***editing to add that I didn't know this Elisabeth was an author or problematic - and tbh I haven't looked - please just enjoy the Book Goblin. Thank you

This video by Elisabeth Wheatley gave me the giggles late last night, and I think most of us can relate.

• BG: Book!
• EW: Book Goblin.
• BG: Book Goblin loves this book.
• EW: Awesome.
• BG: Book Goblin needs you to buy entire series.
• EW: How many books are in the series?
• BG: Does not matter.
• EW: Looks like there's six total.
• BG: Ah-ha!
• EW: And they're all out of print.
• BG: Why?
• EW: I don't know. I guess people didn't buy them.
• BG: Why?
• EW: Beats me.
• BG: Book is amazing!
• EW: I'm sure it is, that's just how things go sometimes.
• BG: Book is incredible.
• EW: Not everyone has good taste.
• BG: True.
• EW: I can still order the rest of the series for you, but it will be kind of expensive.
• BG: Money is no object.
• EW: You sure?
• BG: Get book for Book Goblin.
• EW: Okay.
• BG: Sell whatever. Sell car.
• EW: Um, I don't think that will be necessary.
• BG: Sell house!
• EW: We don't actually own this -
• BG: Sell man friend.
• EW: You mean my dearly beloved husband and the love of my life?
• BG: Meh.
• EW: Look, we don't need to sell anything, we might just need to cut back on eating out this month.
• BG: Man friend can eat next month.
• EW: I'll let you know once I place the orders.
• BG: You will?
• EW: Just go read and wait for your book mail.
• BG: Book mail! Book mail! Book mail!

Everything is reduced to a label:

“A sexy rake…”

“He wants to get her into bed…”

“To save her reputation, he has to marry her…”

“He can have any woman he wants, but he only wants her…”

“He’s the arrogant, grumpy billionaire…”

“Now she needs to find a date because she lied about having a boyfriend…”

“He’s her rival at the desk opposite hers, and they hate each other…”

“All the more so when he invites her to become his mistress…”

I swear, I’ve read these exact dynamics ten thousand times. It feels like so many writers nowadays are no longer interested in showing us who their characters are through actual storytelling. Instead, they give us a handful of familiar labels and expect us to be impressed. Grumpy x Sunshine. Rake x Clumsy Wallflower. Bad Boy x Good Girl. Enemies to Lovers.

And I don't know about you, but I can no longer bring myself to read the same recycled stories over and over again. Sometimes, the book overview alone is enough to make me put the book down. It feels like searching for a single drop of fresh water in an ocean of identical books, and the longer I search, the harder it becomes to find something genuinely good.

What frustrates me most is that these formulas continue to sell, encouraging writers to reproduce the same dynamics with different names, different settings, and slightly different packaging. Where is the ambition to try something new? Where is the effort to create characters who don't feel as though they've been assembled from a checklist of romance tropes?

I don't know who decided what romance readers should find irresistible, but I can tell you one thing: I no longer find the sexy rake sexy. He's predictable, repetitive, and toxic. I'm tired of reading about men whose defining achievement is the number of women they've bedded, only to watch the female lead spend an entire book fixing them. That's not romance, that's the work of a therapist. And don't even get me started on historical romance and its endless parade of marriages of convenience. At this point, finding a historical romance without one feels like a quest of its own. I am so thoroughly exhausted by this trope that seeing it in yet another book overview is enough to drain my enthusiasm before I've even turned the first page.

I spend months searching for that one author who doesn't simply pick a label and build a character around it. I want a writer who creates a man with his own distinct combination of qualities, contradictions, flaws, and habits. Someone whose personality emerges through his choices, his behavior, his relationships, and the way he responds to the world around him. Not someone who smirks after every pickup line and mistakes being a bad boy for having an actual personality.

God, I'm tired of bad boys and rakes. Why does every romantic hero have to be a womanizer who can have any woman he wants? Why can't we have more ordinary, complex human beings with their own struggles, insecurities, ambitions, and priorities? Men who have something meaningful to care about beyond how many women they can attract or conquer. I genuinely don't understand the appeal of a man who uses women as a means of validating his own self-worth and then boasts about it. Where exactly is the charm in that?

