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

How about Dearly Beloved by Putney or Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold?  Almost all of Crusie’s books have at least one bad parent, from Anyone but You to Welcome to Temptation—and they all have a significant impact on the adult child and his/her relationship.  Oh, then there’s Linda Howard’s Shades of Twilight and After the Night.  Maybe it would be easier to compile a list of books that DON’T have a shiteously destructive parent.

And am I the only one who feels that the sheer number of bad mothers in Romance is a scandal?  The contrast of the “bad mother” to the “good mother” in the person of the heroine is a bit troubling to me, as is the proliferation of bad parents in general in the genre.  Although, it does make for an interesting analysis vis a vis the way Romance idealizes the family structure, and how the “good” family is drawn.

Lady of Desire by Galaen Foley - bad dad

The Devil You Know by Liz Carlyle - bad dad

The Rose and the Shield by Sara Bennet - bad dad

It’s in His Kiss by Julia Quinn - bad dad, or possibly bad uncle

Shadows and Lace by Teresa Medeiros - crappy, if not actively evil dad

The one that leapt to mind was Carolina Moon, I believe that was the title from Nora Roberts.  Horribly abusive father.  And, of course, Eve Dallas. It hard to come up with more childhood abuses than Eve suffered.

It is interesting, because more often than not abusive parents are seeminly put forth as a valid excuse to explain why the men in a book are such obnoxious asshats, and women are such wimps. I think Eve is one of the very few cases where a woman develops a serious backbone despite the abuse.

This particular plot device is so common, IMO, because there’s an endless amount of character development that can derive from it. If done well.

Although, more often than not it seems to be a thinly veiled excuse for the hero to behave badly.

Nora Roberts’s entire J.D. Robb “In Death” series—the heroine was sexually abused by her father to the point that she killed him when she was eight, and the hero’s father was a murdering drunken abusive asswipe who killed his (the hero’s) mother.

What I really like about the series is how the two, Eve and Roarke, start out as incredibly damaged people who are not victims of their childhoods. Yes, what they went through as kids informs the adults they are, and might have fucked them up more if not for their marriage, but they don’t make excuses for it.

What I love about Nora’s writing is that she gives her female characters (and the male ones as well) full rein to be complete, effed-up, self-destructive jerks when it’s warranted. Eve is not a nice little lady because of her abusive background, she’s hard and doesn’t trust people and often punches people in the face. And I LOVE that.

Huh. That took me so long to write that Jess scooped me.

*hangs head*

Sorry Sara.  Though you did a much better job of explaining. I think that’s what made me enjoy the In Death books so much. Because their pasts didn’t just turn the hero and heroine into dysfunctional disasters, but gave depth to their characters and explained so much about their personalities.

Instead of wanting to smack them and telling them to get over themselves, you want to see how they continue to evolve and meet each challenge in life.

Hmm, who had the bad parents in To Have and To Hold? I remember Rachel’s awful husband, but I don’t remember anything about either her or Sebastian’s family.

Sebastian’s father, IIRC.  When he had to go back for his father’s funeral, didn’t we get a bunch of info about how emotionally and physically abusive his father was?  I could be remembering completely wrong, here, but for some reason it’s sticking.

How do you see the good family being drawn in romance, Robin?

Good question, Candy, and one to which I don’t have an immediate answer.  One thing I do think, though, is that in Romance bad parents play a special role because the genre has an implicit moral approach to the whole notion of family.  One a surface level, there seems to be some contrast being drawn between a family built on this incredible love and passion between the hero and heroine and one built on, well, convenience or power or something in the bad parents.  But I don’t think the contrast always works that way, because of the way Romance can often emphasize more traditional gender expectations for the hero and heroine, as well.  So the bad mommy who married daddy for money is supposed to be a contrast to the selfless nurturing heroine, but then the heroine is herself an embodiment of some problematic stereotypes.  I actually don’t think there’s one answer to this question, but it’s something that always strikes me as an issue in Romance that’s not talked about a lot.

