Time again for one of the most challenging recommendation features we have: READY, SET, GO!
Here are the rules:
We pick a specific sub-genre, trope, or type of romance, and we have to make ONE recommendation for that type.
And no more than two sentences as to why.
Just One.
And our theme this month?
PINING.
Pining and yearning romance, please!
Could be unrequited until it’s not, or could be secretly in love but hiding it really, really well.
But we’re looking for emotional, yearning, PINING ROMANCE.
Your challenge: Name one book that you recommend that fits this type.
JUST ONE! NOT A LIST. ONE. One recommendation.
What Pining Romance Do You Recommend?
Any genre, but just one rec!
Ready, set, GO!
Susan: Oh wow, you are REALLY not going easy on us this time
Elyse: Daring and the Duke by Sarah MacLean.
The hero pines for the heroine and does a lot of groveling.
Amanda: Lisa Kleypas does this really well, so my vote goes to Marrying Winterborne!
Sarah: Lisa Kleypas is definitely an empress of pining.
Amanda: The pining really starts in the book prior, Cold-Hearted Rake, which I didn’t love and obviously kept wishing for more Rhys/Helen scenes.
Tara: I’m reading one right now! The Thing About Tilly by G. Benson
Claudia: I’m going to go with a very early Caroline Linden, A Rake’s Guide to Seduction.
Don’t let the title fool you, it’s not about a rake! The hero has a bad reputation (unjustly earned) but he’s not a rake. He has pined for heroine for a long time and is about to make his feelings known when she announces her engagement to another dude. Years later they reconnect in a house party. It’s a sweet slow burn story!
Shana: This is an impossible task. How can I narrow it down when I love pining heroes so?
Ok. Since we’ve already got some solid historical options, I’m going to suggest Untouchable by Talia Hibbert.
It’s a nanny romance, and instead of being a creep, the hero responds to falling for his uber competent nanny, with pining and berating himself for loving her. It’s adorable and does an excellent job of managing the power dynamics. They are both so bewildered by their attraction to one another, I love it
Maya: Ohhhhh what about Beautiful Wreck by Larissa Brown. Pining through time and space! And then also some punching by the heroine, which I always love!
Sarah: Space Time Pining!!!
Catherine: The Countess Conspiracy!
I mean, Sebastian has been pining for Violet since before the start of the series! That’s a lot of pining.
Shana: Ooh, that’s a good one.
Ellen: VERY hard to pick one pining book as I LOVE pining but I’m going to go with A Touch of Stone and Snow by Milla Vane--major mutual pining!
What about you? What romance with pining, yearning characters do you recommend?
Remember: ONE REC. JUST ONE.
Ready, set, go!
When He was Wicked by Julia Quinn
Ooohhhh this is literally my favorite trope!! Will be avidly following this thread. HEATED RIVALRY by Rachel Reid has *chef’s kiss* level of mutual pining that develops gradually and beautifully. Two hockey players who are bitter rivals telling themselves it’s just a (years long) hookup! But clearly they’re obsessed with each other. Also literally anything by Sherry Thomas but TEMPTING THE BRIDE works in particular I think. It has a hero who has pined for the heroine for years but he’s acted like an ass for the same time period to prevent her from knowing. I don’t know how ST makes the amnesia trope work but she does.
Ahhh my apologies just noticed the “just one” caveat :/
I have to agree with Elyse. I just finished reading Daring and the Duke and oh my, the pining made my heart ache for the characters.
THE ONE FOR YOU by Roni Loren, from her Ones Who Got Away series, has a lot of pining. The hero has been pining for the heroine since forever. As a content warning, the series deals with people who survived a school shooting, so this may not be for everyone.
My fave trope! In which I’m of course drawing a complete blank lol. The obvious one I think is, Romancing Mr Bridgerton with Penelope pining for Colin many years.
PERSUASION, hands down. I know some people would put most Jane Austen in the “yearning” category b/c of the whole no sex thing, but I think PERSUASION is the most “yearny.”