And I'm equally exhausted by the female character archetypes. The woman who declares that she can't stand him in one sentence and calls him scorching hot in the next. Or the ones who snap at him one minute and then trip over their own feet the next and need saving. Those are not qualities that make a character. It doesn’t have to be black or white. Ice queen or clumsy wallflower. Rake/bad-boy jerk, or brooding grump. These are not characters, these are labels!

These aren't characterizations. They're shortcuts.

A character doesn't have to be one thing or its complete opposite. She can be confident without being rude, vulnerable without being helpless, reserved without being emotionally unavailable. He can be attractive without being a rake, grumpy without being cruel, and protective without being controlling. People are complicated. They contradict themselves. They have flaws that don't conveniently disappear when they fall in love. They have lives, thoughts, and desires that exist independently of their romantic relationships.

I want characters who feel real. Characters with depth, individuality, and personalities that don't feel copied and pasted from the last ten books I read. I want stories that surprise me, plots that make me wonder what will happen next, and romantic developments that feel earned rather than inevitable from the first page.

I want a true slow burn - the kind that leaves me holding my breath over a lingering glance, a fleeting touch, an almost-confession, or a moment of unexpected tenderness. I want yearning. I want tension. I want angst, vulnerability, heartbreak, and love. I want to feel the characters falling for each other long before they admit it to themselves. I want the romance to make me ache.

I don't want five hundred pages of the heroine being humiliated, mistreated, or made to feel inferior, only for the hero to offer a kiss or an intimate scene in the final few chapters as though that somehow makes everything worthwhile. I don't want a relationship held together by manufactured misunderstandings, endless power games, or a hero's supposedly irresistible arrogance.

I want to feel something. I want to become attached to these people, to care about their lives, to understand their choices, and to remember them long after I've finished the book.

I'm tired of romance being reduced to a collection of marketable labels and social media buzzwords. I'm tired of seeing the same recycled dynamics presented as though they've never been done before. I want originality, emotional substance, and storytelling that trusts readers to discover what makes a character compelling instead of spelling it out for them in the book overview.

I want a novel, not a trope checklist with a romantic subplot.

Basically the title but…

I just read it and am left just feeling like ???? did you guys like it cuz it was unhinged and unbelievable? Was reading it within the series something I should’ve done? Was that fun for you guys?? Was it mainly for the smut? Genuinely I would like to know

Like there was so much happening- secret societies, sex clubs, murder in broad daylight, talks of child and animal abuse. I’m just left feeling so baffled. The topics are very dark but it seemed so wild and crazy I couldn’t take it seriously even though the triggers were definitely very traumatizing for characters.

I did like the chapter openings for King Heartless though.

{Duke of Sin by Elizabeth Hoyt}

I recently discovered Minerva Spencer's (aka S.M. LaViolette's) books via this sub, and while the books themselves are absorbing, the covers just take away so much!

I literally held off on buying them because I was so put off by the low-effort, cartoony covers.

Once I finally bought and read my first one, I started enjoying her work and reading more, but I swear, the present covers REALLY do not do the content or the time period of her books justice—they look like a hasty Canva job that can be off-putting for some readers.

If the author or her publishers are on this sub, I really hope they take this into consideration and make her some beautiful new covers worthy of her books!

Mine was {A Bridegroom Bought and Paid For} because it went on for too long and Kentigern reminded me of Nye in {A Bride for the Prizefighter}- I do not like mmcs who communicate in grunts and very few words especially when the hr goes on for too long.

If anyone has anti-recs for these kinds of mmcs, let me know which ones I gotta avoid?

But also what was you most recent hr dnf and why?

I like this trope because it usually has more angst and usually more of a slow burn which I love.

I have a couple I've read recently and wanted to recommend them here and/or see if anyone else has read them!

{Miss Lockharte's Letters} is a great one! It's also got a slight damsel in distress vibe but the FMC is still a strong character. Hard to pull off both at the same time.

{Faro's Daughter} by Georgette Heyer.

{The Hermit's Daughter} I'm still in the middle of reading this one and it's sssooooooo good! It has a faster pace than the first two is it's very easy to get into. I'm only about halfway through but so far I'm loving the antagonism and angst between the two MCs.