People have mentioned some of Nora Roberts’s other books, but there’s also the entire Chesapeake Bay series—each of the four heroes was rescued from abuse and/or neglect by Ray and Stella Quinn. IIRC, three of them had mothers who were drunks and/or druggies and/or prostitutes, and the fourth had a (physically) abusive father.

My verification word is “study49.” Apparently, the internet gods are reminding me what I need to do tonight.

Black Jewels series by Anne Bishop.  We follow the heroine Janelle from adolescence to her early twenties, I think.  Her family, in general, is pretty horrific--blind to her abilities/destiny and forever sticking her in a mental institution to fix it.  While there she is, as so many of the young occupants were, brutally raped.  (It’s sort of the place to go if you’re a young lord who gets off on sexually abusing children.) It’s extremely discomfiting and very effective.

At any rate, Janelle grows up to be seriously Big Time, kicks everyone’s ass, et cetera, but when she confronts the mom with her true ass-kicking witchy self, the mom freaks; calls her disgusting or some such.  Still Janelle prevails.

The heroes, Daemon and Lucivar corner the market on fucked-up mother figures.  Incest makes an appearance, but they seem to be healed by their quest to save the world and the love they find.

Good stuff, but even as wretched as the parental/guardian abuse was, it didn’t seem to me to be the primary cause of hatred of all females everywhere because they’re money-grubbing sluts like dear old mom as it is in some romance.  The Black Jewels is fantasy so that could be the reason for the difference.  Don’t know.

Hmm, who had the bad parents in To Have and To Hold? I remember Rachel’s awful husband, but I don’t remember anything about either her or Sebastian’s family.

Robin is correct, Sebastian’s father was horribly cold and abusive.  And the rest of his family was not exactly warm and fuzzy either.  But Bad Daddy was set up as Exhibit A for “Why Sebastian Is the Jerk that He Is” at the beginning of the story.

The Dream Hunter by Laura Kinsale: Zenia and her relationship with Hester Stanhope--now that’s some dysfunction cakes right there. Arden’s dad is shitty to him for being shy and having a stutter, but it’s nothing near the dysfunctionality of Hester and Zenia’s relationship.

Yes, Zenia and her mother had a very dysfunctional relationship.  But Arden’s mom and dad were not really shitty to him (IMO), just really unbearably overprotective and (once he became an adult) very awkward in his presence.  I do not recall Arden having a stutter, although I may be wrong.  (Famous romance stutterers include the hero of Julia Quinn’s “The Duke and I”, the heroine of Lisa Kleypas’ “The Devil in Winter”, the heroine of Georgette Heyer’s “A Marriage of Convenience”, and Stuart from Judith Ivory’s “Untie My Heart”.)

I really disliked Zenia in “The Dream Hunter” in the second half of the story when I first read the book, but on re-read I found her psychological issues that sprang from her mother and her upbringing really fascinating and noticed that the misconnects between Arden and her were not *all* her fault.  The beauty of the characters of Zenia and Arden is how complementary they are--both unhappy and uncomfortable in the surroundings of their birth and upbringing and longing for the freedom (in Arden’s case) or security (in Zenia’s case) of a foreign land.  Zenia raised by a controlling but neglectful mother and Arden by controlling but overprotective parents.  Both *so* protective of their hard-won independence.  This is definitely a book that I liked much better on the re-read.

Two Three Four more Putney books to add to the list, all from her Fallen Angels series:

One Perfect Rose & Shattered Rainbows The father of the two heroes of these books more or less pitted them against each other, and disowned the younger son.  The dad doesn’t appear in the books, but the information given makes him seem like an @sshole, with complications caused by a tempestuous marriage to a woman who may have foisted off a bastard on him.

Thunder & Roses:  Nick, abandoned by his sick mother to his grandfather’s care.  Gramps hated him and thought his impure blood sullied the family line, and always let him know it.

