This request comes from Sue (Hey, Sue!), who has a K-Drama-inspired recommendation request:
Hi all! Looking for any recs where they’re in love and *miserable* about it. I’m about halfway though the Korean drama Crash Landing On You and right now the main characters are def super in love and SO TORTURED about it. I’m thoroughly enjoying the melodrama. Obviously in romance novels the HEA is guaranteed which is why I’m about to handle the temporary misery. One book I recently read with this same feeling was Lisa Kleypas’s Hello Stranger. Do you all have any other recs?
Amanda: First, this started a conversation in Slack about doing another post of more recent Asian drama recommendations, so stay tuned for that.
This one also kind of stumped most of us, except for Shana and Sneezy.
Shana: How about The Takeover by Anna Zabo? ( A | BN | K | AB ) There’s an overlooked manager, and the CEO brought in to mess everything up, and they’re pretty mad about wanting each other.
Or What Kind of Day by Mina V. Esguerra? It’s got the we’re not sure we like each other arc of Crash Landing, and a little bit of humor like the show. Both the main characters are thrown together during a life transition when one loses his job, and ends up on the tour another created to salvage her life.
Sneezy: Oh!!! This is How You Lose the Time War ( A | BN | K | G | AB ) kinda fits. It IS a HEA, but for a bit it really REALLY didn’t look like it CAN be, and our lesbian couple are so SO SAD!!!!!
Only during that bit. They for sure are okay after.
What romances would you recommend?
It seems to me that almost every angsty enemies-to-lovers (or my preferred term, antagonists-to-lovers) romance involves moments where the MCs are tortured by their feelings for each other because they just can’t believe they feel this way about someone they’re supposed to hate! One of my favorite romances using this trope is CD Reiss’s IRON CROWNE: the heroine is an environmental lawyer, the hero is a developer with a reputation for skirting environmental regulations. I like how Reiss allows both the characters’ antagonism and their growing feelings for each other to develop naturally from who and what they are.
I also think the “I’m-in-a-fake-relationship-but-falling-for-someone-else-but-can’t-let-them-know-this-relationship-is-fake” trope (yeah, that’s a thing!) is full of potential for tortured feelings. One of my favorites is Kati Wilde’s FAKING IT ALL—tortured angst for days! Molly Joseph’s BEARD is also quite good.
I’d recommend the requester search for books featuring the enemies/antagonists-to-lovers or the fake-relationship trope. There’s Lenny of tortured feelings to be found there!
“There’s plenty of tortured feelings….”
Don’t know why Lenny showed up. Stupid autocorrect!
I swear every single Carpathian novel by Christine Feehan has this to an extent. They at least have Super Pants Feelings for each other, and are often Not Happy about it.
Yes I did just rec a series that’s 30+ books long.
Sierra Simone tortures her characters quite a bit and was the author that leapt to my mind- especially PRIEST.
A SEDITIOUS AFFAIR by KJ Charles also came to mind as a book where it’s hard to see how a HEA is possible.
Alisha Rai’s HATE TO WANT YOU might also fit the bill here.
Does “Hate to Want You” by Alisha Rai fit this theme? The leads were together in highschool and then scandal and family drama tore them apart/made them enemies.
In “Seduce Me at Sunrise” by Lisa Kleypas Merripen is such a tortured miserable hero.
I don’t know if it fits “tortured,” but I love the emotional impact of Angels in the City by Garrett Leigh. It’s a little like Heated Rivalry bu Rachel Reid, also a very emotional book where the protagonist aren’t supposed to have a relationship.
In historical romance, I enjoyed To Steal a Heart by K.C Bateman. If you like historical fiction with romance, try A Splendid Defiance by Stella Riley. A Royalist soldier and a Puritan woman try not to fall in love during the English Civil War. Stella Riley is a fantastic writer.
YAY!!! Hi all, thanks for posting this!
@DiscoDollyDeb, that’s a great idea about Antagonists-To-Lovers being a good trope to find these feelings. Heretofore I would avoid that trope because I thought it would be TOO much conflict. And unsurprisingly, Fake Relationships is one of my favorite tropes!
@Ellie, I did love Seduce Me At Sunrise the first time around, but I just (like it’s still on my bedside table) re-read it and it was almost TOO much torture?? Like at some point I wanted to smack him and tell him to get over himself. I dunno, maybe I’ve grown as a person n shit.
