Smart Bitches Trashy Books | All of the romance, none of the bullshit.

Can it get any better than Lord of Scoundrels? “Can’t have her ‘cause she’s an innocent gentlewoman and I’m a well-known rogue, I’ll ruin her reputation. Oh, yeah…not to mention my own.”

I love me a hero with damage - physical and emotional - that keeps him from thinking he deserves the heronine. Love that!

A scar on the face or body here and there, and a heart with scars of its own…swoon!

@ krsylu - LOS - ALL TIME FAVORITE! Love that book.

Definitely the Beauty/Beast angst. Scarring both physically and emotionally goes well with me too.

And I must join you in the forbidden attraction too. Especially in the working environment. Competing business people or the boss/employee angle. I’m a real sucker for those stories

I have to admit, I love the forbidden attraction too - which is why I think I read Diana Palmers. The whole “you’re off limits to me because of this insanely weird family situation and I’m going to pine and be tortured then become bitter for years and years” stories are my reading fix.
Otherwise, in romances, I love the boss/secretary stories -which is so odd because I’m definitely creeped out by it in real life.
I HATE the “I’m doing this for your own good” thing - like “oh I love you but I can’t marry you because you’re too good for me so I’ll make both of us suffer.” I guess the female variation - and one I’ve noticed a LOT now is “I’m infertile and I know you want to reproduce/have kids so I can’t be with you.” >.<

I also have to throw in for the “I’m just a big meanie evil man type and I simply cannot ruin this lovely flower of a woman oh but maybe I will anyways” man-angst.

As for the ladies, I really wish one of these books would have extra shitty hair. Like “holy crap, I have limp/frizzy/ass hair and no one will love me because my hair clingstomyface/lookslikepubichair/smellslikeass” and then through the magic wang, they discover shampoo and hair conditioner and hair spray and everything is suddenly better.

At that point, the sun shines, birds chirp sweetly, and the enveloping warmth of love radiates through everyone. Or everyone with good hair, at least.

My favorite angst? When the hero/heroine thinks they have this big, bad, horribly terrifying and debilitating secret that’s about as evil as a box of kittens.

I love the forbidden attraction and I agree, I hate the whole “I’m doing this for your own good” stuff.  It just makes me want to throw the book across the room.

I love the dark totured hero too.  I’m drawn to the bad boys for some reason.

I hate, despise, absolutely loathe the “your family done me wrong and now I must get back at you” revenge neuroses. 

And if they twist in “oh noes I’m attracted to you, so I’ll make you fall in love with me to hurt you as my revenge”, that makes it worse.

And if the book ends with “I intentionally made you fall in love with me to hurt you, but I love you too much to continue my vindictive revenge fantasy and will gladly live with you and your father/uncle/grandmother/older brother/whoever else did me wrong” and then “oh I love you too much to not forgive you for being a vengeful jerk and ruining my family/business/life in a misguided attempt at revenge”, a book-sized dent will suddenly appear on my wall.

Love the Beauty/Beast scenario… or even just scarred hero (internal/external… doesn’t matter) who not only withdraws from the heroine but from life in general (thinking of Houston from Lorraine Heathe’s Texas Destiny—I thinkthat’s the name of the book.

I love the rogue/rake as well.  One who just “can’t” cause he’s too jaded.  For her hang-ups?  I guess the kind that needs to learn to rely on someone occasionally. 

But can’t stand?  I ABHOR secret babies.  And if it’s not on the cover or description?  I throw the book in the recycle bin—without finishing it!

My favorite angst is when the hero is scarred both emotional and physically and he hides away from society and the heroine has to break through that tough shell he has built to protect himself.

Though I wouldn’t have thought of the phrase myself, forbidding hotty mcwantingpants works for me. A lot.

Beauty and the beast, including switching up who’s the beauty and who’s the beast. I like that lots too.

Oh, the Beast syndrome, though which only the heroine can penetrate (hur) into his damaged soul.  Love it.  Am getting pretty sick of the “he’s the biggest baddest sexin’est rake that evah lived…until SHE came along!”  I seem to read that theme on the back of books way too often, and it usually results in my putting the book back down.

LOL Too well endowed…. is there such a thing?? LOL

I like when forbidden love/attraction is allowed to blossom and I like when they have to wait a while…. liked/crush as kids and grow to love each other more as time goes on.
I am not into macho men who only pleasure themselves…. I want a give and take relationship that not into the hard ass who gives into love as an afterthougt.

I am a total sucker for the wounded hero (literally), two of my most favorite historicals have been about men that can’t walk due to war injuries and the woman that nurses them back to health… of course it totally helps if she happens to be a bluestocking as well!

As I am in a relationship with a man older than me I tend to like that plot.  Why? because it works for me:)  I also gravitate towards the forbidden relationship.

I love the buddy of the older bro thing—she has either (1) worshipped him from afar forevah or (2) sparred with him for years (hidden depths of passion on both sides?!?!) and then BANG, some event happens which makes them realize they are wildly attracted to each other.

But they can’t act on it because it will (1) piss off older bro, (2) he’s kinda squicked because he’s known her since she was a child and even though she’s all grown up it freaks him out, (3) she’s believing he’d never be interested in her THAT WAY, etc. Or all of the above.

Much angst all around with perhaps some thrashing from the older bro and then the HEA. Works for me!

I am also a sucker for the beauty and the beast stories.  Rogues are usually good reads too.  Especially when they are matched someone they would generally not give a second glance…

I’m a sucker for the devastated widower. The one who TOTALLY loved his wife/partner and is having a hard time reconciling his new lusting in his loins for the heroine. Butterfly Tattoo comes to mind.

@Babs: I also am a total sucker Hot For My Brother’s BFF. Love that storyline. Oh! Or, the hero/heroine wakes up one day and is all, “Damn my best friend is hot.”

My absolutely favorite hero/heroine combination (the one that gives me a case of the hotty mcwantingpants, whether it is historical or modern) is the hero who is totally, completely hit between the eyes (metaphorically speaking) by a truly awesome, take-no-bullshit type of heroine.  She comes into his life for reasons he cannot control, and she completely changes him (and his views of women and control) forever because, from the beginning, she never fears him and always gives as good as she gets!

This is why I love Julie Garwood’s The Bride so much and usually read it once every year or so.  Alec Kincade is the consummate alpha male who thinks about women and wives in the same category as he does a good horse - beautiful, well-bred, sturdy & loyal - but once he puts her in the stable, then she/it is out of sight, out of mind.  Until he forced to marry Jamie, who through various hijinxs, neuroses, and unexpected “manly” abilities, cannot be - and absolutely refuses to be - ignored.  This story shows in an hilarious and heart-warming way, just how often people fall head-over-heels in love when they least expect it and often when it would be most inconvenient.  And it is usually with the person you least expected to be your “type,” but who turns out to be everything you ever (secretly) wanted.

Just talking about it has made me want to read this book again…

*toddles downstairs to bookcase*

My favorite angst-ridden hero scenario is when he thinks he’s a Bad Person and loves the heroine too much to fuck up her life with his presence.  Don’t care if he’s truly a Bad Person who eventually redeems himself, a la Anne Stuart’s hotties, or he’s built up some past incident in his head - love ‘em all dearly.  Up to Our Heroine to show him that he is indeed worthy of her love, or maybe he isn’t but she wants him anyway, LOL.

Heroine angst, I like a girl who comes from a family that puts the Fun in Dysfunction, and by the end of the book gets to hairflip them all and ride off into the sunset with her fabulous hero.  Overcoming bad family for the win!

I agree with Babs, the older friend of the brother works for me too.  Lora Leigh has used that in a couple of my favorite books.  She uses it with Clint and Morganna in Dangerous Games since Morganna is Reno’s little sister.  And then she has the Brother - younger step sister thing going in Nauti Boy with Kelly and Rowdy then you see it again in Nauti Intentions with Janey and Alex.  Alex has a lot to deal with Natches.

for example any Beauty and the Beast-type “Oh, noes, I is too ugly/scarred/well-endowed for her!” angst is always fun for my readerly eyes.

