This Rec League came from our staff reviewer Shana:
Have we done a Rec League on books where the couple’s first time having sex is awkward or bad and they had to learn how to give each other pleasure? I feel like I remember us talking about those romances but I’m not sure what we might have called the Rec League. I love historical married couple romances, and this trope feels somewhat adjacent.
Carrie: Jennifer Crusie does this a lot – a good example is in Trust Me On This ( A | BN | K | G | AB | Au ) where the first sex is meh but as they start to trust each other the sex gets better and better.
Amanda: It’s been awhile since I’ve read it, but I believe the main couple in Sweet Filthy Boy by Christina Lauren had some awkwardness.
Sarah: A Lady Awakened by Cecilia Grant fits this VERY well.
The Bromance Book Club but I’m not sure if specifics count as too much of a spoiler.
And Girl Gone Viral by Alisha Rai
Amanda, what about The Bride Test?
Amanda: Hm…I honestly can’t remember? I don’t think so. There’s a lot of awkwardness in general about being around each other, but I don’t remember the sex scenes being awkward. (Commenters please chime in!)
Susan: One of Courtney Milan’s definitely fits this – The Duchess War?
Claudia: You are right, Susan — famously bad first sex.
What romances would you recommend? Drop them in the comments!
Oh wow WordPress hates me these days, it’s always hiding comments and insisting it can’t add mine.
Anyway. In descending order of specificity:
Definitely Jennifer Crusie for this, I am pretty sure the one that comes to mind for me was in Faking It. Crusie’s the one I immediately thought off, along with that Cecelia Grant book.
Eloisa James has at least one – An Affair Before Christmas comes to mind. I am pretty sure Suzanne Brockmann has some, but I am blanking on titles? Linda Howard I think had some back in the day.
There are two other scenes I can think of, no idea what the books are, but someone will probably remember. Both historicals.
In what I believe was an infamous one old school romance, the hero has a Madonna/whore complex and doesn’t want to upset his wife with his attentions and so uses cold cream (I remember it because I was like wtf?) as a lubricant since he believes she can’t be aroused – possibly only after a particularly rapey wedding night, did I mention old school?
Also there was one where the hero explicitly states he doesn’t want the woman to move at all during sex, his hang ups involve not wanting sex to be so wet/messy/intimate. And the heroine was I think a courtesan or possibly a widow who basically happy she didn’t have to pretend not to be thinking about her to do list. I was reading a lot of Mary Balogh and Carla Kelly at the time but that might be a red herring.
*camps out in thread*
Another Jennie Crusie, FAKING IT, has this.
Highly recommend Business or Pleasure by Rachel Lynn Solomon. The main premise is about a ghostwriter who has an incredibly awkward one-night stand and then finds out she’ll be working with him on his memoir. And while writing the book, they work out how he can be better in bed (he checked with his exes and discovered how bad he truly was).
Yeah I’m not sure what tantrum WP is having but I’m trying to figure it out. It’s just commenting, WP, that’s, like, your whole thing!
A Chance at Love by Beverly Jenkins – historical m/f, FMC is a former sex worker, MMC has zero experience. She is deeply unimpressed with their first time and they then having a running joke about needing to practice his sex lessons.
Aftermath by LA Witt – contemporary m/m, MC1 has been experiencing erectile dysfunction since a recent surgery; he goes for a one night stand with MC2, when he can’t get it up, he flees embarrassed without explaining
Confessions of a Virgin on a Dating App by Sydney Wilder – contemporary m/f, FMC has undiagnosed vaginismus and endometriosis, she has disastrous experiences with sex with a few different guys (caveat that the first scene, not with the MMC turns into dubcon, although she never seems to call it that)
And then due to sexual trauma and the other partner not knowing beforehand:
The Lotus Palace by Jeannie Lin – historical m/f, FMC was sex trafficked as a child (which the MMC doesn’t know about), she basically kind of disassociates and lays there and it takes him a little too long to figure something is wrong
A Gentleman Never Keeps Score by Cat Sebastian – historical m/m, MC1 has sex trauma/is touch averse (MC2 doesn’t know), their first time together isn’t great
A Wicked Bargain for the Duke – Megan Frampton – He thinks he’s good at sex, but she has to let him know he’s not. He listens and makes an effort for it to be good for her too.
One more Crusie to add to the list: Welcome to Temptation!
@kkw, the Mary Balogh book you are thinking of where the hero doesn’t wants the woman he’s having sex with to move, is A PRECIOUS JEWEL.
TO SEDUCE A SCOUNDREL by Elizabeth Hoyt has a pretty funny first-time sex scene. The heroine is not a virgin and she is quite disappointed by the hero’s performance, but he’s oblivious. Actually it’s my favorite Hoyt book!
Seconding the recommendation for Business or Pleasure, the awkwardness never crossed the line into cringe, and he was a fast learner!
You May Kiss the Duke by Charis Michaels has a hero who feels like he needs to be so careful and gentle and delicate with his bride, only for her to tell him (paraphrased) “This is really very boring, have you considered ravishing me with all the lust in your heart?”
Elena and Allegretto in Laura Kinsale’s Shadowheart have awkward uncomfortable sex initially, because A) he *did* kidnap her, and B) what they both want is a D/s relationship with her on top, and that’s a tricky thing to figure out in medieval times.
Two or three sites where I have ongoing WP issues, but it’s the first time here.
