AAR typically gets its review books from two places: Edelweiss and Netgalley. I love pursuing these lists. I see upcoming books that mystify me–The Ten Best Kentucky Derbys! How to Date A Foreigner!–as well as those I wouldn’t read unless bribed.
Most books I just glance and the cover, title, and genre and don’t bother to read the blurb. But those I think AAR’s reviewers and readers might enjoy, I delve further.
Doing this, over the past ten years, has been an interesting way to study romance and and women’s fiction in traditional publishing. Ten years ago, the words patriarchy, toxic, and were virtually nonexistent in the blurbs companies used to describe their books. Heroines were beautiful, innocent, and flame-haired. Heroes were mighty, notorious, and devastatingly seductive.
Things have changed. And that’s good, don’t get me wrong.
Over the past decade, romance has become wonderfully more diverse. There are love stories featuring people of all colors, sexual preferences, shapes, and personalities. Heroines have become powerhouses, women in charge of their fates and lives. Heroes have become… what?
Nice, for sure. The number of beta heroes has soared, especially in traditionally published m/f romance. In the past week, I’ve seen blurbs for upcoming romance novels featuring, to name a few, a sweet firefighter who reads romance novels, another who loves lambs and radical politics, and a shy, virginal duke who loves a putative courtesan.
Again, great! I’m all for diversity in leads.
But, I do sorta miss bad boys. (They abound in self-pubbed contemporary romance but are thin on the ground in, let’s say, traditionally published new historicals.) There’s something–FOR ME, YMMV and that’s fine–about a dark hero who is redeemed. The Bastiens, the Bens, the Jameses, and their ilk are out of vogue. It’s hard to imagine a major publisher championing a book like Patricia Gaffney’s To Have and To Hold or Tracy Anne Warren’s My Fair Mistress. I suspect those heroes would be too toxic, to use a word I see all the time in publishing, for most publishers to take a risk on.
Is it just me? Does anyone else occasionally jones for a dark lord or a seducer? Is there still room in traditionally published romance for a bad boy (or man) hero?
100% yes! Frankly they are pretty much the only sort of hero I want to read about.
If you search for Bad Boys at Goodreads you get pages of suggestions! HelenKay Dimons’ Bad Boys Undercover series is fun as is Christi Barth’s Bad Boys Gone Good series.
And if you haven’t read Hard Time or After Hours by Cara McKenna – highly recommend.
Oh, and Mia Hopkins Eastside Brewery Series!
Thank you 🙂
I’m also just reading If Only You by Chloe Liese and it has a great bad boy hero, who is redeeming himself well.
I wouldn’t miss them at all if they had, in fact, gone anywhere. They are just repackaged for a new market. A truly kind hero is so rare. I think the last one I saw was a vicar in Fair As A Star by Mimi Matthews. I don’t want a bad boy. I don’t dream about them. I don’t want my poor heroines to be some learning platform for some idiot to finally grow up. Any article I read about “Beta” heroes (a gag-inducing, if not reductive qualifier) are never actually mature, kind, gentle, understanding or communicative. So, in short, I’m ready for the pendulum to ACTUALLY swing and not for us to go back.
I utterly cannot abide the mafia kingpin, or the fist fighting drinking hero who despises women except the heroine.
(Except for HP and for the 3 times a year where that is exactly what I need for a few books in a row – well written convincing brutal morally despicable men who love only the heroine and are otherwise horrible people.Go figure.)
So I am glad that we get more diversity, and more heroes who are different. The old mould is mostly gone, and that is good.
But like Chris, I find many of the offerings unrealistic – I see men who are some strange imagined package of traits that seem unrealistic, or who have views that do not fit their background, to be as they are expected for today’s market. Especially in historicals.I find the men in m/m interesting, m/f often fails. Heroines who need to be totally superwomen, and men who have 2024 thoughts in 1815.
But I am not sure that I could read To Have and to Hold today, and not think that the heroine has no choice and that all of this is a version of Stockholm Syndrome. Which I think of a lot of so called happy marriages of old – making the best of a situation where women had super limited agency.
I have only thoughts’ no clear view.
Heh. I remember reading Diana Palmer’s novella “Woman Hater” and imagining sequels featuring the hero’s brothers, said sequels being titled “Homophobe”, “Racist” and so on.
Hating women isn’t a hallmark of a bad boy hero. It’s the hallmark of an ass.
Diana Palmer was the queen of this trope.
I tried her a few times and just couldn’t.
I have a few of her books on my shelf and she was quite the acquired taste.
My feeling is it’s super hard to judge the happiness of people in another time. How do we know that women with limited agency were any less happy than we agency full women today? We don’t. I tend to, in art, take the art on it’s own terms. If a heroine says she’s happy, I believe her!
I definitely go back and forth. I’m equally for the bad boy and the nice boy next door hero. I’m not a fan of dark romance (too twisted for me), but I mean Cara McKenna’s Hard Time and After Hours – those are the kind of bad boys I like. A bit of a harder edge, military guys, Lisa Marie Rice’s Midnight Men, Kristen Ashley’s Dream Man series (which granted, isn’t for everyone). And then I’m also perfectly happy with Olivia Dade’s heroes and Noelle’s Adams heroes. I get equally excited when I see good blurbs for either type of hero and all the shades in between. Okay, I just like romances LOL.
