Pamela Clare, Ride the Fire - this certainly may be the most unusual romance setting and characters I have ever come across. This is set in the Ohio Valley during the 1760s, and our protagonists are a trapper and a young widow that is 8 months pregnant, who end up wintering together in her cabin. There are a lot of household chores, avoiding being killed, and hero helping heroine deliver her baby. It's also not for the faint-hearted, because the hero has survived capture and torture at the hands of an Indian tribe during the French and Indian War and if I could unread the description of what happened to him and his men, I would. Ditto for heroine and her abusive family. This is really really good - it takes two very cautious and very wounded people and slowly brings them together and allows them mental, emotional, and physical healing. I loved both Elspeth and Nicholas - it's a testament to how much that while large chunks of the books only have the two of them as characters (as they are in the wilderness), I never felt bored. Plus, when is the last time Benjamin Franklin featured in a romance novel?
Gena Showalter, The Darkest Pleasure - heroine is a painter on the run, hero is Lord of Paaaaaaaaaaain. I am sorry, I always said it that way in my head whenever he appeared. Ummmm, I was kinda freaked out at all the descriptions of the dude craving extreme pain, breaking bones, and cutting himself under his demon's compulsion (especially when he did same when...ahem...pleasing himself, so heroine wouldn't be freaked out). I am not into that sort of thing. By the end, lucky him, she calms his demon a lot so he only needs to cut occasionally? Ummm, no thanks.
Gena Showalter, The Darkest Whisper - I liked that one! Heroine is a Harpy - a sort of ultra-badass warrior. One problem - she is the timid one in the family and craves normalcy, which doesn't work out when bad guys capture her for experiments. Luckily, she gets rescued by the Lords of the Underworld and grabs the attention of Sabin, who houses the demon of Doubt and is oobsessed with the fight with the bad guys above all else. Well, until the heroine takes off her clothes, at least. Then his priorities shift. Oh, and she discovers a killer instinct. This was low-angst (except when Paris appeared. That guy is a one-man angst machine. It's a good thing i read his book already, out of order, or I would have wondered if he needs industrial quantities or prozac. Oh, and Gideon, but he got tortured and his body parts cut off, so I am giving him slack). It was pretty damn fun. It reminded me a bit of Kresley Cole's series, actually (amusingly, there is a teeny shout-out to Cole's series in it. Though if she decides to cross-book hook Torin with Nix, I will end something. Me no like).
Julie Anne Long, The Runaway Duke - this is so historically implausible that it must create an anachronism singularity to swallow the world, but if you can overlook that, it's pretty fun. Hero is a Duke's heir who gets mistaken for dead at Waterloo and goes with the deception because he hates his family (as one does, if one is a romance novel hero), and spends the next five years as a groom (!!!!!). His boss' daughter decides to run away from an engagement and he helps her, they fall in love, are chased by bad guys (who I actually loved and shipped together, luckily so did the author) blah blah blah. I like Long's writing style and this was a nice way to pass the time, but I much prefer the one other book of hers I read, What I Did for a Duke (what is with the Ducal fixation, author? One would think England was populated solely by those rarified inbreds).
Gena Showalter, The Darkest Pleasure - heroine is a painter on the run, hero is Lord of Paaaaaaaaaaain. I am sorry, I always said it that way in my head whenever he appeared. Ummmm, I was kinda freaked out at all the descriptions of the dude craving extreme pain, breaking bones, and cutting himself under his demon's compulsion (especially when he did same when...ahem...pleasing himself, so heroine wouldn't be freaked out). I am not into that sort of thing. By the end, lucky him, she calms his demon a lot so he only needs to cut occasionally? Ummm, no thanks.
Gena Showalter, The Darkest Whisper - I liked that one! Heroine is a Harpy - a sort of ultra-badass warrior. One problem - she is the timid one in the family and craves normalcy, which doesn't work out when bad guys capture her for experiments. Luckily, she gets rescued by the Lords of the Underworld and grabs the attention of Sabin, who houses the demon of Doubt and is oobsessed with the fight with the bad guys above all else. Well, until the heroine takes off her clothes, at least. Then his priorities shift. Oh, and she discovers a killer instinct. This was low-angst (except when Paris appeared. That guy is a one-man angst machine. It's a good thing i read his book already, out of order, or I would have wondered if he needs industrial quantities or prozac. Oh, and Gideon, but he got tortured and his body parts cut off, so I am giving him slack). It was pretty damn fun. It reminded me a bit of Kresley Cole's series, actually (amusingly, there is a teeny shout-out to Cole's series in it. Though if she decides to cross-book hook Torin with Nix, I will end something. Me no like).
Julie Anne Long, The Runaway Duke - this is so historically implausible that it must create an anachronism singularity to swallow the world, but if you can overlook that, it's pretty fun. Hero is a Duke's heir who gets mistaken for dead at Waterloo and goes with the deception because he hates his family (as one does, if one is a romance novel hero), and spends the next five years as a groom (!!!!!). His boss' daughter decides to run away from an engagement and he helps her, they fall in love, are chased by bad guys (who I actually loved and shipped together, luckily so did the author) blah blah blah. I like Long's writing style and this was a nice way to pass the time, but I much prefer the one other book of hers I read, What I Did for a Duke (what is with the Ducal fixation, author? One would think England was populated solely by those rarified inbreds).