Angel Rogue.  Bluff British father thought Robin too effeminate and lazy.  Robin ran and away and became a spy.  I’ll show you, daddy!

The basis of the group of friends was that their families sucked, so they became each others families.

Thanks a lot everybody.

I’ve got a nice, long list to go through now.

Dalia

You guys beat me to the punch again, naming my top choices.  Just to chime in anyway (because as a former boss said, “Darlene believes everyone is entitled to her opinion"), I would’ve put Eve Dallas and Roarke at the top of that abuse list, followed by Sebastian Dain from Lord of Scoundrels.

Some other SEP’s with parenting issues include Hot Shots with the heroine’s controlling, distant father, and a similar situation for Judith McNaught’s heroine in Perfect (Or was it Paradise? My office is being painted and the books are away).

Thanks, Candy.  Paradise was the one I was thinking of, with the dead baby and all that angst.

THE PERFECT RAKE by Anne Gracie—grandfather is a piece of work

THE CHARMER by Madeline Hunter—both H/H have really horrible fathers

PASSION by Lisa Valdez—Mark’s mother made Joan Crawford look like June Cleaver

I would be hard pressed to come up with romance novels that featured parents where there *wasn’t* some form of dysfunction.  One seldom reads about a hero or heroine’s parents and learn that the parents loved each other, and their child, as well.  I seem to recall that in Judith McNaught’s “Something Wonderful,” the heroine’s father was dead and her mother was a shrill recluse.  The hero’s parents were wildly and blatantly unfaithful to each other as well as emotionally unavailable to their son.  The result: a perfect romance match.

“Something Wonderful” features the two prominent family structures in romance, which is either one or more abusive parents, or the absent parent.  Neither of these frequently-employed models much surprise me.  Psychological analysis of fairy tales has pointed out that the hero or heroine of the story often comes from an incomplete or unsatisfying family in order to precipitate their movement into the larger world.  If the family unit was complete and sound, there would be no crisis which forces the h/h into their adventure and symbolic road to maturity.  For example, if Jack had both his parents, he and his mother might not be as desperately poor, nor would his mother send him to the market to sell the cow and set in motion the chain of events which lead him to climb the beanstalk (hello Senor Phallic Symbol!) and ultimately make his fortune.  I believe Bruno Bettelheim discussed this in “The Uses of Enchantment,” though I’m not entirely certain.

It has been postulated in “Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women” that not only does the heroine represent and serve as a cipher for the reader, but that the hero does, as well, and they both form the dual nature of the reader’s consciousness.  With this in mind, it would make sense that one or both of the protagonists suffer from some sort of parental trauma which is healed over the course of the novel. 

Personally, I’m not a big fan of Byron McBroodersons carrying on for twenty odd years because he caught Mommy schtupping the tutor and now all people with boobies are whores, including you, Miss Feisty Bluestocking.  Nor do I believe that he should trill happily after suffering from childhood abuse.  I think that there is a happy medium somewhere in the midst this, whereby our hero (and, yes, heroine) is accountable for their actions as an adult, and behaves accordingly. 

While I adore La Nora, I have been nursing a pet theory about her hero Grayson from “Born In Ice.” I think that he’s attracted to Bree precisely because she represents the mothering he never received.  He’s aroused by the sight of her disinfecting a bathroom.  I think that qualifies as somewhat Oedipal…

Gotta go with the In Death series.  Start with Naked in Death.

Arden didn’t stutter. And his mom was a total bitch to him in his adulthood.

A lot of Nora Roberts’ characters have a bad parent. Angelina in Midnight Bayou had a mother that was a druggie and slept with A’s boyfriend when A was a teenager. Stella in Blue Dahlia had a pretty bad mom too IIRC. Hmm, my word veri is policy81. Maybe that’s where in the Romance Writer’s Handbook we’d find the rule regarding abusive/neglectful parents?