Anne is such a sympathetic person but she messed up big time and now she’s got to watch the only man she’s ever loved come back and toy around with marrying someone else. He’s so close and yet (she thinks) so out of reach. And it’s resolved in such a satisfying way.
I love yearning and I can think of a few more, but that’s my favorite.
R. Cooper leads the world on this – Play It Again, Charlie is gorgeously incoherent yearning and wishful dreaming from start to finish and I love it. Charlie’s hurting, humble, lonely & laden with responsibility when sunlit Will dances into his life.
It’s Cooper’s brand & nobody does it better.
PS Anyone who does read & love PIAC – R. Cooper’s written lots of lovely follow-up “fanfics” too.
I will say Wanna Bet? by Talia Hibbert. The heroine is a mess while her best friend who’s been waiting for her for years just knows and gets her; the depiction of how they have to eventually mature is sophisticated and rewarding
I’m going with my girl Kati Wilde’s BREAKING IT ALL, where the hero & heroine have been pining for each other for ten years! The hero has serious, even scary, reasons (gradually revealed over the course of the story) for never acting upon his attraction to the heroine; he’s protecting her by not letting her or anyone else know he loves her—but, of course, the heroine doesn’t understand this and thinks she’s alone in her feelings (she has dated other men during the decade of what she thinks is unrequited love; the hero has remained celibate). When events finally push the two together, it’s ten years of longing ready to combust! Epic stuff. (Note: BREAKING IT ALL is an M/C romance and some cw/tw’s apply; there’s violence—including some against the heroine—along with neo-Nazis and white supremacists.)
Mary Balogh’s The Secret Pearl. It seems to be a love it or hate it book and it does have Balogh’s trademark martyr heroine who you want to shake at times, but you can’t say it doesn’t have lots of yearning on both sides. And all with Balogh’s talent for understatement that she uses to heartstopping effect.
Love a good pine, though oddly enough I can’t think of many specific examples at the moment. For now I’ve got to go with GDC/The Untamed, wherein Lan Wangji plays a song trying to find and communicate with Wei Wuxian’s soul every night for *thirteen years*. He names their son something along the lines of “thing which is longed for.” That is some serious pining, right there.
Kaleb Krychek from Heart of Obsidian by Nalini Singh. Not exactly pining per se given his personality, but dude, he searched for her for years and bought her a special, meaningful gift for every birthday she was missing.
“Desire and the Deep Blue Sea” by Olivia Dade – Thomas and Callie are both librarians, and Thomas has crushed on her from afar. However, Callie is oblivious to his pining (and in fact, seemingly can’t stand him at times). Callie was selected to participate in a HGTV-style program picking the best island for a romantic getway – but she and her boyfriend broke up before filming, and she recruits Thomas as a last-minute fill-in (so there is also the fake romance going on). It is a stand-alone novella, although it ties into Dade’s Teach Me/40-Love universe.
Seconding both Grandmaster of Demonic Persuasion(The Untamed) & Heart of Obsidian! Especially GDP (sooo much pining, and not from just Lan Wangji either – the Xue Yang/Xiao Xingchen arc also comes to mind). Both books I thoroughly enjoyed and reread with pleasure.
As a rule, I don’t like unrequited love & second chance romances (I might be a tad vindictive… I find characters forget & forgive too easily) so by nature pining often has a sour note for me. BUT, I love pining when the main character doesn’t know who s/he’s pining for exactly – I think that catnip formed very young for me bcs of the anime Cat’s Eye, when police officer Quentin told his fiancee Tam he might be maybe developping feelings for the art thief he’s pursuing, without knowing Tam (and her sisters, but it’s always Tam he comes accross) is said art thief. 30+ years later, it is the scene I remember the most clearly from that show.
So, romances with mistaken/hidden identities, where characters meet both masked and in real life, where a character writes letters under someone else’s identity, etc. – I’m all there for that pining! There’s lots I enjoyed but right now the only title that comes to mind is Simon vs. the Homosapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli, a YA coming of age m/m. I’m not sure it fits the bill of this rec league either: there’s pining, but it’s not angsty.