Definitely seconding the fantastic A LADY AWAKENED by Cecilia Grant — the initial sexytimes are deeply unsexy, and that reflects the opposing perspectives of the hero and heroine at the start of the book.
Also, the last book @kkw mentioned, with the prostitute heroine and the hero who doesn’t want her to move/respond at all, is Mary Balogh’s A PRECIOUS JEWEL.
Eloisa James’ Your Wicked Ways is another, although I found it problematic. MCs elope and get married and end up having terrible sex on their honeymoon. ML decides it’s his wife’s fault because she’s too stiff and a prude so makes fun of her then abandons her and has wild affairs while living separately for several years. Turns out the FL wasn’t properly taught or prepared for her wedding night and was just nervous and scared, and it’s actually the husband who is terrible in bed but none of his mistresses will tell him that because they are profiting handsomely off him.
@Lara: Your description of Shadowheart has bumped it up my list.
there’s a Penny Reid/ LH Cosway collaboration that fits, The Player and the Pixie. also Jackie Lau’s Four Wedding to Fall in Love
@Karin: I can’t find To seduce a scoundrel among E Hoyt’s titles. I like your description and would love to read the book you mean. Another title? Another author? Please advise!
@Lena, sorry for the error! The correct title is TO SEDUCE A SINNER.
When the Marquess Needed Me by Lydia Lloyd is a historical that features a woman who wants to be a mistress for a specific hero because he has a reputation as being a rake and she wants more lessons from him so she can be a great mistress. Unfortunately the first time is bad and she ends up teaching him how to be a better lover. The hero is bad because he has body image issues from hearing women talk about his small appendage. This was a great reversed story of an open woman who loves sex teaching a man how to enjoy it more and provide pleasure to women.
Alice Coldbreath’s books in the Vawdrey Brothers and Brides of Karadok series follow a consistent pattern/formula, but the FMCs in them, who each start off virginal, experience sex differently. Some are enthusiastic from the start and some are slower to warm up. I can’t remember which ones have the more awkward sex at the beginning. But An Ill-Made Match stands out because it has an FMC who doesn’t really “get” sex even though it seems like the MMC is ensuring she has an orgasm every time. Like she doesn’t quite register that what is happening is pleasurable…until she does.
I suspect that the one with the cold cream that @kkw is remembering is probably ROSEHAVEN, by Catherine Coulter. It’s not just in the first sex scene either. This was my very first romance novel, so I remember it vividly.
At least as of 1999, I think all of Coulter’s couples had similarly horrible early sex, usually rapey. It was sort of her thing. I read a bunch of her books at the time, not because I liked this but because I hated it; I wanted to read one where the heroine had a good first experience and thought surely, surely there’d be one. But alas, no, so I stopped reading romance and didn’t try again for several years.
A non-rapey one is Joan Wolf’s THE GAMBLE, in which the FMC discovers her newly dead father was a blackmailer and decides to continue his legacy in order to get someone to present her to Society so she can maybe find a husband and save herself and her sister from penury. She ends up blackmailing the MMC, who iirc is the son of the originally blackmailed person, and naturally things go awry. In case you’re wondering from this description, yes, the FMC is kind of loony. I don’t remember why their first encounter is not great, but they figure it out.
The Joan Wolf book intrigues me, and is a rare one I haven’t read. I wish it wasn’t $9.99 on Kindle.
I’m surprised no one’s mentioned JAK yet. I think a lot of her Amanda Quick historicals from the 90s and 00s have this.
An Affair Before Christmas by Eloisa James
Duchess by Night by Eloisa James
Most of the one’s I remembered have already been mentioned but the Linda Howard book she was probably thinking of is Duncan’s Bride. An oldie but goodie. I also jump on the good book bandwagon for the Cecelia Grant story A LADY AWAKENED.
@cleo – I think I was wrong about JAK. I didn’t find any awkward sex in the few books I have that I looked through. (Lots of oral sex and orgasms just for the heroine in the first sexual encounter though – I think that’s the formula I was remembering).
IIRC, the first encounter between Kit and Lauren in Mary Balogh’s A SUMMER TO REMEMBER didn’t go well. I liked this book and liked the development of their affair, but another factor was Kit’s relationship with his brother. Sydnam had been tortured and maimed during the Peninsular wars. Kit thought he was helping Syd, but in a taut and powerful scene Syd confronts him with the truth about how he feels and how Kit’s actions affected him. A number of Balogh’s books have scenes like this – not necessarily directly related to the romance but revealing of the characters and their emotional truths.
Eloisa James’s When the Duke Returns. He’s been traveling most of his life, and is terrified of STD’s, so he’s a virgin, and she was married to him by proxy at 11, and is a rule follower, so she’s one too.
Oh! I Forgot to mention I read RAPPORT,FRIENDSHIP, SOLIDARITY, COMMUNION, EMPATHY. It’s a lovely short story set in the MURDERBOT world.
I’m not sure if T Kingfisher’s Paladin’s Grace quite fits the bill… but the first sex scene goes terribly, and learning how to enjoy sex is part of things.
I second PALADIN’S GRACE by T. Kingfisher The SAINT OF STEEL series consistently features aging characters, whose bodies have a lot of mileage on them, which is very refreshing as my 40’s are on the horizon. Kingfisher tenderly crafts sex scenes with vulnerability and humor, making them some of my favorite re-reads.
There’s also some delightfully awkward and hilarious sexy-times in SWORDHEART (also by T. Kingfisher).
Love this comment thread!