Lady’s Companion and With This Ring by Carla Kelly and pretty damn near everything by Dinah McCall.

What I’m looking for in particular is not ‘bad’ parents but ‘bad’ relationships - where no singular party is wholly at fault and throughout the course of the novel, the hero/ine and the parent(s) work through their problems (or attempt to do so).

What I’m looking for in particular is not ‘bad’ parents but ‘bad’ relationships - where no singular party is wholly at fault and throughout the course of the novel, the hero/ine and the parent(s) work through their problems (or attempt to do so).

Ah.  Well, I think that Kinsale’s “The Dream Hunter” is an excellent example of the type of complex, dysfunctional relationship between father and son that you describe.  There is really a very poignant scene near the end of the book involving Arden and his father.

There is a series of historical mysteries set in the Regency period written by C.S. Harris (AKA Candice Proctor) featuring a nobleman hero, Sebastian St. Cyr, who has a very interesting, complex relationship with his father.

Mary Balogh’s “A Summer to Remember” features a hero who believes that he has always been a disappointment to his father.  The two work on their dysfunctional relationship during the course the book.

Another book with a dysfunction mother/son combination is Sutcliffe’s “Darking, I Listen” which features a mother who was so interested in furthering her young son’s career as a child star that she turned a blind eye to obvious signs of child abuse.

The father in Judith McNaught’s “Paradise” is a control freak who believes that his daughter is a whore, because he thought that her mother was a whore, etc., etc.  Paradoxically, no one is good enough for her.  He is *extremely* manipulative and his bad behavior sets up the whole Big Mis between the hero and heroine.  He gets off waaay too easily in the end, IMO. 

Books in which the offending parent is blithely forgiven by everyone at the end of the story always leave me shaking my head...."Well, he *did* sell me into slavery and then try to murder me, but he *is* my dad and I guess that for the purposes of family harmony and the HEA we should all kiss and make up....”

Dalia--Someone who does a lot of difficult father/son relationships is Jayne Anne Krentz.  They’re dysfunctional in the sense that oftentimes the father doesn’t understand the son, his career choices, his taste in women and his motivation ‘til the heroine explains it all to him and brings them together with her sweetness and light

Quoth Zoe Archer:

I would be hard pressed to come up with romance novels that featured parents where there *wasn’t* some form of dysfunction.  One seldom reads about a hero or heroine’s parents and learn that the parents loved each other, and their child, as well.

Actually, this kinda-sorta happens fairly often in the Regency state of Romancelandia.

One common scenario is based on the “runaway love match” device.  Although the parents were forbidden to marry—usually forbidden due to class or financial differences—they provide a loving home environment, replete with public displays of affection.  Frequently there is financial instability, whether from a life spent following the drum or from the gambling habit of the genial-yet-spendthrift father.  Familial tension is provided by grandparents and other family members who cast off the unrepentant parents and with whom the hero/ine must come to terms.

The other major scenario involves an idyllic period of childhood lasting until the death of one or both parents.  Enter the wicked stepparent, unscrupulous uncle, lecherous guardian, or whomever.  While the abuse is still being performed by someone in a parental role, the hero/ine still has the memories of “what marriage can be”.

I have to nominate one of my own books.  I don’t usually write about famiial dysfunction.  But in my BODY OF LIES, the heroine Alexandra Waters’ father Sammy raped her when she was fourteen, “gave” her, as he was dying, to the hero when she was seventeen (luckily our hero sort of misinterpreted the “gift") and in between was, as one of my reader’s described it, a hot mess. 

But I agree with whoever said that often times poor parenting as the reason why heroes behave badly or heroines become wimps can be overused.  Undoubtedly in fiction as well as life, our relationship with our parents shapes us, but not all of us in the same way.  And how come no one ever seems to see a shrink?  Please, if you’re that messed up, quit dating people and get some help first.  Historical characters please ignore the last comment.