That was some funny right there!

I loves the Kinsale hero…broken/scarred/emotional wrecks that they are. Flowers From the Storm...where else ‘cept in Witness did going Amish seem so sexually appealing?

Reggie from Mary Jo Putney’s The Rake is one of my all time favorite wounded heroes.  An alcoholic hero wouldn’t normally do it for me, but Reggie has a good heart under all the booze and pain, and Lady Alys is truly his salvation.

Alys is more like my typical favorite heroine- a woman who is smart and capable, but insecure about her beauty and attractiveness to men.

I love a good Plain Jane story. Especially when the hero fell in love before the transformation and doesn’t just jump on the bandwagon after the fact. The angst of struggling to put aside past insecurities so the heroine can move on to a happier life *sigh*

SarahB said: But when it’s done right, forbidding hotty mcwantingpants is deeeelicious.

That is the most freakin fabulous phrase of all time. Seriously. Do you mind if I print it out and put it on my computer? I think it would work to lift me right out of any depression I am in, no matter HOW deep! I think I may have it on my tombstone: “This woman was wanted by many men with forbidden, hotty mcwantingpants” right above, wife, mother, romance reader…

While I easily become incensed with angsty whining males, I do enjoy me some secret baby stories and the beauty and the beast is a great story. Plus, what is this about too endowed? Is there such a thing? Where I have been when these people were around????  Is there a place I can write, and please don’t mention this to my husband ;)

I like infertility as a source of angst IF it is done well (no miracle cures from the Mighty Wang or Magic Hoohoo, plskthx) and they learn that love doesn’t require babies.  Conversely, I like “already a parent” angst—not secret baby (ugh) but someone else’s baby, who the h/h learns to love along with the parent.

I also really love angst that is caused by the h/h’s past relationship, especially “I tried, but I can’t get over you.”

Revenge angst, especially the family stuff, bugs me.  Angst that manifests itself in excessive self-pity also bugs me.  Damage of any kind that results in really stupid behavior is annoying.  And I really hate heroes who say “I have phobias about sex/childbearing because of what happened to my mother/dead wife, so I must try to avoid impregnating you and then be VERY ANGRY with you when you end up pregnant anyway.”

I love the tortured hero, full of angst, questioning self worth, but at the same time, I want a powerful, knows his own value and ready for action hero.  I also love the Cinderella storyline and Beauty and the Beast, damn I guess I love them all.

Dottie :)

I really enjoy the friends turn into lovers scenario.  They’re worried about ruining their friendship but hotty mcwantingpants cannot be denied :)  Conversely, I hate when couples separate because of a big misunderstanding and neither one has the guts to be upfront about things.

Oh, God. Too many to choose from. I love the battle-scarred hero—shell-shocked, PTSD, monomaniacal, whatevs. Someone above mentioned the hurt/comfort, where the bluestocking heroine nurses him back to health? DIE HARD KINK, right there.

I love—and don’t get to see nearly enough—the unlikely virgin. Not the one who was married and never devirginized. Please. No, this one really only works in contemporaries, but the woman who’s far too old to be a virgin at her age. But if the guy starts balking and going, “Are you sure? Sure? SURE?” it might become a wall-banger for me. And not in a good way.

And, of course, my all-time favorite—the high-strung, tightly-wound, control freak heroine who has to learn to let go and rely on the hero just a bit.

No, I don’t project my issues into my romance characters. Not at all. What a silly idea.

Oh, and long-time friends with a standing attraction who have to overcome their personal barriers to ever really be together. One of my favorites. (Not a romance pair, but a damned romantic one in my opinion: Ron and Hermione. Or, if you’re willing to consider their odd relationship a friendship, which I suppose it was, of a sort, Lord Peter and Harriet.)

I love the Beauty/Beast, especially when the scars are internal. The darker, the better.

Renee

My favorite is the monkish hero that is taken by surprise by the knowledgeable heroine.  Kinsale, of course, in For My Lady’s Hear but I loved this in Kushiel’s Dart and sequels, too.  LOVE that.  LOVE IT!

I HATE the Big Misunderstanding with the passion of a 1,000 Suns.  It DID teach me to communicate in my relationships, though, I will say that for it.

OMG how embarrassing!!  For My Lady’s HEART  my bab my bad!!

I’ve always been fond of second chance stories, like Jane Austen’s Persuasion, for example. I also like the friends turning to lovers which can be great if done well and horrible if not.

I love Beauty and the Beast style angst. My favorite example of it is in The Raven Prince.

I also like situations where there is a very real and serious reason why they can’t get together, e.g., they’re from different countries and those countries are at war. In that case it’s not angst at all, but major logistical problems that need solving for the relationship to happen.

My least favorite—the Big Misunderstanding. Or anything that could be solved by the hero and heroine sitting down in a room and talking to each other for 10 minutes.

@ Jackie - you just made me snort my coffee, cause I was laughing so hard, thanks! :-)

Spamword: volume64 - that is how many inches high of hair Jackie wants her characters to have.

I happen to be a fan of the forced attraction rather than the forbidden attraction.
Sounds weird. I know.
Don’t get me wrong, the latter of the two make for some pretty interesting senarios, but there’s something about a writer pushing two people together against their will, and wathing it evolve that just grabs my attention. (Ex. Velvet Promise or A Knight in Shining Armor by Jude Deveraux)

Oh, and long-time friends with a standing attraction who have to overcome their personal barriers to ever really be together.

Love that one, possibly because I’m looking for advice IRL. 

Also love:
Hot for Brother/Sister’s BFF
Tried to Get Over You, but Can’t
and
Engaged to Mr./Ms. Perfect but Hot for Mr./Ms. Unsuitable/Never-Noticed-Until-Now/Met-Too-Late.

pressure46: Under pressure to use 46 slashes and hyphens in this post.

I’m a sucker for Beauty and the Beast as well, the kind that has the hero hiding in his shadowy castle, manor, etc.  Good times.  Loved Goddess of the Rose, when the hero was a literal beast. 

I also really love it when the hero comes back from war, all tortured and everything.  Only magical sex with a good woman can make him forget his pain.

The conflict I absolutely hate is the whole, “I can’t love you because I’m a vampire” cliche.  Since when is that a problem?! 
She obviously doesn’t have a problem with you biting her neck for all eternity.  And what’s the problem with turning her into a vampire?  Why would that be a bad thing?

I, too, find that I’m a sucker for the hero being the one with some kind of hang-up that makes him think he doesn’t quite deserve the heroine—as long as it’s not completely debilitating and can be overcome to give them both their HEA, of course! Whether that’s Beauty and the Beast type stories or just something in the hero’s past that has affected the way he sees himself, I’m pretty easy to please, :)

@Jackie:

I really wish one of these books would have extra shitty hair. Like “holy crap, I have limp/frizzy/ass hair and no one will love me because my hair clingstomyface/lookslikepubichair/smellslikeass” and then through the magic wang, they discover shampoo and hair conditioner and hair spray and everything is suddenly better.

Ah, you have clearly not read enough Snape/Hermione fanfiction!  I swear to God this is the plot of at least 20% of the fics I read before I got into slash.  Woo, bad!fic. :D

I am a total sucker for a hero with a real, permanent, physical issue.  Simon’s stutter in the first Brigertons book totally made it for me (we’ll be silent on the issue of the forced-baby-making…).  I’ll take nasty facial scars, missing limbs, you name it.  It’s twice as nice if the heroine helps him learn to live and be happy with his life without any magical (hoo-ha or otherwise) fix-its.

(My favorite forbidden relationship was probably Karen Robards’s Scandalous: we’re not actually brother and sister, but we have to pretend to be while meanwhile we’re totally hot for each other and could ruin everything and completely squick the entire cast if we got caught.)

