This is another one from our Submit Your Rec League post and is from Star:
All those Bored Slutty Wives and Widows who exist to show how hot and experienced the hero is? The ones who aren’t allowed to be people and are written off as pathetic trash because they weren’t lucky enough to marry someone they loved (or even someone decent)? Stories where they get to be happy too.
Catherine: Oh, that’s a really interesting one!
I mean, it’s extra interesting because I can think of plenty of ‘redeemed’ heroes, but heroines? Much harder…
Elyse: The Roommate although the next book isn’t out yet.
Tara: Close to Home by Rachel Spangler. I thought Kelly was entirely irredeemable in The Long Way Home and was surprised and delighted to learn I could invest in her as a love interest. It’s an f/f romance and she’s deeply closeted for much of the story, however, so it’s not always comfortable reading.
Catherine: There is the hero in A Duke of Her Own by Eloisa James. Former villain and romantic rival both.
Actually, I think both Kleypas and James use this trope a fair bit.
Claudia: Roni Lauren’s By The Hour. ( A | BN | K | AB ) Heroine is the former fling of hero in the first book in the series, and she definitely comes across as villainous spurned ex.
For historicals, Mary Balogh’s A Christmas Bride. ( A ) Heroine is most definitely the villain in A Secret Pearl, and could be characterized as “bored wife” as the request reads. She is a widow in A Christmas Bride.
Shana: I was going to suggest Common Goal by Rachel Reid, because one of the heroes was previously in love with the hero from another book. But it was unrequited so I’m not sure if that works.
EllenM: I second the Eloisa James recommendation—I think several of the Desperate Duchesses books feature heroes or heroines who were alternate suitors/love interests in previous series entries.
I think one of the Psy-Changeling wolf books may also have a hero who was a previous lover of a different book heroine at one point?? But i’m not 100% on that.
What books would you suggest? Let us know!
I’m not sure COMMON GOAL fits the request parameters, the hero’s love is unrequited in GAME CHANGER and he’s not in any way villainized. However, it’s a good book and if anyone is interested, COMMON GOAL is a KDD for $1.99 today.
Lady Derring Takes a Lover by Julie Anne Long is perfect for this. Not only that, but she becomes friends and business partners with her late husband’s mistress. I loved it.
It looks like the second book in Julie Anne Long’s Palace of Rogues series, after Lady Derring Takes a Lover, would also work. That’s where the mistress, Angelique, gets her HEA. I know shewasn’t a wife, but mistresses are so often played as the “slutty other woman” so this could fit the bill.
It would help to name the book. Sigh. It’s Angel in a Devil’s Arms by Julie Anne Long.
Tara is right. Kelly’s character in The Long Way Home was irredeemable. She was so hurtful to Beth and to herself that it was a really sad read- even if it ended HEA for Beth. I reread a lot of books but never this one. I really never forgave Kelly, even though she did pull herself out of it in -Close To Home and find her own HEA.
I should have also said, I’m happy to hold a grudge against Kelly, even if Beth wouldn’t. 😉
Would any of Scarlett Peckham’s books fit? I haven’t read her yet yet but she’s so sex positive.
Yes I was thinking the Rakess by Scarlett Peckham might work. But I bet a lot of us have read it already!
Not sure if this totally fits, but Cara McKenna’s Desert Dogs series includes two characters, Raina and Jeremiah, who were in a relationship that was hot but just didn’t work out. Their relationship was covered in DRIVE IT DEEP. I liked that McKenna showed sexual chemistry can be hot between two people but other factors intervene and things just don’t work out. Raina gets her HEA in GIVE IT ALL; Jeremiah gets his in RIDE IT OUT.
I thought Darcy in Rachel Griffin’s Something Borrowed was completely irredeemable, but there she was getting a hard earned HEA in Something Blue.
Lauren Dane spent a few books in the Brown Family series trying show there should be no hard feelings toward Raven before giving her a book of her own, but I disliked her so much in Coming Undone that I can’t bring myself to read it. Someone else know if it worked?
following
@DonnaMarie Raven gets her HEA in Drawn Together. I had my doubts before reading it, but it does work and is a good example.
TO BEGUILE A BEAST by Elizabeth Hoyt might work. Helen, the heroine, has been the long-time mistress of a powerful duke and even has two children by him. She decided she done being his mistress and takes the children to the Scottish highlands to escape and work as a housekeeper to a dude with his own baggage.
It’s not out yet but Courting Trouble by Kerrigan Byrne fits the bill. The heroine, Nora, is not quite a good guy in the first book of the series and sleeps around on her terrible husband. She gets a second chance romance with a man whose heart she broke when they were kids.
I have a few!
My favourite is probably Cecilia Grant’s A Gentleman Undone. The heroine is actively another man’s mistress when she first meets the hero, and not in name only; plus she’s a gambler.
Margaret McPhee had a couple of Harlequin Historicals about actresses. The heroine of Dicing with a Dangerous Lord might have been originally from the upper classes, but Sally, the heroine of Mistress to the Marquis, is not at all — she’s your standard disposable lower class actress who has been the hero’s mistress for a while, but when the book opens, she finds out he has to marry, and he certainly can’t marry her (or so he thinks). Lots of suffering by the heroine, but unlike anything else I’ve read.
