Read my first tomboy heroine roundup here! There’s nothing else to say I didn’t already say there, so let’s get to the books!
For The Duke's Eyes Only by Lenora Bell. We’ve got archeologist Lady India Rochester, our adventurous tomboy. We’ve got Daniel Bonds, the Duke of Ravenwood, a purchaser of antiques (often illegally). They were childhood best friends, and are now enemies and rivals with very different ideas of what it means to honor history (their own and the world’s).
But when the Rosetta Stone is stolen from the British Museum, they have to team up to track it down. A little bit of Indiana Jones, a little bit of James Bond, a LOT of angst and feelings and arguments.
I’ll be honest. I read this book a few years ago and the particulars of the plot have escaped me, but I remember the characters, I rated this book extremely highly in my spreadsheet, and all the things I just wrote above that I do remember just make me want to reread. This is the danger of reading hundreds of books a year, folks! And this is why I have such a detailed spreadsheet to track them, so that even if I can’t recall specifics, I capture my in the moment feelings upon finishing.
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Wilder At Last by Serena Bell. The last of the first series set in this world has the most surprising pairing of all. I wrote about the first book in my opposites attract round up a while back, but to job your memory: this is a series about the Wilder family and their outdoors business that’s been flagging since their small Oregon hometown has started to transition from tourists seeking backpacking adventures and towards more romantic getaways with the bubbling up of a new hot springs.
Over the course of the series, all of the Wilder brothers have paired off with a variety of heroines from outside the outdoors space (hehehe), except one. Easton. The playboy brother. But I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about Hanna, the only non-family teammate at the company, the youngest child (and only daughter) of another family in the area (though that family, the subject of series 2, has mostly left town for now). She’s a rough and tumble tomboy with no interest in girly pursuits… or so she claims. But as the only daughter of a ranching family and the employee of a mostly male outdoor adventure company… when would she have had the opportunity to try those girly things out without getting teased?
So when a hot celebrity chef is hired for a summer gig who catches her eye, she’s invested in dipping her toes into becoming more actively appealing to men, and who better to help her than the single playboy who surely must know what most men want?
Except as Easton helps her Pygmalion herself, he starts to wonder if maybe she was perfect all along… and, specifically, perfect for him. Over the course of this series I would not have predicted this pairing at all, for all their bickering and seemingly opposite energy, but at the end of this book, I gotta admit, I’m glad this is the direction they went. An incredibly sweet and satisfying ending for all, and we didn’t have to rehabilitate a tomboy to do it!
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
The Arrow by Monica McCarty. This is also, for you freaks in the audience, a guardian/ward romance! That’s not USUALLY my thing but it’s not NOT my thing. No judgement, we’re all freaks in our own ways! This is also the 9th book in this series, and you really do need to read them in order… but I’ll tell you why it’s worth the wait!
Gregor “Arrow” MacGregor is one of Robert the Bruce’s Very Special Boys (one of the MOST special because he’s a stone cold hottie and Scotland’s best archer), and during a previous book after an English raid on a village, he rescued a tiny little baby girl (or DID he) named Cate, the only survivor. He then left her at his keep for safekeeping and continued to do War Stuff elsewhere.
Except on a mission a few years later, his face is revealed, and he has to rush home to lie low until he’s able to rejoin his compatriots on the battlefield safely (his secrecy is important to the mission, you’ll understand reading books 1-8 TRUST ME). And when he does, he discovers a few things. 1. Cate wasn’t as young as he expected her to be, she’s just tiny and was slightly emaciated upon rescue. 2. Cate has grown into a stone cold hottie herself. 3. Cate is also possibly the most dangerous little thing north of London (for MANY reasons)
Cate, for her part, fell instantly for the hot archer guy who rescued her and gave her a home. She’s also spent the last few years doing The Most to train herself to be prepared for if and when the horrible English try to cross her again, haunted by the raid that stole her village, mother, and life from her. But she needs to not just convince Gregor to let her fight… he also needs convincing to STOP fighting the attraction between them.
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Next week, I’ll be recommending slow burning historical romances!
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!
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