I cannot abide a heroine who’s jaw-droppingly gorgeous but angsts about being ugly despite all evidence to the contrary.  Have a little self-awareness, honey.

Beauty and the Beast all the way for me

I love Beauty and the Beast-style angst.  Gets me every time.  I also love me some wounded heroes.

The one that drives me crazy?  Secret babies.  Never fails to be a wallbanger for me.

I’ve always loved the damaged hero - whether its a physical injury or a psychological, so long as the author doesn’t feel compelled to fix the problem, deus ex machina, within the last five pages, e.g. hero leaves heroine because he’s too damaged for her goodness, has super-dangerous or super-experimental surgery, and comes back completely healed.  Harlequin in the 1980s and early 1990s would have all sorts of interesting, but damaged alpha male heros that would get the miraculous cure, or were tragically misdiagnosed in the first place.

Jennifer Ashley’s “Madness of Lord Ian McKenzie” has to be my all-time favorite book that uses this trope.  The hero is extremely damaged, and nothing can be done to fix him - and the author makes no bones about the fact that it’s going to be a difficult HEA, but it still will be a HEA - all the sweeter for the difficulty.

Another great one was Julia Quinn’s “The Viscount Who Loved Me” - the damage here was unique.  The hero, Anthony Bridgerton, suffers from a very real psychological problem - he is certain that he will die before he’s 35 (not positive about the actual year, could be 40), because his father did.  Julia Quinn did her research on this one, and it shows.  And speaking of damaged heros in the Bridgerton series, let’s not forget that the Duke in “The Duke and I” was a stutterer.

Another personal favorite trope is the Cinderella heroine - but these are difficult to pull of.  It’s all too easy to make the heroine a perfect Mary Sue who is also TSTL.  Many of Mary Balogh’s early Signet Regencies did a great job with this type of heroine.  They weren’t necessary suffering at the hands of abusive family members, but were forced to keep their light under a bushel and the moment when the hero discovers the heroine’s true greatness (not necessarily beauty) are real money shots for me.

Of course, forbidden attraction is a great appeal too - I love the Jane Eyre type (he’s all wrong for you) rather than the Romeo & Juliette style (he’s from the wrong family/clan/race).

But probably my most favorite mcwantingpants moments are reserved for the hidden/secret relationship - which is a subclass of forbidden attraction.  I like these the best because it puts hero and heroine on a level platform.  Probably the best Cynster novel, “A Rake’s Vow” featured this type of relationship.  There was also a book from the long-vanished Loveswept line (I think it may have been a Delaney book) where the hero and heroine were conducting a clandestine affair (during the mid 1800s).  She wouldn’t marry him because she was afraid that her father’s insanity was heriditary - and it turned out that the father was in the final stages of syphilis.

Anyway - I’ve been a little too prolix, as usual. 

If we’re still doing spamwords, I’ve got “makes33” - as “in that makes 33 times she’s orgasmed in the last 10 minutes.”

Lita

I like a hero who has a naughty, naughty past and really believes he’ll be a playboy for ever, so he hasn’t bothered to keep a nice reputation. And then he meets some smart, sparky gal in dire straits who very much needs to keep a good reputation. And it turns out that suddenly he’s ready to grow up and settle down with this woman, only her life will be mortally screwed by associating with him. Jo Beverly writes a lot of those kind of guys. Also Diane Gaston.

I have to agree with Becky, The Rake and the Reformer is the best ever, closely followed by Silk and Secrets.

I also love redemption stories which is really funny because no way in hell would I ever take a guy back after what some of the guys in my favorite books have done.  Paula Detmer Riggs has written some of the most moving ‘second chance at love’ contemporaries out there, lots of them with babies which really aren’t my cup of tea in real life.  Go figure!

I also love tortured hero stories and reformed rakes, but the latter have to be done right.  I really want to see Lord Quence from Enoch’s ‘Notorious Gentlemen series’ get his own story.  I’d love to see how such a love story might have played out in Regency England.  Does anybody know if she has any plans for him?

Balogh’s A Precious Gem and The Secret Pearl are frequent re-reads (and I only discovered her in January of 2008) with very damaged heroes and heroines.

And I get a kick out of bad boy younger guy, older woman stories like Karen Robards’ One Summer.

I *love* angst and for the longest time there wasn’t any being written.  I’ve found a few gems here and there lately, so that gives me hope that maybe that light, fluffy stuff is on its way out the door for a few years.

I’m seeing a lot of love here for the Wounded Hero, which I totally agree with - my personal favorite iteration is Dag from the Sharing Knife series. But what about Wounded Heroine? Don’t women ever suffer? It seems a little weird to throw all the love on stories where the heroine brings life back to the hero, but ignore those where the hero is the healer. Not everyone likes a strong, silent, tough alpha; some of us have a soft spot for nurturing types! I haven’t seen many of those in the bookstore or library, but I think I’ll buy those that I do see just to encourage it. An example just popped into my head, also from Bujold, because of everyone talking about this in relation to the Beauty & the Beast archetype: Miles Vorkosigan and Taura totally have the gender-reversed thing I’m talking about, albeit in a necessarily somewhat time-compressed form. Bujold and playing with gender roles, they go together like peanut butter and Nutella.

I’m amazed that no one’s mentioned the Dangerous Career meme—the firefighter/cop/spy/daredevil who Just Knows the job will be fatal sooner or later, and therefore won’t commit because they know that the prospective spouse will be Utterly Lost without them. 

Angsty Dangerous Career heroes are a dime a dozen; angsty Dangerous Career heroines seem to be a lot thinner on the ground. And then there’s the version where both protagonists are in the same Dangerous Career, and keep circling each other warily until the forces of the Mighty Wang and the Magic Hoohoo combine to persuade them that facing ultimate danger together is the most romantic and satisfying possible outcome.

I was looking for a good place to buy titles by this author this month and I stumbled across this website: http://www.booksonboard.com. They have really reasonable prices and I have come to enjoy the convenience of eBooks. They carry a lot of romance titles too, a couple by Victoria Dahl. Here’s the link in case anyone is interested:

http://www.booksonboard.com/index.php?BODY=viewauthor&AUTHOR=Dahl, Victoria

And I should say that the opposite scenario, where the guy would lose family favor, property, inheritance, whatever, by marrying an unsuitable woman is equally satisfying. Pride and Prejudice being the supreme example.

LOVE the Beauty/Beast thing (physical, emotional, too well-endowed, etc.)-hehe-

HATE the “can’t be together because the heroine needs a intimate outpatient surgery” plot.  I refuse to read Diana Palmer anymore for that reason, though there have been a few other authors as well.  *Definitely* a wall-banger (bad).

I like historicals where the heroine is usually decent looking, but her intellect and smart ass mouth are what truly attracts the hero to her.  And of course, I like the hero who thinks he’s Mr. Cool on the outside, but just emotionally broken on the inside.

@Cyndala: *snort!* My ‘no more Diana Palmer’ is due to all the males’ having hairy chest syndrome.  Gad, all of the men in Texas? All of them?

LOVE: Oh a hero that was injured either mentally or physically in war. Rachell Lee did one (or some) returning Vets and Julia Quinn & well, many others, have written some male characters that were injured by war and I love to see them getting a HEA.
Love It.

Absolute (secret, don’t tell anyone) favorite heroine neurosis: fading away from not eating due to lost/forbidden love. Every woman I know who was in the middle of emotional turmoil heads for the frozen food department or her candy stash so a heroine who is waif-thin for want of love is real fantasy reading for me.

Most likely to not even buy the book but in case he/she shows up later in the story: PRESUMED DEAD. If a character is dead then stay dead. Dead to me. Gone. Out of here. Not in this story. You Are Dead. Yeah, that one drives me a tad bonkers.

The scarred hero, especially when he was scarred by prior love either leaving or dying, gets me every time.  I like heroes that can admit to having loved before.  I don’t like those heroes that were always rakes/had tons of affairs but have “never felt love before.”  Bleh.  Emotionally available men FTW.

