This request comes from Anne. Thanks, Anne!
I’m a successful self-made businesswoman. I love fiction with a romantic element about successful businesswomen, like classics by Judith Krantz and Barbara Taylor Bradford. But I have a hard time finding it. Too often businesswomen in romances are not that good at business (anxious, unsure about how to make the business work financially) relieved when a successful here comes to save them – or they are good at business but are anxious with stunted lives, and are relieved when a successful man comes to save them emotionally.
I’m looking for books where it’s ok to enjoy the thrilling challenge of building your business, be successful and find love, and not have to be squished down into anxious/broke/incompetent box and be ‘rescued’ by love.
Bonus points if the business isn’t a bakery or bookshop.
I know this is a niche. But considering what mega sellers books like this were in in tail end of the 70s and early 80s, it’s not that niche.
P.S. Yes, I’ve read Alisha Rai 🙂
Amanda: Lush Money by Angelina Lopez I think. Heroine is wildly successful and wants the hero for baby-making purposes
Sarah: This is a really interesting request. Krantz and Jackie Collins definitely wrote business wise heroines. I loved Collins novels when I was a teenager.
Shana: Can’t Escape Love by Alyssa Cole has a badass heroine who’s a wheelchair user and building her online empire. I don’t think she’s emotionally inept, although both the main characters have a little anxiety around dating.
Sarah: There are so many heroine memories teasing my brain and I can’t grab one. I am going to read the comments to this one and bang my head on the desk five or six times.
Tara: If an f/f rec works, I’d say Kiss the Girl by Melissa Brayden. Both leads are successful businesswomen, although one is further in her career than the other, and they’re rivals for a big deal.
Sneezy: OOOH!!!! Another f/f rec that might work is City Kitty and Country Mouse ( A | BN ).
What books would you recommend? Let us know below!
Julie James has some books that might work here. Her heroines are very competent and successful in their careers. These are all m/f romances. It Happened One Wedding has an investment banker heroine, and Suddenly One Summer has a divorce lawyer heroine who (I think) runs her own firm. The heroine in Suddenly One Summer does have anxiety, but mental health issues for both the hero and heroine are handled well.
I know there are others but I can’t think of them right now!
Curses, I was going, “Ooh, ooh! Alisha Rai!” right up until that postscript.
I think part of the problem with finding books that fit the bill here is the popularity of an anti-trope aka woman who owns a struggling bakery. That said, Jackie Lau’s Baldwin Village series (including THE ULTIMATE PI DAY PARTY and ICE CREAM LOVER) feature successful small business owners.
Pretty much every Nora Roberts heroine is extremely competent at her job. They have a wide variety of occupations, but whether they clean houses or run a major corporation, they work hard for their success. It’s one of my favorite things about her writing.
If you like paranormal, the Hidden Legacy books by Ilona Andrews feature a woman who successfully runs her family’s investigation agency.
Liberating Lacey by Anne Calhoun (there’s age and social background difference between H and h)
If I may nominate two of my own. In T’s Trial, the heroine owns a convenience store in a small lake town. In the next of the series, C’s Comeuppance, the heroine has a real estate agency. One more: A Suite Deal. The heroine is vice-president and heir to her family’s convenience store empire. None of these heroines need their business to be “saved” by the hero.
I think that whole Angelina Lopez series fits this. All three heroines are good at their jobs and competent. Other people do tend to underestimate them or undermine them, but they are all really excellent at what they do. I think that’s particularly true for Cenobia in Serving Sin.
One other that I thought of. In Her Sights by Katie Ruggle is the start of her current series featuring sisters who have their own bounty hunting business. Some of the sisters seem a little more out of depth, but the oldest in this first book, Molly, is exceptionally good at her job and while she teams up with the hero, another bounty hunter, she is doing most of the hard work and he’s just supporting her.
A little old Skool but – THE PASSIONS OF CHELSEA KANE – By Barbara Delinsky. She is an architect who owns her own business.
THE VINEYARD AT PAINTED MOON – By Susan Mallery – Story is about a master winemaker who leaves the family winery she works at to buy and build her own. Very soapy!
VEIL OF NIGHT – by Linda Howard – heroine owns a wedding planning business with her mom. Romantic suspense but we get a lot of face time with what it takes to run the business and different flavors of weddings are a hoot.
Manhunting, by Jennifer Crusie.
The first Harper St. George book has a business-oriented heroine. The barrier is the sexism of her society, not needing to be rescued.
The Boyfriend Project, by Farrah Rochon.
Kimberley Kincaid’s Remington Medical series feature women doctors except for one where the romance is between a female business type and a male nurse.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07RZMSSH4?binding=kindle_edition&ref_=dbs_s_ks_series_rwt_tkin&qid=1646932474&sr=1-1
Lois McMaster Bujold is my ultimate competence porn, for male and female characters. Sci-fi and Fantasy with strong romance subplots.
Off the top of my head, there’s a garden designer heroine in A Civil Campaign, a space mercenary commander in the Young Miles books, a riverboat captain in the Sharing Knife fantasy series book 3 (I love the main heroine of this series too but she’s too conventional for a lot of readers).
