You did it! We figured this one out! It is a truth universally acknowledged (by me for certain) that the Bitchery pretty much knows everything, and really, it's true. Scroll down to see the solution for this HaBO - and many thanks!
This HaBO is from Katherine, who is looking for this romantic fantasy:
This one has been driving me crazy and I’ve been trying to find it for a year at least! I hope someone can help me out. Here is what I remember.
Definitely a romantic, fantasy (or at least alternate world), probably YA book.
Heroine is an orphan taken into an orphanage run by a seemingly kind noblewoman who treats the girls there as her daughters, they call her Mother. Mother is later revealed to be the stealth villain, and her orphanage raises girls to be spies to help her quest in taking down the young Emperor of their kingdom (I forget why she wants to, exactly.)
Heroine is The Most Gifted Spy, so is singled out and given the task of seducing the Emperor to get closer to him. She sincerely loves Mother figure and believes the Emperor is evil. Heroine goes undercover as an actor or dancer to “stumble” across the Emperor “accidentally.” They meet and sparks fly. Emperor eventually asks Heroine to become his official Inamorata. She agrees and is in the best place to assassinate him. Sexytimes ensue, and the Heroine starts to have Feelings for the Emperor, and wonders if Mother was telling her the truth about everything.
The truth is revealed, the villainous Mother is defeated, and the Heroine officially marries the Emperor, becoming the Empress. HEA.
I hope someone else knows this book! I loved it when I was a teenager, but now for the life of me I can’t find it anywhere!
Oooh! I am interested!
Don’t have an answer but I’d sure like to read it!
The Assassins of Tamurin by S.D. Tower?
An orphan girl is found in a boat. They name her Lale. At age 11, she’s given to Mother Midnight to be trained at a school for orphans and unwanted girls. The girls are trained to be spies and killers. At 20, Lale is sent to court to seduce and kill the usurper Sun Lord, Terem.
Maybe Grave Mercy by Robin LaFevers?
The bad guy is actually a good guy is definitely a common trope in fantasy. Are you thinking about the grave mercy books? The throne of glass books also have an assassin heroine.
Would love to know which book this is.
OMG KARA You’re right!!!!! The Assassins of Tamurin is definitely it! OMG, I could kiss you. Thanks so much!!!
I also came here to suggest Assassins of Tamurin. It has been a while since I read it, but it fits and I really enjoyed it.
I rather enjoy the assassin falls for target trope myself but I do wonder: is there a romance where a lady or gent assassin is sent to kill a reasonably attractive target and actually finishes the job? Romance assassins suck at their jobs!
Ms. M asks an intriguing question – I think to be a romance there would have to be an alternative True Love Object offered. Or the assassin would start off very reluctant to kill the target but discover they really were evil.
Rosamund Hodge’s Cruel Beauty might come close.
@Ms. M and @batgirl, Death Angel by Linda Howard–the assassin nearly kills her–meaning she shouldn’t have lived after the accident–but he ends up being more of a guardian angel, watching her stalker-style before she confronts him, and he eventually kills her husband instead.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2067180.Death_Angel?from_search=true&from_srp=true&qid=sBZcbFhqIJ&rank=116
It would be hard to call a book a romance if the either the hero or heroine killed the TLO. Romantic tragedy would more likely be the genre.
If you are interested in a book with a similar premise, I can recommend The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen. The first book was awesome, but the sequel really fell flat for me (though the reviews suggest that my feelings are unusual!)
Well, Aleksandr Voinov (I think it was him) wrote a paranormal romance in which the MCs were reincarnated and one had murdered the other in a past life. Pretty angsty it was.