I'm also open to recommendations that are similar. But closed door only. I find for this trope, open door just spoils the tension.

Edit to correct one title that the bot got wrong.

I was thinking about this when re-reading parts of {The Unlovely Bride by Alice Coldbreath}. The last couple of chapters always felt rushed to me and the cause of the conflict rather underdeveloped as it largely got resolved off-page. The matter of how the MMC came back to his wife after his 'angry and hasty' declarations also did not feel too satisfactory; I had actually wished there were a couple of more chapters to show that they were going to stick this time and that he was carrying out his promises.

This time, I went thought the entirety of that part and realised something: the MMC actually used all five apology languages.

For those who do not know, the apology languages as put forward by Chapman and Thomas are:

• Expressing regret i.e. 'I am sorry'
• Accepting responsibility i.e. 'I was wrong'
• Making restitution i.e. 'what can I do to make amends?'
• Genuinely repenting i.e. 'I will not do that again/I wish to change my behaviour'
• Asking for forgiveness i.e. 'can you forgive me?'

The MMC demonstrates all of them as he says he is sorry for what he did, admits he was a jealous and angry fool who behaved badly, agrees to accept anything she asks for in the parlay to make it up to her, wants to behave better to make her family proud of her and asks if she would give him a chance to earn her good graces again. From my understanding of the MCs, the most difficult one for him was to accept responsibility that he messed up due to his pride and the one that made the biggest impression on the FMC was him making restitution by giving up his childhood dream on her request and promising to win over her family who would be ashamed of him. (Note: he had despised her parents before this so I do not know if the author forgot or the MMC wanted to do it).

Why I was not initially happy with how his behaviour was forgiven and resolved may have been a mismatch between my primary apology language and the FMC's (though I still think he could have apologised more graciously for everything he did throughout the book but the FMC knew what she was getting into).

So it made me wonder: when authors write down certain grovelling or amends-making scenes and readers either like them or do not feel they redeemed the character, could the apology languages make a difference?

If my apology languages are expressing regret and asking for forgiveness, the character making all kinds of restitution but not saying 'I am sorry' or 'will you forgive me?' enough may make me feel it was not a good apology. This may be why I initially did not feel as warmly towards the MMC in {My Deceitful Duchess by Aydra Richards} because he was apologising by making restitution and genuinely repenting but I was waiting for him to verbally say that he was sorry or talk about everything he did wrong. Now I feel the MMC did well with the apologies and amends. In fact, the FMC completely forgave him when she found out he had tried to 'borrow' a prison cell for a month to be locked in as penance to make it even after what she had suffered. His request was not accepted but the FMC loved that he was willing to go through the humiliation and suffering so she could feel better.

I was curious what people here might think. I hear conflicting views from many regarding certain books and their endings and how one did not feel the MC was redeemable while another felt they grovelled extremely well.

Thank you to all who recommended this. MY GOD THE ANGST. Now THIS is a sweeping histrom. The sense of place. The prose.

But why oh why… no epilogue! sob

Got all of these plus a bunch of contemporary books for $50 off of FB market!!

The second image are the repeats/ones that don't interest me. Is it allowed to give books away here? I'll give it to first dibs as long as they pay for shipping, preferably as a whole.

The same goes for the 3rd image to a separate user who wants it. Those bottom 3 books are 2-in-1's that complete the Hathaways with "A Wallflower Christmas".

I dunno if it's ever been discussed here, but I just always am so entertained by this little callback in {Devil in Winter}.

In the billiards room at Jenner's, during the scene where Sebastian taught Evie how to play, she missed her very first shot. Sebastian then told her, “Whenever that happens, reach for more chalk, and apply it to the tip of the cue stick while looking thoughtful. Always imply that your equipment is to blame, rather than your skills.”

When I read that part during maybe my second read, I was taken back to when he was shaving Evie's father, where after the shave, they saw a tiny nick on the edge of Ivo Jenner's jaw.

In the book it said: Pressing the towel to it, Sebastian murmured, “The soap needs more glycerin. My valet makes far better shaving soap than this…I’ll have him bring some later today.”

