This Rec League is from Elizabeth. Thanks so much!
After reading this one and The Worst Guy (also reviewed on the site, also hilarious!), I discovered I have a thing for romance novels about villains, or at least jerks who find happiness with other jerks. I wonder if there is a whole genre of those.
Amanda: We have a Villains Redeemed Rec League, but I definitely want to focus on the jerks 4 jerks part of the request because that’s super interesting! We haven’t done that one before.
Sarah: This one really stumped me. The villainous or mildly jerky characters I can think of usually end up with people who provide redemption or at least a morality chain arrangement.
Amanda: Laura Hankin’s One-Star Romance has some jerkish characters. I didn’t love it but
Sarah: Oh! Hang on. The one with the carapace guy. The Auditor is the heroine. But not really a romance. Very mild pants feelings IIRC.
That’s the one. Good job brain
But not quite a fit for the request. I wonder if most of the suggestions will be for secondary characters. It might be easier for two secondary characters to be terrible jerks who find each other.
There is often an expectation of likeability or reader approval for main characters especially heroines.
Amanda: I think Lothaire ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Scribd ) could maybe fit? Lothaire is definitely a jerk. I wouldn’t say Ellie is a jerk per se but she has a snarky streak.
Elyse: Pretty much everything Holly Renee has written but for sure The Touch of a Villain ( A )
Master of Salt & Bones (but beware this book is all kinds of f’d up)
Shana: Not Here to Make Friends! ( A | BN | K ) And maybe Assistant to the Villain? ( A | BN | K ) Because Evie does start to like the idea of torture.
Elyse: Any of the VE Schwab books work? ( A | BN | K | AB )
Which books would you recommend? Let us know in the comments!
I still lowkey ship The Auditor/Quantum Entanglement, and no I have not found The Fic About Them.
“Horrible people in love who treat each other and the people who depend on them well” is catnip for me, but I can only think of a few examples. This one is really tough. Usually you get horrible people who the author doesn’t seem to think are horrible, which doesn’t work.
Julia London’s THE TROUBLE WITH HONOR is sort of this, at least initially. It’s sort of a Regency Les Liaisons Dangereuses retelling, except that the heroine is the ingenue and she wants the hero to seduce her stepmother. It’s hard to recommend because there’s a very dramatic shift in tone and character in the last third or so that did not work for me at all, but for a large portion of the book, it’s Terrible People In Love.
Katee Robert’s THE BASTARD’S BARGAIN, which seems to now be reissued as RUTHLESS REDEMPTION, is a more consistent example, in which a Russian mobster marries the very young, drug addicted daughter of an Irish mobster. They’re both awful, him for obvious reasons and her because she’s a traumatized rich kid acting out whose more functional self is proto-mobster goddess. Horrible people, but they end up with a relationship that suits them.
A different kind of example: Hudson Lin’s INSIDE DARKNESS is about a former international aid worker suffering from acute PTSD and a former foster child journalist suffering from CPTSD. Both men are deeply damaged and lash out in various ways because of their respective pain. It’s a heavy read, and I’m not sure it really counts, but it’s the only other thing I can think of right now.
Seduction of the Crimson Rose by Lauren Willig. Sebastian and Mary are both jerks and there is no improvement.
Not sure if it really fits the bill but FIVE BROTHERS by Penelope Douglas has lots of complicated and morally gray characters.
I’ve been working my way through C.M. Nascosta’s Cambric Creek books. I haven’t read it yet, but RUN, RUN RABBIT is described as having two Alpha-holes as the MMC and FMC, both sarcastic and self-centered.
Not the best recommendation, but I DNF’d The Worst Best Man by Mia Sosa because I thought both of the leads were being jerks.
According to the advertising, it was named one of the best romances of 2020 by several sources, so either it gets better or my opinion is in the minority!
Iron and Magic by Ilona Andrews might work. MMC is a villain of the Kate Daniels series and the FMC has a lot of difficult history, a ton of gray-area magic, and takes none of his shit. Please note the sequel has not yet been written. No cliffhanger, but one does want the next book!
Would Sarah MacLean’s Day of the Duchess fit this? They’re not exactly villains but the MCs are both difficult and kind of awful to each other at various points (sometimes for valid reasons) and yet only fit with each other. It’s been a few years so maybe I’m remembering wrong.
Another possibility is Portrait of a Scotsman by Evie Dunmore. Definitely two supremely flawed MCs who are not “good” people. HOWEVER, it was a 2-star read for me, but it does fit this rec league.
The Harpy and the Dragon by Marie Lipscomb is fantastic.
There was a slytherin/slytherin rec league a few years ago, which might be worth mining? Mostly I got nothing for this.
Eloise James used to do a lot with disagreeable characters/villains, but I can’t think of any where they were really all that villainously paired. Similarly with characters not so much bad as very flawed, but possibly the Bad in Baltimore series by KA Mitchell?