For heroines, I love Plain Janes.  Especially the ones with a gorgeous best friend/sister who always outshone them.

I love the Romeo and Juliet one. I read a Harlequin recently with that theme and loved it.
The “our families are at war but we’re secretly in lurve” thing. All that sneaking around. But the families really have to be at war. And I’d love to read one where the couple have different ethnic backgrounds, you know, the West Side Story thing.
I say I hate secret babies, but occasionally a good one comes along where it seems reasonable. I read one where she thought he’d died in the military - Afghanistan I think - and his family kept his survival from her.
There’s an old Linda Howard - White Lies - where the hero is learning to walk and the heroine is his therapist. Awesome. He doubted he was sexually capable until she proved him wrong.
But when the angst is the box of kittens, and the secret is contrived, I’m out of there. I don’t particularly enjoy blackmail or revenge stories, either. Petty, not romantic. Don’t like contemporary Prince and Commoner stories very much, I just can’t believe them because the heroes always talk and act like Englishmen or Americans, and the heroine thinks she isn’t good enough. Give me a break.
But I love a good sheikh romance. Go figure.

I have always loved the rough, alpha male that is a bit too rough, maybe even a bit of a bastard or from the lower class that feels he’s not good enough for the gentle female that later proves very strong minded and able to see beyond that seperation of classes/lifestyles. Lisa Kleypas writes these themes very well. 

I despise novels where the guy is wimpy and waits for the female to take the lead. Ugh. . . boring!

I also love the sexy paranormal shape-shifter that almost kidnaps or believes he has to keep his future mate with him at all costs… I never thought a male desperate for a woman could be that sexy, but Susan Krinards early werewolf books and Nalini Singh, Karen Marie Moning, Rhyannon Byrd etc. . .  all use this device to some degree and make it yummy, not creepy.

I love the ‘loved since a child’ theme, usually, particularly when it is manifested as the ‘faking love to cover up heartbreak at ex’s wedding/etc but then it becomes real.” sort of thing.  (It’s usually related to the best friend soon to get benefits theme, which is another favorite.) 

At the same time, there are some SERIOUSLY creepy variations of that thing, such as too much of an age gap (more than 5 years unless well done, and more than 10 if it’s the older loving the younger.) for example) or, most squickworthy, raised as siblings.  I apparently have a bigger problem with social incest than the genetic incest issue.

I am a sucker for a bad boy, a broken bad boy.  All the hot chicks love him but he wants the one goodie gal on the block.  She has to be a little bitchie in return however, I do not like frail women.

Hot bodies, with a flaw…??  Yummy.

While I easily become incensed with angsty whining males

I have to agree with this statement.  I really, really hate whiney ass males with too much angst.  However, I love the ones where the hero and heroine can’t be together, because the hero is married to a woman who is mentally ill, physically ill or both and he feels he must stay with her because he made a commmitment…..

Just love those!!

What I hate is where one of the “family members” is not a blood relation, and they have been nursing a crush since they were kids, but no! they can’t be “in love” cause they were raised as siblings and this would be incestuous. Give me a break. They probably know all the best and worse in each other but aren’t suppose to love each other. If most couples knew each other that well they probably wouldn’t get married in the first place.
What I love is where a younger guy, usually a real hottie, falls for an older woman, and he has to work so hard to convince her that, yeah, he really, really loves her.

I love bad boys.  And alpha males.  And even more when they can be found in the same character.  I enjoy the tortured pasts or the belief that they aren’t good enough or gentle enough for the heroine.

I love the clever, sassy, interesting and gutsy heroine that starts out as SO not the hero’s type and winds up. . .well you know how that story should end!

Can I admit that I love the PIXAR film, “UP”, ‘cause it’s SUCH a great romance?  Ellie and Carl’s relationship—told in many pictures and few words—was one of the most grownup, enviable, loving screen marriages to come out of Hollywood in years.
*sigh*

OK, things that drive me wacky?  Whiny heroes/heroines, most secret babies, and Big Misunderstandings, subcategory Had I But Known!

Like others, I am a sucker for the scarred hero.  Physical and emotional scars, the ones that make him go “she can’t really love me, she must be faking it for some reason” are always good!

Captcha: must48 there must be at least 48 kinds of tortured heroes I love!

What’s your favorite or most enjoyed form of heroine neurosis, or hero damage? Hmm… I can’t really think of anything… I guess I don’t mind the “I’ve got a big secret I can’t tell him” as long as the heroine tells the hero once it becomes obvious she can trust him. Like in Faking It. Once it becomes ridiculous for her to keep holding out she tells Davy what’s up.

Conversely, what tortured devices make you want to throw things? I really hate the “bad blood” trope. “oh noes, my family were all violent assholes, so I MUST be a violent asshole (even though I’m actually a sweet, protective nurturer type), and now I shall dump the wonderful heroine to protect her from my evil self”. Bleck.

Of course, as with every story, how these things are handled matter a lot. If a writer can pull it off more power to them!

I really loved Talk Me Down so I really, really wanna win one! Please! :)

Brilliant, rational, locked-my-emotions-up-a-long-time-ago-and-threw-away-the-key alpha males get me all the time.  I’ve been doing paranormals recently, so off the top of my head; Lucan, from Lynn Viehl’s Darkyn series (Dark Need), and V from the BDB.  They’ve got just enough sneer to be badass, but not so much as to be utter bastards.  And I love brilliant heroes who get blindsided by equally brilliant heroines.

Also like heroines who aren’t perfect.  There’s a Jayne Ann Krentz (yeah, she’s formulaic, but the formula works) heroine who has curly, hard to tame hair, and when she gets caught in the rain it goes all frizzy and shit; and I read a Regency long ago where the heroine is not especially beautiful - can’t recall the title, but the term she kept using for female beauty was “diamond of the first water” and the hero was the Earl of St. Ives.

Can’t stand heroes who hurt (psychologically or physically) the heroine at the beginning, or heroines I judge to be just plain stupid.  Weakness I can forgive, because by the end of the book they usually grow a backbone, but stupidity is usually incurable.
Also don’t like beta male heroes, but that’s purely a personal preference.

Hi :)
My favorite angst must be Richelle Mead’s Succubus hero Georgina who cannot sleep with her love because she will steal his life if she does. *sigh*
:)
Love From Canada
xoxo

Beauty and the Beast is a favorite of mine along with the soldier returning home from war and trying to find normal.

I love the wounded hero—emotionally or physically—who finds himself again with the heroine’s help.  Absolutely hate TSTL plot devices and heroines.

I like the heroines who think that they have family that is just too quirky, weird, demented, etc. for any “decent” man with half a brain to be able to put up with.  I like heros who have something wrong with them that doesn’t get fixed.  Whatever it is, remains and he continues to have to live with it while he tries to make his woman happy.

There’s one really angsty book I love:  Return to Night.  Set in Great Britain during WWII, contemporary to the writing.  Heroine is older woman who is a doctor.  She saves the hero’s life when she performd an emergency trepan on him.  Hero is a younger (not jail bait)member of the local squirearchy, extraordinarily talented as an actor,  but who hates his own good looks.  Lots of things to overcome: difference in age, difference in social strata—ordinary doctors were sort of middlish, middle class in England then—his overly possessive mother and other things I probably have forgotten.  I think I need to reread it.

Now for what I hate—must make you fall in love with me to redress some injury your family did my family—especially if it involves the person realizing they are being an idiot but have to go on because—wwwhhhaaa, their father made them swear on some mouldy sacred family heirloom so they cannot be forsworn. 

captcha:  Appear72—probably not quite that old but the heat and humidity in the Ohio Valley is making me feel about that age.

@Nita: Ooo, the “Jane Eyre” angst! Yeah, I love that too.