I would have to agree with Zoe, it is easier to list the books where the hero/heroine does not have some sort of dysfunctional family, I suggest she go to Borders hit the romance aisle and read a few back covers.

Ooo, don’t forget BURNING POINT by Mary Jo Putney.  They hero’s dad was abusive, ergo he becomes abusive and then they have to work their way through it.

I can’t really remember if I liked it or not, but it was shocking, to say the least.

Not a typical romance, but definitely Women’s Fiction.... Jennifer Weiner’s Little Earthquakes is full of Mommy and Daddy issues. And it’s done remarkably well.

I actually just finished this book and have to say it’s the first book in months that I stopped whatever I was doing to finish it. I read it in one day...and that hasn’t happened in a LONG time for me.

When I think of abusive parents in romance, the one that leaps to mind is Nora’s Maeve Concannon from the “Born In” trilogy.  I hate that woman!  She is so incredibly vicious to her children—manipulative, deceitful, grasping, denigrating, not to mention just downright cruel.  She’s miserable so she intentionally, premeditatively goes out of her way to make everyone else feel miserable, too, and she has a chip on her shoulder the size of the Blarney stone.  And what pisses me off about her is that hello! nobody told her to get in bed with Tom Concannon and get knocked up.  It was her choice...her “mistake”...but instead of doing penance on her own she acts like she’s a victim and takes her pound of flesh from her husband and daughters.  Ohmigod, I hate that woman with an everliving passion.  She’s reprehensible.

How about “The Rake” by Mary Jo Putney?  The hero’s uncle, who is responsible for him after his parents die, is a real butthead.  The heroine and her father have a difficult relationship, too.

Always Time to Die by Elizabeth Lowell.

M-E-S-S-E-D U-P.

The hero’s father is his grandfather AND great-grandfather, from what I remember.  (The dude molested his daughter and granddaughter.)

That’s just entirely too much incest for me.

I can remember Lynn Kurland’s The More I See You had the hero’s father being extremely abusive. Also, Julia Quinn’s To Sir Phillip, With Love had the same theme with Phillip’s father physically abusing him. I remembered this one because it affected how Phillip was raising his own kids.

I don’t think this is a serious relationship problem on the level of some of la Nora’s bad parents, but Mirabel’s relationship with her father in Loretta Chase’s Miss Wonderful is certainly not what you’d call totally functional. Of course, in their situation it’s largely a case of mental illness, but still. You do have an abnormal parental relationship.

Catherine Coulter does a shitload of Not So Nice Parents as well - the Legacy series, for instance (Wyndham, Valentine, Nightingale) has possibly the bitchiest old hag of a mother in it, as well as cold and/or abusive father figures.

I recall Jane Feather doing quite a few Not So Nice parents as well - like others have said, it’s really common in Romancelandia.

What I’m looking for in particular is not ‘bad’ parents but ‘bad’ relationships - where no singular party is wholly at fault and throughout the course of the novel, the hero/ine and the parent(s) work through their problems (or attempt to do so).

What about Heyer’s Devil’s Cub? That’s interesting because the hero’s father’s story is told in the previous book, These Old Shades in which his relationship with his brother and sister is complicated too. In Devil’s Cub the difficulties in the father/son relationship are resolved. A lot of their problems stem from how similar they are (in some ways).

Rosemary’s comment about incest reminded me of The Anasazi Mysteries which aren’t romance (though there are romantic subplots and sexual tension).  They had a lot of issues between one generation and the next, as well as incest.  Lots of craziness.

Also, anthologies often have good parental relationships because its a continuation of the HEA.  Linda Howard’s Mackenzie Saga comes to mind.  Mary and Wolf are good parents, but then the heroine often has bad parents to make up for it.  Mackenzie’s Chance for example.  Her father tries to kill her to get to her sister whom he molested as a child.

Kate Hoffman’s Mighty Quinns is an exception though.  The HEA between Seamus and Fiona didn’t last.  Their kids grow up with a drunken father and runaway mother and it isn’t until the kids find their HEA that the parents get another HEA.