I also meant to say that I would take recs for other Asian dramas that are like this, though I suspect that’s… like almost all of them.
@stephanie I second A Seditious Affair, and would also add A Gentleman’s Position from the same series. Such great books. K.J. Charles never disappoints.
My original post disappeared! Anyway, In short:
Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid
Angles in the City by Garrett Leigh
A Splendid Defiance by Stella Riley (incredibly written historical fiction with romance set in the English Civil war)
To Steal a Heart by K.C. Bateman
I stopped reading them many books ago, but isn’t this the whole premise of most of the Black Dagger Brotherhood books?
I’d like to suggest “Curse of Chalion” for this. Re-Reading the Penric-Novellas put Lois McMaster Bujold on my mind, I guess. Anyway, Caz may be quite reticent about it, but his admiration-from-not-so-far has some pretty intense moments of Doom.
@Carrie G:
I have fond memories of reading A Splendid Defiance over a snow day a few years ago. Probably long enough ago that I could do a reread.
So many good suggestions! AN UNNATURAL VICE is another KJ Charles possibility. A fake medium and an investigative reporter.
TURNCOAT by Donna Thorland: an English officer and an American woman who’s been pressed into spying for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.
Contemporary: The Rivals by Vi Keeland
Historical Romance:
A Wicked Kind of Husband, by Mia Vincy (also the third book in that series, A Dangerous Kind of Lady, if I recall correctly)
A couple of Loretta Chase books: Knaves’ Wager springs to mind – any “begin the romance under false pretenses” would likely be good for melodrama
Paranormal m/m: The Sumage Solution, by GL Carriger
YA Fantasy: The Folk of the Air Trilogy by Holly Black (starting with the Cruel Prince) – not a romance per se, but definitely fits the bill. And since it’s a trilogy, there’s a lot of pages for that angst to really simmer.
@Stefanie Magura If you can get A Splendid Defiance on audio I highly recommend it! I only wish the last couple of her books in the Roundheads and Cavalier series were on audio.
@Courtney M: thank you for mentioning Vi Keeland. I would recommend any of the books written by Vi Keeland and Penelope Ward (either individually or as a writing team) because they love to put their characters through the wringer! For a really tortured duet, I strongly recommend Ward’s STEPBROTHER DEAREST and NEIGHBOR DEAREST. They’re technically stand-alones, but should be read as a duet. Tortured angst—and keep Kleenex handy!
@Carrie G:
She has other things she’s working on first, but she is still planning to record the last books of the Roundheads and Cavaliers series on audio with Alex as her narrator. Audio is where I read A Splendid Defiance, and I can concur. And talk about lead characters on two different sides with some pretty serious obstacles. Justin is a royalist soldier, and Abby’s under the thumb of a Puritanical brother, who considers anything that doesn’t fit his strict definition of such as heretical, when the book starts.
Mary Balogh does good melancholy romances.
The Survivors Club series is particularly angst ridden. Only a Kiss has a relationship between talented but unserious Percy and war survivor Imogen. Percy is furious to be drawn to the determinedly sad and serious Imogen. She, in turn, refuses to allow herself any joy and resists the sudden urge to live again.
Try: Still Beating, by Jennifer Hartman. The protagonists are tortured literally after being kidnapped together. They are not a couple but kind of enemies: he is engaged to the protagonists sister and she never trusted him fully and thought he is kind of a slick playboy. However, since they have only each other, they have to learn to work together to survive and maybe escape. Tropes: dark romance, enemies to lovers, thriller, crime, rape trigger warning.
@Inga: Similar to STILL BEATING (and, although I liked STILL BEATING, I think it’s a deeper reading experience) is HEARTBREAK WARFARE by Heather Orgeron & Kate Stewart. It has a very similar setup: after a man and a woman (not romantically involved) experience a terrible trauma together, they find it impossible to relate to anyone else but each other because no one else understands what they have been through. I liked both books, but I strongly advise everyone to take all the trigger warnings seriously.
Archangel’s conflict by Nalini Singh
Remembrance by Jude deveraux
Definitely support Hate to want you as already suggested
For another angsty romantic and improbable k-drama with great production values try Korean odyssey – on Netflix – so many tortured feelings though it takes a few episodes for the main couple to fall in love they are then willing to die for each other etc etc