I think my favorite hero/heroine angst is the Uber-Emotion-Control freak who is afraid to lose their sense of self by losing control, a la Not Quite a Husband.  I think I especially like it when it’s the woman who feels the need to control herself and then realizes that by handing over the reins to the right person at the right time, she can be an even stronger version of herself.

I am with several others in my dislike of excessively whiny heroes AND heroines.

I despise revenge fantasies: ur dad stole my dad’s company so now i’m gonna make u my mistress and destroy ur life.
I especially also hate the, “all women are evil, gold digging bitches bcuz my ex-fiancee/lover/mother/girlfriend/whatever was an evil gold digging harlot who walked out on me/mydad/my uncle

Like: “Lo, I am wrong for her, for she is good and pure and I am made of sewage, and also a commoner, woe,” as long as it’s genuine.  Lisa Kleypas does this a lot, and I think she managed to pull it off… once?  There, it was more, “Lo, if I make a move on her, she will leave, and life will suck, so I’ll just go on as I am YAR KISS SHIT I SCREWED THAT UP.”

Like: hurt-comfort.

DO NOT WANT: ugly heroines who are beautiful at the end.  Every single time, it annoys me.  Every time.  It reinforces that looks are everything, it reinforces that looks are *really* everything for a woman, and it means I don’t get as much interesting and meaningful dialogue.  “You are so beautiful!” is boring. 

DO NOT WANT: power dynamics.  I like Bujold’s Dag and Fawn, but the middle two books are weak because Dag is made of awesome, and Fawn is made of supportive background character who will just love him enough to be special herself… and the worldbuilding is such that Fawn can only be awesome in the absence of Dag.  I dislike a lot of Asaro for the same reason.  And Twilight.  It is almost always the man who is powerful and the woman who is not, which just makes it worse.

@Tili: You might try Sweet Memories by Lavyrle Spencer. The heroine is overendowed, and very embarrassed and shy about it. The guy is her brother’s bff, younger than her, and very sweet (oooh, that hits several favorites here).

@Lynne Connolly: It’s not White Lies you’re thinking of, that one’s the spy with amnesia. I think Adam’s Fall is the one you mean.

“forbidding hotty mcwantingpants is deeeelicious”

*snorts her latte*

Love the Beauty/Beast angle as well…but not the hidden I’m-going-to-pretend-I’m-scarred/deformed-to-drive-you-away thing.

Physical scarring with a side of “who would want me now?” gets me EVERY TIME. Variations on a Beauty & the Beast theme, with extra angst pls!

I love and adore Beauty and the Beast romances, especially when someone plays around with what constitutes beauty and what constitutes beast. I will probably read anything if I know it plays off this theme.

As for tropes that I hate, I’m willing to give pretty much anything (pedophilia/incest/etc aside) a try if the writing is good, but I have a really, really hard time with romances in the first person POV. I go out of my way to avoid them.

Put me down as another B&B fan, but it’s really hard to top almost any Kinsale hero.  They suffer from PSTD; emotional trauma from sexual abuse; religious vows; strokes; deafness and inner ear problems; religious persecution and more.  Love ‘em all.

“@Lynne Connolly: It’s not White Lies you’re thinking of, that one’s the spy with amnesia. I think Adam’s Fall is the one you mean.”

You’re right, it wasn’t “White Lies,” that was the one another author (can’t remember who) allegedly ripped off, who was it?

Just found it. “Come Lie With Me.” Hero in a wheelchair, thinks he’s crippled, heroine is his therapist. Love some old Linda Howard.

Like the majority here, I love tortured heroes - the lost souls.  When only the heroine is able to break through the wall around his heart and make him believe he’s worthy of love - that’ll get me everytime.  My all time favorite lost soul is Houston from Texas Destiny by Lorraine Heath.

I love heroines that are clever, who go toe to toe with the hero.

I like dark and twisted pasts that come back to bite the hero on the ass but end up being overcome in the end.  He is all icy and brooding at first glance but then the Emo Wall of Pain starts to crumble.  There is almost always a confrontation between the heroine and the MegaEvilGuy or SeductiveSociopathicShrew where secrets and schemes are revealed.

I love campy time traveling vikings/knights/earls with hearts of gold.  The Very Virile Viking is my favorite of this sort.

Bring on the angst, I say. Especially the I’ve-loved-you-forever-but-you-never-saw-me angst.

I love it when the H/H has this Big Hurt that’s haunted them all their lives and it turns out to be an ingrown toenail.

.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) totally agree. In my book it’s probably the best used trope. :)

I also like the Beauty and the Beast, hurt/broken either inside or out.  But, I feel a particular glee when the role is reversed and the beast/broken one is the heroine and it’s up the hero to fix her.  My favorite example of that is Cry Wolf by Patricia Briggs. 

Also love the rake, I’m a bad boy angle.  Again, that secret *yippee* dance goes off in my head when it’s reversed and it’s the bad one is the gal.  Hmmm, I see a theme here.

Hate the big misunderstanding or I’ve got this deep dark secret that I can’t share with you.  Most of the time, I’m mind screaming, REALLY?  COME ON!!!  Don’t be an uncommunicative ass.  Secret baby falls into that category since it’s a secret after all…

Did you all know that Chase has a new book scheduled for late this month?  Am I the only clueless one?  I just found out about it while browsing.  I read the excerpt and I’m a bit confused… but still excited!

“hotty mcwantingpants”?? omg. howling. :D

I love scarred heroes. Physically, emotionally…physically. She doesn’t have to be a beauty but I do like the beast. ;)

I am so totally on board with the hotty McWantingpants that there ought to be a ship docked in the street outside my house.

I’m in BIG Lurrrrve with the forbidden attraction of the ‘ohmygodimsohotforyouimightjustburstintoflames’ persuasion.  Lots come to mind—Chase’s Lord Beelzebub of course, all of Kresley Cole’s Immortals, Lisa Kleypas’ Wallflower husbands (especially Lord St. Vincent) and Elizabeth Hoyt and the Fairy Tale Princes.

I can think of books with every type of formula trope that I’ve loved, but there are def. some that I’ll pick up when I don’t know the author’s work, and some that I won’t.  Once author trust is established, I’m all over it no matter how cliched the secret baby (and oh god, how I hate secret babies.  But Susan Anderson wrote one in her Marines series that I loved.)

Romantic tension builders I like: friends to lovers, Big Brother’s BFF, “she’s all alone in the world, do I protect or ravish?” which leads to my shameful love of guardian/ward stories, and greater love of historical career girl stories (one of my favorites is Dahl’s most recent historical, virgin “widow” and all), modern career girl stories as long as she doesn’t give up her career in the name of lurve (god, how poor = virtuous stories annoy me).  I love paranormals because I adore the “fated mate” trope, aka “how can I want someone I kind of despise so badly?” and I love it when the heroine kind of scares the hero with her badassyness (Midnight’s Daughter, Karen Chance; most Kresley Coles).  I especially adore the genre-role switches, Dear Author has a great post about that in Kresley Cole novels - how the females have a strong community, etc, and the males are often the loner/virgin/outcasts, as opposed to the old skool romances where the woman is in constant fear of social outcast status.

And I like almost all varieties of noblemen disguised as pirates.  Yum.

Dislikes: children.  Seriously, it takes a hell of an author to make me be okay with a secret baby, kids from a former marriage, snarky teen nephew or niece, mostly because the dialog seems fake and the kids seem like window dressing.  And, to some extent, because when you have children, I think you’re always going to be more committed to them than to your new spouse.  I don’t like 3rd parties in my HEA, even if the 3rd party is a child (books that end with the heroine pregnant irritate me as well, frankly.  It’s like no love is complete without being sealed with a damn baby).

@Alpha Lyra - you nailed my least favorite, the “we’re not grown ups enough to actually communicate for 5 minutes so let’s have 400 pages of dumb angst.” Arghhhhh….

These comments are FUNNY stuff.

My favorite is the marriage-of-convenience where they fall for each other. Love it.

