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!
@ Lainey: Unlike you, I loved Matthias Schoenarts in “Far From the Madding Crowd”. I know the earlier Julie Christie/Alan Bates version is generally rated higher (and with Christie as Bathsheba you certainly understand why so many men fell in love with her), but I thought Schoenarts conveyed Gabriel Oak’s strength and honesty in such a compelling fashion, plus Schoenarts is a physical actor he makes you believe that he is a farmer and not simply an actor playing one.
I used to list Elisabeth Fairchild’s books when asked for authors who did longing well. She wrote trad Regencies so they are long out of print, but I’m sure inexpensive copies can be found in libraries, UBS, or online. She was very good at conveying longing for various kinds of love: romantic, familial, and home as a place of comfort and safety.
I cannot understand how this list does not include R Cooper, the EMPRESS of pining (the most gorgeous, beautiful, heart-wrenching, delightful, funny, found-family-based, cinnamon-roll pining, I read her new short story “A wealth of unsaid words” last night and it might now be my favorite and best-written novella). Also Anyta Sunday, who similarly has a tone of oblivious pining joy throughout her novels. Pining done well is like sunshine breaking through endless cloudy days, and both of them deliver that feeling of undiluted joy.
My other favorites are named but this is also a favorite: “Someone to Cherish” by Mary Balough
@ Shawna (39) YES WORTH IT, but there are much bigger TWs than I would normally give for an R Cooper book [SPOILERS, scroll to see]
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TW: past self-harm, bipolar protagonist, ill and untreated parent who likely committed suicide. It is an intense but absolutely worth-it read. I have and have family with related mental health diagnoses, and reading the story made me cry because it felt like reading thoughts that I or my brother might have written in a diary.
I’ll second Joanna Bourne’s Black Hawk.
My botany nerd side can’t help noticing that the stylized conifer tree at the head of this post is more like a spruce than a pine. It belongs on a rec league about dandies!
Kittens And Kisses At The Cat Cafe, by Kris Bock. The hero has been in love with his best friend’s older sister for 12 years – since he was 13 and she was 18. It’s a sweet contemporary romance.
@DiscoDollyDeb, @Susan: I need to find the 1960 movie and do a proper comparison. For science.
@Susan/DC (41) A lot of Elisabeth Fairchild’s books are available as e-Books (Kindle) – I love them too! The Counterfeit Coachman and The Love Knot would be two of my recommedations here.
And another vote for Persuasion!
@Midge & @Susan/DC, I’m also a big Fairchild fan, but if we are going to talk about traditional Regencies, I have to put a word in for “Red, Red, Rose” by Marjorie Farrell. It’s got everything, mad pining, a beta hero, friends to lovers, and a Napoleonic War setting equal to anything Carla Kelly wrote.
Anything for You by Sarah Mayberry
@ Lainey: As a firm believer in science, definitely watch both versions of Madding Crowd to do a compare and contrast. Both are worthwhile. As for Schoenarts, he plays a very different character in “Mustang”, which is based on an actual program where prison inmates train wild horses. His physicality definitely stands him in good stead in the role, since he is often nonverbal and expresses himself almost completely through his eyes and body rather than through words. Intense but good.
@ Midge: I actually have copies of the 2 books you mention, as well as the last in the series, “The Rakehell’s Reform”, which is the book that introduced me to the Bach cello suites (don’t know how I’d never listened to them before, but the hero finds consolation in the music after losing the family fortune).
@ Karin: I’m also a fan of Marjorie Farrell but don’t think I’ve read “Red Red Rose” — off to the internet to find a copy. Thank you for mentioning it.
@Susan/DC, I’m sure you will love “Red, Red Rose”. And “The Rakehell’s Reform” is not the last book of that Fairchild series, there is one after it, called “Marriage a la Mode”(c/w for spousal abuse by the heroine’s first husband).