He blamed the soap 💀 It's always so funny to me that he had practiced what he preached, and blamed the equipment rather than his skill. It's the little things like this that leave me chuffed.

Tell me about what fun, small things you notice while rereading your fave novels. I wanna chuckle some more.

(Edited for clarity)

Are you an author? A blogger? Someone else producing historical romance content of some kind? This is the place to talk about your work and link us up! As per rule 4, please keep self-promotion to these threads unless directly requested.

Please check rule 2 for the definition of historical romance.

This thread repeats every other Wednesday.

Tell us what HR you are currently reading/listening to or have finished lately? Tell us as much or as little as you want. We just want to hear from you!

What do you think so far? Any great, hilarious, heartbreaking, heartwarming, etc moments? If you have finished, what rating would you give it? Give us the deets!

Fill free to spill all the tea, but remember to mark any spoilers!

This thread repeats every Wednesday.

I'm looking for help tracking down a free prequel to one of Lorret's books that she apparently published on her site (I copied the text below). I can't find the story at the link anymore. Does anyone know if it was taken down or published in another collection or as a novella with a different title?

A Special Surprise for International Talk Like A Pirate Day!

Sep 19, 2021

Dear Readers,

Happy International Talk Like A Pirate Day! To celebrate, I’ve uploaded a free short story to my website. You can read A PIRATE’S LOVE FOR ME by visiting the BONUS CONTENT page and subscribing to my newsletter.

If you’ve read LORD HOLT TAKES A BRIDE, you might remember Asher’s Aunt Lolly and her rollicking adventure with a pirate named the Mad Macaw. A PIRATE’S LOVE FOR ME is her story, and I hope you enjoy it.

 

Warm wishes and happy reading,

Viv

I finished {a shopgirl’s guide to wooing a lord by Shana Galen}, and it was fantastic! Historically compelling, complex characters and characterization, terrible cover… I’ve gotten most, if not all my recs from this subreddit, but she’s never one of the often-mentioned.

I asked myself, what else could be in her catalogue?

Reader, her books are fucking fire. Each MMC and MFC reads as distinct and interesting, the sex scenes are awesome but not gratuitous (though if I had one criticism: peeps be mad frustrated and not a single masturbation scene), real societal stakes are considered (pregnancy, poverty, money, war, etc.). I haven’t read one dud yet.

{No Earls Allowed by Shana Galen} was my starting point, and I loved it. It was surprisingly candid re: the realities of the time and place, and I liked that she made the FMC someone well-meaning but over her head in a way that didn’t stupefy or infantalise her.

I wish her covers were more consistent. She’s trad-pub, but I’ve been getting her books off of Libby and all but two have the fugliest things on them. I know authors have no to little control over that but they are particularly bad, and I worry that puts people off.

That aside, I just want to gush and give her her flowers - any other fans?

Edit: it should read “quick props to” :(

My family always wants to get me book related gifts, which I appreciate, but I have enough bookmarks, notepads, or mugs/pillows that have book on them. And while some know that I enjoy romance books they do not know that I enjoy THOSE types of romance books. I am not about to explain to Aunt Sally that the book I put on my list involves a dominant viscount who spends his nights teaching the innocent governess how to please a man (but if you know of a book like this, please let me know).

So...I just came across The Flower Letters. It is a subscription service where you, or the gift giver, can pick a historical time period and you will receive two letters a month in the mail for 12 months. With each letter you learn about the story, uncover a secret, and other things. HR books make me miss the art of letter writing and the yearning a piece of paper can convey. I thought I would pass it along as the holidays are approaching!

Hi everyone,
Today the third book in the earls trip series got published. I'd love to exchange opinions with everyone who is currently reading the book or just read it 😌

I am currently like half way through and love that it is staying true to its character so far and the bromance of the guys isn't coming too short. And the topic about care taking of someone with dementia is being treated really well imo.

What do you guys think about Simon as a main character? And Diantha Brown?

Again this is a relationship that feels real and not too fast but also not too slow. You can feel Simon and Diantha falling in love, step by step despite the rather weird start of it all by her asking to be ruined.