My favorite angst is: “A long time ago/we used to be friends (or even better lovers/spouses)/but I haven’t thought of you lately at all” and now we HATEZ each other; but we don’t really hatez each other, we’z just fron’in cuz we’z been hurtz and we’z all skeered to open our hearts again.

One trope I’m so incredibly sick of I could vomit—the previously married to a bastard widow. I know, I know—for centuries, marriage was nothing more than a contractual exchange of property (aka, daughters/wives) between men, be they rich or poor and said men were allowed to get away with murder (literally, in some cases). But c’mon! Couldn’t there have been a few couples who managed to forge some sort of amicable relations, possibly even falling in love with each other, after the fact? (Incidentally, I was so happy to Beth from THE MADNESS OF LORD IAN MACKENZIE broke with this trend and actually loved her previous husband, despite the brevity of their marriage).

I’m a Beauty/Beast fan.  LOS, To Beguile a Beast, and so many others.  Love it! 

I also love my brother/relative’s BFF - as in Victoria Dahl’s Talk Me Down.  A big dollop of “I shouldn’t be attracted to her, oh but I am!” is excellent mixed with her self assurance.

Another fav is when an author is effective with a realistic parenting situation.  Erin McCarthy’s Flat Out Sexy is a great example.  She’s a single mom and balances her kids and her attraction to him.  He’s supportive of her as a mom.  There’s no magic disappearing of the kids so that they can have a romance.  They’re meeting up at 2pm to have that hour before the kids come home from school… hot! 

I’m not a secret baby fan.  I HATE it when the conflict could be solved with one page of dialog if the main characters would just TALK TO EACH OTHER.

Definitely another fan of the beauty and the beast - so long as he isn’t melodrama city over his looks. Internal scars are even more delicious. Paging Carlyle’s Bentley Rutledge TTT.

Also love the older brother of her bff/bff of her older brother kind of off-limits. Those always seem to exude great chemistry and humorous false starts.

Really, really hate secrets though. When one or the other lies about why they’re pushing the other away, I want to toss the book. So long as there’s some honesty over the conflict I can stomach most angst. Straight-up lying kills it every time.

I love the best friends forever but she’s totally in love with him then decides to get over him and move on… THEN he realizes what he’s been missing all alone ... My Best Friend’s Lover is a good example

I love it when my hero is all messed up and the girl he saves fixes him up emotionally and mentally. It’s always the big bad tough guys that fall into this category, but I love it nonetheless.

Please count me in for the drawing.

I’m with Jocelyn on the children thing, and especially when the book ends with the heroine pregnant. That just usually ends up making me sad for them, that they never got time to be an established couple together before having it derailed by a baby. The other thing I hate? Amnesia. Dear Lord, how I hate the amnesia books.

I lurve the B&B type books (Goddess of the Rose was gorgeous, Cry Wolf made me ache for them). And also ones where the hero/heroine are equally powerful, but in ways that they may not recognize in each other. Like Warprize or Poison Study.

Wow, all these beauty and the beast fans. Add me to the pile. I think one of my favorites in that vein has to be Laura Kinsale’s The Prince of Midnight.

I also kind of dig the Native American/half breed thing - not fitting in type to any society book. Haven’t seen too many of those lately, but when those are done well *swoon*

I like it when there are real barriers to the relationship, and I have to wonder how the author will make it all work out.  Nancy Butler had a trad Regency in the much missed (by me at any rate) Signet line where the heroine, Ursula, an aristocratic widow, dangles after after a rich duke because she’s tied of being poor.  Of course, she then visits one of his country estates and falls for Will, his steward.  Back in those days, class barriers were real.  There’s a great scene where Will tells Ursula to “stop rescuing the things that matter to me, or I shall go mad with wanting you.”  Loved, loved, loved that expression of seemingly hopeless longing—definitely a case of hotty mcwantingpants.

Reading all the posts above mine, I’m once again struck by how many people love tropes I avoid.  It’s wonderful, though, that we can all find something satisfying in the romance genre.

Spamword:  sat69—Lots of potential responses to that, but I’m not sure I want to go there.

Looking for scarred (emotionally & physically) heroes, I highly recommend Elizabeth Hoyt’s Four Horseman series: 4 soldiers return to England after surviving a massacre in the colonies. The heroines are well done too. Can’t wait for the final book in the series to come out later this year!

Interesting topic given that the last two books I’ve read have tortured heroes.  I just finished Elizabeth Hoyt’s “To Beguile a Beast”, and loved the hero and how she showed his vulnerable side through the love of his pet dog, and am currently reading Samantha James’S Secret Passion of Simon Blackwell. 

Again another hero with physical and psychological damage who finds himself falling in love with a heroine he neither loved nor wanted but now discovers he can’t live without.

I love it when the hero and the heroine are enemies or dislike the other but in the end they fall in love.

I think I love redemption stories best and I like to write them, I also love unconventional heroes, so Kinsale comes to mind and Robin Schone.
I hate big misunderstandings and heroes whose whole conflict is based on the terrible certainty their big manly love sword could never be taken by such a sweet virginal heroine.

I’m into the forbidden love angst too.  On the other hand, I hate hate hate the martyr syndrome, especially if it’s combined with TSTL.

Forbidden attraction works for me, but I also draw the line when it involves pedophiles (vampire or not). Also, any that have the female lead damaged due to rape or abuse - who needs that in fiction?

Laura Kinsale’s “For My Lady’s Heart” comes to mind.  There was angst done right.  A hero tormented by an ex-wife’s lunatic religious rantings and his pledge to her that he would be celibate at her urging because he was too young and naive to know better until he met the dispossessed lady not inexperienced in the way of lust and longing.  She gives him the go ahead to indulge in earthly delights and the added gift of telling him his wife is dead…executed by the church for being a witch which absolves him of his vow to her.  Good stuff.

I love forbidden romances! Special weakness for the innocent girl and playboy/rogue characters. Or, enemies to lovers stories. sigh.

big manly love sword

My new favorite phrase. : )

I love a secretly soft-hearted, huge, scarred, hulking brute of a hero combined with angst caused by social ineptness or just plain disregard for society as a whole. And the heroine who matches is A) nurturing enought to care for him despite his bluster, or B) fiesty enough to take on the world and drag him along with her; or C) so tortured and dark in her own right that the hero is compelled to protect her and teach her about the softer side of life (in his own awkward way, of course).

I dislike lover/spouse/one-night-stand reunited romances. I don’t know why but they just make me feel a little green around the gills.

Man, I’m generating a sizable list of books to look for from this thread. 

I remember being really wowed when an author turned what should have driven me nuts into a really interesting character trait: in “The Beast” by Judith Ivory, the heroine is so astoundingly gorgeous, and knows it, but sees it as a double-edged sword.  She uses it to her advantage often, but tires of it.

Also, love the hasty marriages of convenience, where the h/h don’t really get to know one another until after the vows have been said.  Favorite example of this is in “Outlander” by Diana Gabaldon.  Conversely, I’m so sick of the marriage of convenience/arranged marriage where the heroine explicitly tells the hero that she won’t sleep with him without love.  Seen that so many times…

I hate when characters fall in love too fast. That said, I love a good marriage of convenience-turned-love-marriage.

I also hate what we are supposed to believe are deep emotional wounds that are solved in a day via the power of true luurve.

Oo, and martyr complexes—no more doormat heroines (or heros).

Hmmmm…. some of my favorite angst(s), in no particular order

—Emotionally wounded characters who think that they are incapable of loving/being loved.

-Big fan of the “Ack, my best friend is hot! When did that happen?” storyline.

—Characters who have to come to terms with themselves and their own pasts before they can allow themselves to feel… well, what they are pretty clearly already feeling but stomping on heartily (see above re: cannot act on the hottie mcwantingpants—except instead of a personal code, it’s several boatloads of past trauma).