Nalini Singh’s contemporary series have a few business-centric books. And while they’re part of a series, they can be read as stand-alone: Rock Hard, Rock Courtship, Rock Wedding, and the Hard Play series.
I feel like I have read a lot of competent heroines recently…
Lease on Love, which is a recent release, has a very competent heroine who starts a floral business that is central to the story.
Frankie in Always Only You is not a business owner but is definitely competence porn.
In Witches Get Stitches, Violet opens a successful tattoo parlor.
The Love Con — the heroine is in a cosplay competition and is super great at what she does and well supported by her friends/hero (though not her family IIRC). The Cool Job detail in this book is great.
I’m going to give a specific Nora Roberts rec – the Bride Quartet. My favorite aspects of this series is the tight friendship of the 4 heroines and their fabulous competence at their individual specialties and their shared wedding event business.
Oh, hey. I have a few options here.
The Trouble With Mistletoe by Jill Shalvis – heroine runs a pet store and an ersatz pet rescue/training service. The hero inherits a cat and has no idea what to do with her.
Teach Me by Olivia Dade – not a business owner, but two highly competent teachers.
Pretty much all of the Old West trilogy by Beverly Jenkins – all of the women are competent and either own their business or play a significant role in it (Eddy is a cook, Portia is a hotel manager and great with numbers).
The Prince of Broadway by Joanna Shupe – heroine is planning to open a casino exclusively for women.
Devil In Spring by Lisa Kleypas – heroine designs and builds board games, and is working on how to have the games she designs mass-produced for sale.
Legacy by Nora Roberts – heroine and her mother build fitness empires.
Kate Caterbary’s series about the Walsh family (starting with Benchmarks) and then related spinoffs (e.g., Vital Signs series) has very competent and career aspirational heroines, including architects, doctors, lawyers, and teachers. I binged most of the Canterbary catalogue in a month after a recommendation from DiscoDollyDeb on SBTB for The Worst Guy (as a completionist I had to read all the preceding related books first – if you’re the same then you might find Canterbary’s resource re reading order useful https://katecanterbary.com/reading-order/). So good! I am now holding off on reading Canterbary’s Talbott’s Cove, keeping them in reserve as a “treat” for myself to read over spring break.
I recently read Battle Royal by Lucy Parker which I think fits. Kate Clayborn’s Love Lettering would fit,too. I enjoyed Always Only You by Chloe Liese (great autism and disability rep).
These aren’t usually business owners, but I find that romantic suspense is a genre that often has strong women characters. Older books, like Linda Howard’s Dying to Please and Cry No More have strong female leads. I also like Sandra Brown (Envy is great). More recent books include those by Rachel Grant,who’s characters have the smarts to help in their own rescues, Melinda Leigh,and Kendra Eloit.
If you like sci-fi, Linnea Sinclair writes wonderfully competent heroines. Try Finders Keepers or Games of Command.
For historical romances, I think the Dressmaker series by Loretta Chase fits.
In Three Weeks with Lady X by Eloisa James the heroine is a very sought after interior decorator/estate manager/fixer.
I just finished a couple of Sarah Mayberry’s older novels–Cruise Control and All They Need. Heroines own a livery service and a vacation retreat respectively. The Rebel and the Cowboy also comes to mind as featuring a mural artist launching her career. Thing is–Mayberry always seems to do a great job with career/workplace scenarios and competence p0rn. Many of her heroines have unconventional careers and even her squillionaires are actually seen working for a living.
Also my favorite JAK–Trust Me–features a caterer who manages to achieve personal success while also providing support for her extended family of theater folk.
My recs are already posted, but I’ll double down that Julie James rec. IT HAPPENED ONE WEDDING is pretty much a perfect book. I know she’s got other priorities right now, but what I wouldn’t give for a new Julie James book right now.
Spoke too soon. Jasmine Haynes/Jennifer Skully. More on the erotic side, but full of people who are good it their jobs, and, wait for it, often over 40. They don’t have perfect lives, there’s divorce, aging issues, changing priorities, but there is a level of maturity in the way they interact that is head and shoulders above a lot of other writers. It also means that they are relatively low angst. And very steamy. I don’t think she gets the love she deserves.
I’ll nominate Patricia Briggs’ Mercy Thompson who is a car mechanic with her own shop.
Ok, to get this out of my system, John Wick #1 when he is in a gun store or his gun collection is absolute 100% competence porn.
Having gotten that out of my system, I think the Ilona Andrews books are also competency porns. especially Hidden Secrets and the Innkeeper series. These are both in the sci-fi realm.
There are lots of sci-fi books where a woman is a ships captain, a wizard, a healer, a detective, a scientist, etc. and SHE DOESN’T SUCK AT IT. Maybe it’s turning some kind of corner into make believe alley allows people to do that? In sci-fi if she’s a baker or a bookstore owner it’s bc she’s really a secret magician….. Seanan McGuire also.