Some others:
Hot Under the Collar by Jackie Barbosa, featuring a vicar and a member of the demimonde. It’s been ages since I read it now, and I think I found it a bit unsatisfying, but there were aspects of it I liked.
Jeannie Lin’s heroines from the Lotus Palace series, or at least the first two. One of them is a courtesan and the other is a maid at the brothel.
Verity from Sherry Thomas’s Delicious is pretty much infamous.
I would also include Gigi from Thomas’s Private Arrangments — yeah, it’s a second chance romance between spouses, but Gigi has had affairs over the decade or so of estrangement.
There’s a Victoria Alexander historical (maybe My Wicked Little Lies?) where the Other Woman somewhat abruptly falls in love with her own husband. It happens completely off page, and I always wished she had at least a novella telling her story.
It’s interesting, I wasn’t really thinking “irredeemable” so much as “considered disposable by plot and hero,” but… they do sort of seem to go together.
I think it is Mary Jo Putney’s Lost Lords series that has two characters that are spies and friends with benefits who both eventually get their HEA with other people.
Thirding the rec for Lady Derring Takes A Lover and Angel In A Devil’s Arms. There’s a scene early in the first book where Delilah and Angelique, over the course of a conversation, slowly realize that the true enemy here isn’t the other woman but instead the man who treated them both like objects he’d purchased, and so of course it’s natural that they would team up. It’s delicious reading.
It’s not exactly the same, because the mistress in question did end up marrying a duke and the marriage itself was happy if not a love match, but Kelly Bowen’s Duke of my Heart has a former-opera-singer-turned-mistress-turned-duchess who, after being socially ostracized as a widow, makes a living as a “scandal fixer.” It’s one of my favorite romances when I’m in the mood for heroine competence porn; the heroine’s brilliant at her job, and Bowen lets the hero face-plant on his own hubris several times when he assumes he knows better than her. The rest of the series is a lot of fun, too.
This doesn’t exactly fit the request, because the heroine is a divorcee, not a widow. Lottie Cummings is the heroine of the second book in Nicola Cornick’s series, Scandalous Women of the Ton. In the first book, she tries to sleep with the heroine’s husband and although it is clear that she is involved in an unhappy marriage, she isn’t particularly likeable. The second book opens in a brothel, because after her divorce, she is destitute and is trying to earn her living as a courtesan. Then, she meets the hero, who hires her as his mistress and hijinks ensue. I didn’t think that I would like Lottie at the beginning, but she becomes quite likeable fairly quickly. Not because the hero redeems her (he can be kind of an ass at times) but because of her own actions.
I can think of two, except I can’t remember the name of either!
One of Mary Balogh’s Mistress books featured a guy who turns up to inspect a house he has won in a card game, only to find who he assumes is the mistress of the previous owner living there. She claims she inherited the house. I’m pretty sure she was a prostitute or courtesan before she arrived at the house. (eta: No Man’s Mistress)
The other is A Secret Affair from Balogh’s Huxtable series. The heroine is a notorious widow, whom everyone believes had affairs with all of her elderly husband’s friends. Her reputation is actually a deliberate act, conceived by herself and her husband.
I think The Importance of Being Wicked by Miranda Neville fits here. The heroine is a widow, and somewhat notorious or scandalous. The hero is more conservative and I’m pretty sure much less experienced.
Neville’s The Duke of Dark Desires sort of fits here, although it’s more of a stretch. The heroine survives the Terror in France by being a mistress. She’s also on a revenge mission.
I second the Nicola Cornick book which @Another Anne recommended, the title is “One Wicked Sin”. Two other books in that series also fit, “Notorious” and “Desired”. The heroine in “Desired” has been married 4 times!
I recommend Liz Carlyle’s books, she did the ‘wicked woman” trope a lot. I’m still sad she retired from writing. “A Woman Scorned” is one of my favorites, the heroine is a widow and the hero is a vicar, it’s delicious. Also, “The Devil To Pay”(widowed heroine), and “Never Lie to a Lady”(heroine is not a widow but she’s had a previous affair and is an independent businesswoman),”Never Deceive a Duke”(twice-widowed heroine), “Two Little Lies”(widowed heroine is an opera singer)and “Three Little Secrets”(twice-widowed heroine).
Also, “The Lady Who Came in From the Cold” by Grace Callaway. Not a widow, but a wife who is a former spy. She even pretended to be a virgin when they got married, and when he finds out about her shady past life it really hits the fan! Hero and heroine are both in their 30’s and have several children. Plus, it’s free right now on Kindle.
Read many years ago (so YMMV), but TIGER LIL by Ellen Archer came immediately to mind. To quote the back cover, “She’s a lusty, hennaed faro dealer with a history of husbands and a legacy of land. But when Lillian Selby Sullivan Kingston Jones Jones Foster Ross Wilcox Teague arrives in rural Maryland to claim the Foster estate…” The Maryland locale also stuck in my mind.”