Argh. Now I want to go re-read various examples, and it’s really time for me to head off and get some sleep…

JD

My favorite angst is the screwed up childhood (weren’t we all screwed up by something in childhood?). Anything from my parents weren’t good parents and so I won’t be a good mother/father and can’t get married, to I don’t believe in marriage for love because of my volotaile family, etc (obviously these work best in historicals).

I can’t wait for Dahls next book!

Second comment, so ignore this one if it wins a book: I really like PTSD characters of any stripe.  A great many of the good parts of Miss Wonderful were PTSD-related.  I like that Patricia Briggs’ Mercy has panic attacks, and that they affect the plot.  I like twitchy-nervous Nora Roberts heroines (usually the heroines) and heroes you don’t touch while they’re sleeping because they will a) throw you across the room and b) feel really, really sorry for you afterward but c) they warned you, you idiot.  It annoys me if done poorly, because I know folks who are dealing with it, but still.

Fav: Any angst due to past damage leading to the heroine/hero feeling they are unlovable.

Actually come to think of it, I quite like all angst as long as it’s done well. As long as they don’t drift to TSTL territory, I’m good.

I really get hot for the forbidden.  Some examples are the widow who fights the attraction to the deceased husband’s best friend who was hot for her for years.

I also love the twist where a best friend or roommate has been dating someone but the guy is really into the heroine but the heroine resists to not hurt the best friend or roommate…this one is touchy but when written well, I love it.

Also like the regencies where the hero falls for the forbidden heroine has one of those horrible pasts that won’t allow her to be in his “perfect” world.  Like she was a housekeeper or was a stage actress.

love these kind of stories.

liking the cougar tales books’
the ugly duckling stories are good tooo

Definitely the “rescue” theme - gets me every time.  I love it when the hero rescues the heroine and (very often, the heroine rescues him right back).

I’m looking forward to this book - please count me in for the giveaway!!

I love the whole, “I was emotionally/physically/whatever damaged and must now be cold, emotionless and aloof, because the strength of my emotions will kill you.” and then the heroine must show how his loving her won’t be her death sentence.

Examples: Judd from Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh and Rhage from Lover Eternal by JR Ward

Also, the heroine proposing marriage the hero in order to save herself for some reason.

Examples: Jessica from Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase and Evie from The Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas

I adored Broken Wing by Judith James because the hero was messed up for a very real reason. It was such a beautiful story, far and away the best Romance I have ever read.

I’ve loved the Jane Eyre plot for years (since I first read Jane Eyre, really), but it’s so rare to see it done well—it doesn’t work at all if the heroine is beautiful and just thinks she’s unattractive, or if she magically transforms halfway through. Anything that pins the attraction on something other than looks makes me happy.

Also, very fond of the friends-to-more-than-friends plotline, as it’s always felt incredibly realistic to me (it’s how I ended up with my fiancé), and I’ll admit to a weakness for a hero/heroine who fancies their sibling’s best friend. It’s such a fun dynamic to play with.

But when it’s done right, forbidding hotty mcwantingpants is deeeelicious.

I would have you know that I nearly spewed tea all over my computer from that.

I love the damaged hero, too.  One who thinks he’s not worthy of the heroine. (I hate books where this makes him act like an a** to the heroine, though.) 

Friends to lovers is a big favourite, too.  When the hero suddenly looks at his friend and sees something different.  *sigh*  I love these kind of books.

I’m a sucker for guys who are perfectly content with their well-ordered lives.  Good job, nice routine, a lack of emotional attachment that they view as a strength, not a weakness.  Then another guy sweeps in like a tornado and whips Hero #1’s life into a frenzy, showing him just how fun chaos can be.  By the end of the story Hero #1 can never go back to being content again.  Content is blah. Content is empty.  He wants *happiness,* and he wants it with Hero #2. :)

I don’t know that I have a favorite angst/trope. I’ll pretty much read anything as long as it entertains me.

But I hate! hate! hate! the Old Skool “Ugh! I am chest-beating-alpha-asshat, let me do your thinking for you and boss you around and treat you like shit because I know what’s best for you little-miss-doormat and might makes right.” Although it has to be laid on really thick for it to interrupt my reading because sometimes small amounts don’t bother me. (This comes from a personal history of reading what was at hand or not reading at all.)

I’ve also never really liked the revenge thing.

I really adore Beauty/Beast story lines. I love scarred heroes (and heroines, for that matter). I’m also a sucker for when either the hero or heroine are perfectly content with their life before the introduction of the other person and don’t want to change.

I’m partial to heroines with a very immediate and obvious flaw (pathological liar, witch with no control over powers, etc) that must be overcome or, better, learned to live with. I like childhood trauma that must be overcome to grow into a fully functioning adult. If it’s the hero who helps her with this, it’s a bonus.

May/December romances (particularly 25-30 year old women, 45-55 year old men) particularly make me want to swoon. :D

Big43—I’m not touching that one.

“Lo, if I make a move on her, she will leave, and life will suck, so I’ll just go on as I am YAR KISS SHIT I SCREWED THAT UP.”

Diatryma, I should not have taken a sip of coffee before reading that…

And I pretty much agree with your likes and hates, although my hate is for the girl that is pretty by todays standards but Oh noes!  This time period didn’t value her stick-thinness/general awesomeness… 

Right now I’m jonesing for a betaman.  I’m keen to read Kate Noble, Compromised (just reviewed by Book Smugglers) and am liking the sound of that hero.

I hate heroines that are just too cool for society and continuously alienate themselves to the point of rudeness.  It just seems to me like the author is trying to write a modern woman in a historical period.

I love the hero who shouldn’t be attracted to the heroine because of his role/ responsibility/ duty but just can’t help himself falling smoking hot in love with her. Good example: Kleypas’ ‘It Happened One Autumn’ which I loved, despite not liking some of the plot devices (e.g. seducing her after she’d been drinking).

Hate: secret babies, ‘I’m doing this for your own good’ and stupid misunderstandings.

Would love to win this book as I am a (new) Victoria Dahl fan-girl and can’t wait for this one and ‘Start Me Up’ which I have already pre-ordered and am hoping desperately that it arrives before I leave for my holiday.

I’m not a big fan of angst, especially if it’s a wallow.  I like more subtle character-based conflict.  However, I do like amnesia.  I’m not consciously drawn to amnesiacs, but it happens that three of my favorite books/series involve amnesia, and whether the hero is rediscovering himself as he recovers his memory or revealing a different side of himself in his memoryless state, I enjoy seeing the layers peel back as he slowly recognizes that he’s standing right next to the Perfect Woman. 

I loath and despise heroes who lecture their honeys and criticize their character flaws throughout the novel, and the heroines who fall into their arms at the end: yuck!  I recalling reading something in the dark ages where the heroine had been committed to a mental hospital and stripped of her child’s custody by her inlaws, and a family friend lectured her throughout the book on how she should understand their point of view and give up all thoughts of revenge.  When she ended up with this guy, I stopped reading the author forever.

Wow I hope these comments are still open. I -loved- Dahl’s last contemporary. I’m with you on the “must not must not” hotnesss trope, if only because of all the guilty fantasies on both sides. I love an active imagination.

One exception are historicals with a massive class difference- it just takes me out of the story. I spend the whole time thinking, “yeah but you really can’t do that. I mean not at all… ” And then the last chapter is, “It turns out she was a princess all along!/ He was a duke in hiding!/ he just inherited the Baronetcy…” whatever. Bleh. If you’re going to do it, go all the way. “They moved to Australia! Lived on a pittance! No one would associate with their children!”

Also, children in peril (unless it’s not just an obvious plot device- I’m a slave to my mom hormones, for the childbearing years at least, and nothing makes a book hit the wall faster. I had to watch the last season on BSG basically on my husband’s lap) And like everyone else - Alpha Mc. Rapes a Lot. No thanks. Not even with that so-thoughtful “cream”.

I didn’t see mention of the Underworld dynamic: vampire vs. lycan and the forbidden love that results in hundreds of years of fighting. So incredibly sad when these lovers can’t be together.