I guess both Kim Secretan and Will Darling are kinda sociopathic in their own ways? The Will Darling Adventures are at least excellent, if kind of a stretch.
Ugh. It’s not quite as absurd as how the orphans are all nobility, and the nobility are all good looking, or how those wicked widows keep turning out to be virgins, but yeah, villains who aren’t are quite common in Romancelandia.
I don’t have a mutual jerks in love recommendation (my digital bookshelf is mostly populated by unilateral jerks), but I am curious what the “this one” in Elizabeth’s request is. She started down this path because of The Worst Guy and what other book? Kate Goldbeck’s You, Again? Something by Emily Henry?
I LOVED The Luckiest Lady in London, by Sherry Thomas, and I think it might fit the bill–the main characters are assholes who ultimately make each other better/more vulnerable versions of themselves while simultaneously being attracted to each other’s assholeness.
Came in to post You, Again by Kate Goldbeck but I see it was already mentioned. I thought both characters were real jerks. (As well as hot messes who really needed therapy, not relationships.)
It’s very tongue in cheek, but So These Rude Grumpy Arrogant Jerks Fall in Love and it’s Gross by TJ Land is delightful.
The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles also fits the bill. It’s an m/m re-imagining of The Prisoner of Zenda from the pov of the villains. It may not fit everyone’s definition of genre romance – neither MC care about monogamy but they’re definitely in love and their HEA suits them perfectly.
I also second the rec for Not Here to Make Friends – I surprised myself by how much I enjoyed reading about two manipulative, morally gray people scheming and stumbling their way to a happy ending that they both desperately want but secretly aren’t sure they deserve.
It’s the 3rd in a trilogy set on an Australian dating show. It probably could be read as a stand alone but I think it has more impact it you read at least one of the previous books (they all have overlapping timelines). I wouldn’t have read this but book 2 was a lovely Sapphic romance and Murray and Lily intrigued me in it – I wanted to see how on earth the author was going to pull off a romance between the manipulative producer and the season’s self-appointed villain.
I really liked The Worst Best Man. And Seduction of the Crimson Rose was fantastic.
If you’re willing to watch a TV show, You’re The Worst definitely fits the bill! (It is a show that, based on the description, I should have hated but I actually love deeply.)
Kay on Twitter gave me permission to share her reply for this one:
“OK, this fits the brief and also does not fit the brief. Go in completely unspoiled, look up nothing, it will not feel like a romance. The Queen of Attolia, The King of Attolia, A Conspiracy of Kings. People doing bad things but are also wonderful. (I would start with the Thief).”
I adored Assistant to the Villain. Yes, Evie does begin to be more sympathetic about the torture, but she is still a total cinnamon roll.
I also think Butcher and Blackbird would fit this as they are both serial killers.
Man Card by Sarina Bowen and Tanya Eby, kind of. The main couple aren’t exactly evil and definitely immature and ridiculous. I found it funny.
I thought the 3rd book in Elizabeth O’Roark’s Grumpy Devils series, The Devil You Know, had similar vibes to The Worst Guy. The characters aren’t outright villains but they’re definitely grumpy jerks.
Tessa Dare’s ‘The Scandalous, Dissolute, No-Good Mr. Wright’ both characters are self-centered kinda-assholes but you still root for their happily-ever-after!
Cassandra Gannons “Happily Ever Witch” both MCs are fairytale ‘evil’ villains.
The Villain Edit by Sarah Brenton – FMC makes no (or very few) apologies; MMC has this golden boy image, but is more morally gray and self-centered than he lets on. They deserve each other, and are so hot together!
I actually liked Kate Goldbeck’s YOU AGAIN a lot. The characters were hot messes in their own way: Ari unable to connect deeply with anyone so connects superficially with many, and Josh hyper focused in his effort to find The One so that he can feel his life is, finally, under control. I felt for them as they struggled, messed up, connected, disconnected. Jerks, yes, but relatable ones and I rooted for their happy ending together.
Red Heir by Lisa Henry, a funny MM fantasy, although you could argue one of the leads is a brat and the other is a jerk. Also the books she writes with J.A. Rock have at least one jerk/jerk pairing, I think, as well as some pairs who are both just vein and foolish.
@chelle: I have an ARC of this book and have been very curious!
I didn’t like The Worst Best Man either. I tried to read it tgree different times due to all the buzz. You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle fits this category. I didn’t like that either.
@Maria F. I agree! IRON AND MAGIC fits the bill. Hugh being a jerk is covered in the previous Kate Daniel books but he is a pretty big @sshole in the beginning of this one as well. But…he’s show not tell when it comes to protection here and it worked great. The Andrews have said the want to do his sequel next and plan to write it this year. Fingers crossed.
Alexis Hall’s London Calling/Material World books so far have had some degree of Jerk for Jerk relationships. I’m not quite finished it, but Here We Go Again by Alison Cochrun also qualifies.