg stranded in Wyoming who needs a veterinarian to help hatch his dragon. Not a pet, per say but it’s kind of cute as a baby.
Elsa Jade’s Mach One (#1 in Cowboys of Carbon County) is about a cyborg stranded in Wyoming who needs a veterinarian to help hatch his dragon. Not a pet, per say but it’s kind of cute as a baby.
How about a book, IMHO, where the animal plays a ridiculously over-sized role – Linda Howard’s Troublemaker featured a dog that got more “screen time” than either the hero or heroine. At the end of the book I was convinced if either h/h got hit by a bus the surviving h/h would be more than content to have their HEA with the dog.
Hosed by Pippa Grant and Lili Valente features a pet racoon named George Cooney.
Shacking Up by Helena Hunting has the heroine pet sitting a ferret and a tarantula. Francesca and Tiny, two of my favorite pet characters!
Okay I am not even sure that I liked this book, I honestly have issues with a lot of the author’s books, but the pit bull Brodie Hawaii steals the show in “The Unleashing” by Shelly Laurenston.
The cat (whose name I don’t remember) in Christina C. Jones’ I Think I Might Love You is responsible for one of the funniest scenes in the book. I can’t say why, you have to experience it unspoiled, but oh so good.
Charybdis the cat in How the Marquess was won also has a very funny scene (and gets the last line in the book!). Oyster the dog from A Duke of Her Own has a big moment.
The Dogfather/Dogmother series and also Debbie Burns’ Rescue Me series all revolve around rescuing/adopting dogs.
And I don’t know if it counts, since all the characters are animals, but Dennis the (goodest) dog in Hollow Kingdom stole a big piece of my heart.
@Hot in AZ, omg, YES!! Brodie Hawaii is a wonderful choice.
Just checking back in with Darcy’s cat from Wallbanger the first book in Christina Lauren’s Cocktail series. He is very much a cat and has a bit of a harem going by the end of the series.