I’m yet another who loves the wounded/battle-scarred hero.  It’s so nice to know I’m not alone in this!

I’m a sucker for the tortured hero—the best being two Dereks, in my opinion—Derek Sutherland (Kresley Cole’s Captain of All Pleasures) and Derek Craven (Lisa Kleypas’ Dreaming of You).
I love that they both have genuine issues, too.  Sutherland is married and Craven is pretty emotionally stunted.  Nothing hotter than a lusting man trying to talk himself out of the lusting, and failing miserably.

SBSarah, totally agree. I love the angst that is a GOOD reason two people shouldn’t be together. But if it’s not a good reason, I usually can’t stand it.

Also, I love the angst of one of them having screwed up the relationship and trying to make it up to the other.
And unrequited love on one or both parts.

But the best is when the sexual tension is totally there, but they have to keep denying it because [insert reason]. Often, I find the sexual tension so much more satisfying (hur) than the sex scenes.

I love when the heroine is fat.  Jude Deveraux Wishes comes to mind.  I also like when the heroine isn’t that pretty, or when the hero JUST notices her there.

My BIGGEST pet peeve is TOTALLY inaccurate historical romances.  One example of this was a historical when the date was set at 1605 and they were talking about what Queen Elizabeth was doing at court.  What was she doing?  Pushing up daisies!!!!  She died in 1603!

I’m totally in the Beauty and the Beast camp. Love scarred, wounded heroes, either physically or emotionally - as long as they can be healed/rehabed or functional (not physically, but emotionally) by the HEA. If still emotionally really damaged, don’t think the HEA would hold, and it makes it hard for me to buy in to the “off into the sunset” ending.

YES! The tortured hero, we love him. But said tortured hero must be completely free of self pity - they’re tortured, everybody was meeeen to them when they were vulnerable widdle children… people are *still* so meeen to them, but we and the heroines can see how full of win they really are. *sigh* My two favorite heroes (both of whom are tortured of course) are Harry Braxton from Connie Brockway’s “As You Desire” and Meredith Duran’s half (actually quarter) breed duke Julian Sinclair.

Darlene Marshall said on…
06.17.09 at 02:56 PM
Put me down as another B&B fan, but it’s really hard to top almost any Kinsale hero.  They suffer from PSTD; emotional trauma from sexual abuse; religious vows; strokes; deafness and inner ear problems; religious persecution and more.  Love ‘em all.

YES! Kinsale’s heroes are the BEST! But she doesn’t reserve her torture just for her heroes, which is why he heroines are probably some of the most interesting in Romancelandia. How great was it that S.T., the half-deaf ex-highwayman in “The Prince of Midnight” was the romantic while Leigh was the cold, hard-nosed pragmatic who needed the healing power of True Lurve (tm) to save her. *le sigh*

“men87” - Give me 87 tortured men, huzzah!

I love a tortured hero too…but there is something intriguing about a heroine who has a deep dark secret and has a man willing to pursue her regardless of that. Again, nothing silly…I mean like really good deep dark secrets. I killed someone, I am a pirate/highwaywoman/thief etc. But then I like a strong heroine…someone who is as adventurous and captivating as her man.

I’m going to pipe up in limited favor of the secret baby here.

*ducks thrown shoes and books*

I mean, not the “oh, noes, I got pregnant and didn’t tell you and hey, look, you’re a daddy and have been for 5 years” secret baby. That’s bullshit.

But the idea that the hero or heroine had a child out of wedlock—in historicals, mind you, not contemporaries—and hides it to protect his or her reputation and to secure the child’s future? That’s awesome, especially if the other person steps up to be the missing parent.

(I suppose you could blame Jane Eyre for this, too. Rochester did step up for Adele, even though he wasn’t her father.)

It’s not the classic secret baby, but it’s still a secret baby, and it’s an angsty story that I like.

The tortured hero trope works for me.  Also love the “you’re too good for me, but I want you anyway” thing going on.  I especially love when both the hero and the heroine have issues and they save each other.  Swoon…

I’m not sure what my fave angst is cuz I’m not really an angst kinda person, but I can say what my least favourite is! 

I hate when characters (one or both, but especially the female) have had the worst lives imaginable (ie they were born in a dumpster to a crack addict then went through foster home after foster home and got molested each time then had every one they loved die then inadvertently started the apocalypse) and because of this they have no capacity to love whatsoever.  I get really angry and just wish they’d move on damnit. 

Kelley Armstrong’s Elena went through some awful shit but managed to get over that and be a super cool character.  She didn’t let it hold her back.  But Tayla in Larissa Ione’s Pleasure Unbound made me so pissed off.  I get it, you had a shitty life, but that’s not the fault of the one decent person you will ever meet.  Tayla held on to that awful life tightly, like it was the best she could hope for and there was no point in dreaming. 

I read romances because they are not like the real world.  I don’t want to have to deal with your terrible problems.

okay I’m done. whew!  that all sounds so unsympathetic. I wish I could explain it better.

Sam D,

Might I suggest Wild Western Bride by Rosalyn Alsobrook.  it’s about a man who marries a woman in order to give two orphans a home, but he is in a wheel chair and feels like a useless man and she helps him realize that he can still do normal things.  he is also scarred from the accident that put him in the chair and doesn’t want to frighten her by letting her see the grotesqueness that is his mangled leg.  it’s very sweet and fun (the book, not his leg).

My fave is probably some insurmountable obstacle, like age or injury, that can’t change but has to be met. And if the two can be combined, all the better!

Least fave is being mwahaha driven by revenge or dickish for its own sake. Meh.

Honestly, I can handle anything as long as it’s done well (and even, on occasion, when it’s not but I’m in the moment).

I hate when the barrier is dragged on too long though, or when the characters keep flip-flopping. A Harlequin Historical I read (I think it was His Lady Mistress) was like that. The heroine was beaten-down and a bit timid, but earnest, sweet, and honest, and had nursed a crush on the hero since he came to her rescue at the worst time of her life. He eventually married her (because, after not seeing her for years and being told by her relatives that she was dead, he had sex with her, thinking she was a maid, then went , oh noes, I have sullied your honour, I must marry you! when he figured out who she really was), then treated her like shit. He thought she’d tricked him into marriage, and then, as his feelings for her grew, continued to push her away because of a stupid promise he’d made to his mother, who he thought was a cow anyway. It turned out HEA, but drove me insane.

My favourite

forbidding hotty mcwantingpants

has got to be Riley from Barbara Michaels’ Into the Darkness.  That has a whole pile of forbidden hotty mcwanting, with a side order of stoic, scarred, melty hero. 

I’m really digging the chemistry in Karen Marie Moning’s Fever series these days - the series as a whole has a romantic arc, but no resolution yet.  However, I’m sure that our hero, while full of bastard alpha male-ness, is actually tightly containing his terrible, awesome love for our heroine and thinks he’s just too bad to love.

On the chiller side, I also have to mention the hero of Michaels’ Stitches in Time as an example of an amazing beta male, and Dag from the Sharing Knife series is both scarred and sweet.  Love ‘em.

Ok I’m entering cuz of twitter pressure and cuz I want a book!

OH I love"The worlds going to end if we dont MATE!” stories. “We must make love, I don’t want you either but we MUST!”  How is it that humanity hinges on you getting some? Oh heck I’m old. I usually cheer for them not to hook up, I’m not getting any so let’s just see what happens if they don’t do it!

Love, Love, Love: Overcoming addiction especially to opiates.  There’s just nothing more hypnotically attractive to me than the druggie reformed by true lurve and forced to confront his weaknesses.  A good example is To Rescue a Rogue by Jo Beverley. 

Hate, Hate, Hate Heroines who feel shamed or soiled or something because they were raped, molested, or inappropriately hit upon.  Jealous heroes who are cruel to the heroine because they think all women are sluts, untrustworthy or dishonorable also suck metaphorical ass.