A Lady by Midnight by Tessa Dare. Hero hides his pining under rudeness for years because he knows something about heroine’s past and doesn’t want her to know, but not in a shitty way. Oh Thorne…
I love this trope! I would go with Far from the Madding Crowd. Gabriel Oak can pine with the best of them. The movie with Carey Mulligan/Matthias Schoenaerts never really did his character justice.
Hah, I love this trope but am also drawing a blank – some excellent recs below me though!
@Lainey: I think the version from the 1960s with Julie Christie and Alan Bates is more faithful to the tone of the book.
Olivia Parker’s To Wed a Wicked Earl is a delightful example of pining. The “wicked earl” has been secretly in love with the awkward, bespectacled heroine for years. He has a meddling grandmother.
Alisha Rai’s Wrong to Need You. Fantastic book about a hero who has been pining for the heroine forever, and she is his brother’s widow! LOVE this book.
@Jenny: there’s a lot of yearning in the sequel, Tiny House Big Love.
My Fake Rake by Eva Leigh has some good pining between characters who’ve been friends for a while. The hero has pined for a while (before the book I think), but it pretty quickly becomes mutual pining.
The Secret Diaries of Miss Miranda Cheever, an older Julia Quinn novel. The heroine starts pining at age 10 for her best friend’s older brother, who promises to marry her someday if no one else comes along. Totally delish. Lots of great suggestions in this thread!
following
Oh, you keep picking my favorite tropes! “After the Scandal” by Elizabeth Essex. The pining is mostly prior to the book action, but it’s a great story. The hero has been quietly in love with the heroine for years, but when he sees she needs rescuing, he jumps into action, with drastic results.
Kristin Ashley
I love this trope! Agree on Kristen Ashley, my favorite of hers with this trope is Law Man, which also my fav contemporary of hers in general— it’s a huge comfort read for me! However, since Ashley is so polarizing I’m going to cheat and also suggest Sophie Jordan’s “The Scandal of it All” which has an older heroine as a bonus.
Joanna Bourne’s Black Hawk- the hero and heroine have known each other though several books, formerly she was a French spy and he an English one. The Napoleonic war is over and she keeps a knife/ travel shop in London.
On Broken Wings by Chanel Cleeton has some world class pining. This is from Cleeton’s contemporary romance writing days and is a gloriously heartrending story about a fighter pilot’s widow and her husband’s friend and squadron mate.
The Devil’s Delilah by Loretta Chase, mutual pining, one of my favorites.
99% Mine by Sally Thorne. Tom has pined for his best friend’s sister for years.
Am I the first to offer Julie Anne Long’s conclusion to The Pennyroyal Green saga, The Legend of Lyon Redmond?
Yes, there are thorny issues/questionable actions in the “here-and-now” part of the story that I wish Long had not chosen for Lyon and Olivia, but I know I was pining for them to get (back) together for the 11 books (& 6 or 7 years) it took to happen.
When I finished their story (& I think it’s best to not read the contemporary short story that comes afterwards until a month or two later), I felt like I had just taken off a tightly laced corset that I had been wearing throughout my reading of the entire series.
I’m with Sarah Drew: nobody writes pining like R. Cooper. I nominate His Mossy Boy, one of the paranormal Beings In Love series. This one’s got some angst: CW for drug & alcohol use, as well as two sets of emotionally abusive parents. Don’t worry! The found family and HEA for our cinnamon roll protagonists make the emotional rollercoaster worthwhile.
I second the Milla Vane recommendation. The first book was fine but the 2nd…I was all over it once it’s revealed early on that it was a pining story
Wrong to Need You by Alisha Rai.
Ever Yours, Annabelle by Elisa Braden overflows with mutual yearning.
Since Daring and the Duke and Marrying Winterbourne were both listed, I’m going with another Kleypas.
Seduce Me at Sunrise. It’s one of my favorites and I believe it was a double pine in a way.
So R. Cooper: A Wealth of Unsaid Words is .99 – and sounds pretty , but also . Worth it?
Oh no, it didn’t register my pine tree OR my Christmas tree!! Please note, as clearly important factors.