Family of origin versus family of creation.  It’s a great source of conflict because it packs an emotional punch.  And, almost anyone can relate to it.

~Ohmigod, I hate that woman (Maeve Concannon) with an everliving passion.  She’s reprehensible.~

Thank you! I found her a particularly wretched woman.

I have done some very bad parents, some middling parents, and some horrendous parents.

I’ve done some very good ones, too. It all depends.

I’d nominate Falling For Gracie by Susan Mallory.  The heroine has a mixed-up mom and two totally self-absorbed sisters.  She acted like a fool as a teenager (who doesn’t?) and has been punished for it nearly all her adult life by her family.  By the end of the book they aren’t all happy/lovey, but they are trying to work things out.  And that’s better than a fake, totally unbelievable HEA for the girls.  Well done, Susan.  :)

Ooops, I forgot the Signet Regency book “The Prodigal Daughter” by Allison Lane.  The heroine and her father /definitely/ have issues to work through, with a helpful kick in the butt from the hero.  It’s one of my keepers.

The only books that I can think to add is one by Laverl Spenser (spell) and I think that it was called the Gamble or something.  Anyway, the chick’s dad was a drunk and beat her and the mother.  The kid ended up with a resultant handicap physically and had issues with trusting men as a consequence.  I remember it being a pretty good book....

I just thought of Lani Diane Rich’s Maybe Baby.  The mother-daughter relationship isn’t horrible or abusive such as the ones described above.  But, they are not close (daughter feels like she and her dad were abandoned by mom), and they work through this to come to a better understanding by the end of the story.

Not sure if this is serious enough for what you’re looking for, but it’s all I’ve got.

Jean Brashear wrote a duet for Harlequin Superromance called Mother and Child Reunion.  The books are Coming Home #1251 and Forgiveness # 1267.

Plot summaries courtesy of RT:

Coming Home: More than five years after the death of her son, the collapse of her family and her divorce from Malcolm, Cleo Channing is ready to find love and put her life back together. With her runaway daughter Coming Home with a grandson, Cleo hopes that the distant happiness in their past can be reawakened, but Malcolm’s pregnant girlfriend might make it hard to turn back the clock.

Forgiveness:Dead broke, Ria Channing is forced to return home with her 4-year-old son, even though she’s never gotten over the fact that she was responsible for the death of her younger brother in a car accident. At home, she meets local carpenter and artist Sandor Wolfe and battles both her attraction to him and her feelings of guilt over the past.

I preferred the story of the parents over that of the daughter.

What about the eeeeevvvvil grandmother from Flowers in the Attic?

OK, that book is overall a big old freak-show, and maybe doesn’t qualify as romance (cause, well, ick), but she was a total piece of work!

Summer--There was a LaVyrle Spencer short contemporary about a couple that gets married when she gets pregnant, and her father was such a nasty drunk they all worked to keep him away from the wedding.  And her historical Morning Glory had the heroine raised by crazy religious fundamentalists who made the town think the girl had a screw loose too.

Morning Glory, btw, is one of my favorite romances ‘cause the hero and heroine are so not the norm--when they meet, she’s barefoot and pregnant, he’s just been let out of prison for killing a woman.  It’s set in backwoods Georgia right at the end of the Depression and into WWII.

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself.

- Philip Larkin
“This Be the Verse”

This is probably pretty obscure, but _Tempted_ by Laurel Ames is a Regency-era romance in which the hero has a problematic relationship with his father--the hero feels like he is a disappointment to his father, and the father is very impatient with the hero and loses his temper at him a lot.  It’s not really an angsty relationship, more like one where the two characters don’t really know or understand one another, but it is worked out throughout the book until they are reconciled at the end.  I thought this was a great read.

Another book from the Bridgerton series, On the Way to the Wedding, features a heroine with a nasty uncle who is forcing her to marry someone to pay off blackmail.