Susan Mallery has a lot of romance novels that feature heroines who are also confident small business owners. Just off the top of my head: CHRISTMAS ON 4TH STREET stars Noelle, who owns a Christmas-themed shop. WHEN WE MET stars Tara, who founded and runs a very successful PR firm. THREE LITTLE WORDS stars Isabelle, who inherited a bridal boutique and runs it brilliantly.
If I may nominate one of my own: A WINNING HAND by Alexandra Caluen is about a professional musician (not a small business owner, though; she leads the combo and writes songs for a singer in Las Vegas). Contemporary, alternating 1st person point of view, sweary. Her love interest is a cop. 🙂
THE OPPOSITE OF YOU by Rachel Higginson. Enemies to lovers, with heroine starting a food truck business and hero being a gourmet chef in a nearby restaurant.
The Coxwell series by Deborah Cooke (Claire Cross) is really good and has great competence porn amongst all of the heroines: https://deborahcooke.com/cr/the-coxwells/
Just about every Jayne Ann Krentz heroine is either a small business owner or entrepreneur. Everything from photographer to private investigator to restaurant owner. In “A Marriage of Equals” by Elizabeth Rolls, the heroine is Black and owns a coffeehouse in 19th century London. In Julie Anne Long’s Palace of Rogues series, the heroines of the first 2 books jointly own and run a boardinghouse. In Julia Justiss’s Heirs in Waiting series, all the heroines have vocations that they are very good at-one is a railway engineer, one deals in antiquities, and one is a translator.
Kathleen Gilles Seidel has a great book with a super competent heroine, Again. Jenny is the creator, head writer, show runner for a Regency-set soap opera, In My Lady’s Chamber. The book was written in 1994, and it shows in some of the details (e.g., the fact that there’s only one phone for the actors to share), but the details don’t matter when you’ve got Jenny and Alec. The show’s plot and characters become part of the story, so Again is both a contemporary and an historical romance, as both parts add depth and resonance and just plain fun. Loved this book.
The “Men at Work” trilogy by Tiffany Reisz, is a series of less traditional Holiday romances (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah) where each book features compentent ladies and a nice amount of steam. I love book 2 “Her Naughty Holiday”, where the heroine owns a successful plant nursery business and has to make a decision on a multimillion dollar buy out offer over the Thanksgiving Holiday. Her issue is her Academia-obsessed family not recognizing her business as valuable, and the hero starts as a supportive fake date and becomes a staunch support and ally.
I second Ilona Andrew’s Hidden Legacy trilogy, where the heroine manages her families small private eye business.
Kristen Proby’s “Fusion” series, starting with “Listen to Me”- a group of female friends start a restaurant together and are each responsible for a different aspect of the business (and each one gets her own book…)
I have a soft spot for “Red’s Hot Cowboy” by Carolyn Brown. Keeping in mind that it’s a small town romance, the heroine does leave her big city banking/loan job when she inherits her great aunt’s old Texas motel, but over the course of the book, she is attending business school courses to turn the motel into a profitable business and be on the other side of the desk requesting a small business loan.
Another vote for the Walsh books by Kate Canterbary (the first one is Underneath it All) – Shannon Walsh, who appears as a secondary character in the first books and then as the heroine of The Cornerstone, is very, very good at managing everyone and everything. She’s not emotionally stunted, but she does overdo it as a caretaker at times. Her book is my favorite in that series by far.
And yes, Liberating Lacey is also an obvious recommendation for this request.
On the historical side, Sherry Thomas’s Private Arrangements and Tempting the Bride both have heroines who are successful businesswomen. Also, Jennifer Donnelly’s The Tea Rose has the closest heroine to Emma Harte that I’ve come across.
Sweet Hush by Deborah Smith–the heroine runs an orchard.
+1 for many of Linda Howard’s books. Drop Dead Gorgeous & To Die For, the heroine owns a successful gym. Dying to Please, she is a butler, Cover of Night, she runs an inn, Cry No More, she runs a NGO.
A Lot Like Adios by Alexis Daria has a heroine who got burnout in a corporate marketing career and now runs a successful & growing freelance graphic design business.
I second Battle Royal by Lucy Parker although it’s a bakery. (Her book Headliners also has a successful career woman protag, but she’s a news anchor, not a businesswoman.)
Party of Two by Jasmine Guillory has a lawyer starting her own firm. Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert has a heroine with a web design business, as do some of Alyssa Cole’s Reluctant Royals heroines. And check out Alisha Rai of course.
I love the following authors collections. Julie James -all of her books. I love Nora Roberts -Bridal Quartet Series. She in this series writes about the truly perfect wedding business set-up. the details in this series about weddings from beginning to end and ALL that this entails is just WOW. i TOO WANT to give love to Jasmine Haynes. She does not get enough credit for writing about older women and they have kick-ass careers to boot. Great choice is the book FAIR GAME. This book is so damn sexy, but I learned about business as well. A very good story. I know there are more but these authors really stand out for me.
The Intimacy Experiment by Rosie Danan. The heroine, a former porn star, now leads a business making educational sex materials anp unapologetically excels at it.