Since the halcyon days of historical romance in the 1990s, I guess the world has changed and my reading tastes certainly have. I attempted to reread To Have and to Hold a few years ago and abandoned it pretty quickly. Even knowing the hero was going to have an epiphany did not make him someone I want to read about anymore. But those beta hero blurbs mentioned above do not appeal to me either.
My problem with the traditional bad boys is the lack of nuance in their characterisation. And that goes for heroines too; the preponderance of feminist warriors with modern do-gooder attitudes is another reason I no longer read historicals. If the author was skilful enough I could enjoy the redeeming of a bad boy if there was more to him than a misogynistic manwhore, but the bad boy persona would not be a drawcard in itself.
Look at ya–risking troll wrath again!
Of course I dig those bad boys. For those of us from a time where seeking pleasure was just for bad girls or married women, without kids, of course, the call of the hot guy who overpowers with his bad ways, forcing all those big orgasms on you; it’s still the dream.
I wonder if the stats have changed. A decade ago, studies showed that up to 50% of women had fantasies of being forced into sex against their wills. If a bad boy is one who rides roughshod over a woman to insure she has mind blowing sex, I can see that bad boys retain their appeal for many.
I don’t read “dark romance” or “mafia romance” etc. but it certainly seems that your definition is the draw there. I think the bad boy hero is alive and well and still popular – he’s just moved into other sub-genres.
Definitely thin on the ground in HR and traditionally pubbed romance.
Oh, yes, he’s definitely moved into the realms of self-publishing these days!
I’m very specific about what sort of bad boys I enjoy: IE: they have to be some narrative meat on their bones and reason for them being this way – they have to have a sense of life or humor or SOMETHING to them to make interesting. And some I won’t make an exception for at all: IE: alpholes are not sexy, especially minus a grovel.
It’s my bet, though, that one person’s alphahole is another’s dream lay.
I’m not taking that bet – it’s a sure thing. And that’s fine – I think we’ve all read books featuring characters who, between the pages, we find attractive, but from whom we’d run a mile if we met them in the street!
Yes and that is why art exists. No one wants to actually go to Hogwarts but oh how we love to imagine its upsides!
This may be true – I think there’s a behavior moral event horizon though, naturally.
In fiction? What is it? It’s not murder, that’s for sure. Maybe murder for fun, a la Hannibal Lecter?
And getting people to agree about the line between–if there is one for them–forced seduction and rape is rough too.
Hurting kids and dogs–that’s pretty clearly beyond the pall.
Hurting kids? I dunno, there are plenty of Jaime Lannister fans.
Not me. But you are proving my point for me!
It’s certainly true that one person’s verboten is another’s catnip. I am fine with affairs in romance–as long as it’s done, seen as ruinous, and the reconciliation involves lots of groveling. But, those who kill for revenge, well, that’s a turnoff for me. It’s always YMMV.
Oh, I think every moral event horizon is different for every person – I’m erudite enough to know that, and obviously believe in literary freedom for all. I’m thinking more along the lines of Nazi soldier/concentration camp victim romances that caused a stir a few years back.
Agreed. I’m not drawn to books about gangsters or MC gangs, but the definition of “bad boy” – these days, anyway – tends to refer to MMCs who are dickheads rather than people living lives of crime! Arrogant billionaires and cocky sports stars who need taking down a peg or several seem to meet the criteria right now, and I’m not interested unless they have some actual substance.
Like I don’t mind either genre, I just want it to be interesting. I giggle pretty hard when book tries to dress up kink, for instance, in the most vanilla of wrappers.
One of the problems I have with recent romances, is how bland the heroes sound to me, as if they were the BFF of the heroine, instead of her partner.
I just miss masculine heroes. That’s one of the reason I read more male/male romance than ever. I find quite unapologetically masculine heroes in MM. In the MF romance, a beta hero can very easily end up being a perfect doormat that the heroine attacks even phisically.
Instead of the toxic masculinity of decades ago (that has mainly gone away, thank God!) it looks like any masculity is toxic, that the gender stereotypes related to the male part of the species -to be ambicious, self assured, provider, brave, not very expressive- are all of them something awful.
I think it’s just a trend that started around 2016, and it will disappear in another five years or so, as any other trend.
Yes to pretty much all of this. The heroine who treats the hero like crap (and even hits him) is a trope I’ve always hated, and it seems to have become even more prevalent in the last few years.
Agreed. And I’m just not in favor of the double standard, period. If it’s unacceptable for the hero to punch the heroine, it should be just as unacceptable for the heroine to drive a fist into the hero’s chest, even if he’s got bodybuilder pecs and she has fists the size of blueberries.
We SO agree on this.
Basically, I agree with you – what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander! However, I will never forget the feelings I had when reading Lord of Scoundrels for the first time. The scene where Jessica shoots Sebastion, while initially shocking, was quickly followed by ‘you go girl’. Yikes, Chase convinced me that the whole episode was entirely warranted! I feel compelled to add that I am a very peaceful sort of person.
I think it’s in part because she writes Sebastian as almost super human so you’re not super worried about him.
Thank you for a very interesting discussion – this is a topic I’ve been thinking about quite a lot lately. I’d like to start by emphasising that what I’m about to write is only my (very personal) perspective and I certainly do not mean to offend or anger anyone by expressing it. I realise every reader has their own background, personal preferences and boundaries and I firmly believe that makes our world intricately beautiful and rich. Furthermore, as it has been pointed out already, just because we may enjoy certain tropes and situations in fiction doesn’t mean we would actively pursue (or even like) them in real life.
I’m lucky enough to be part of a generation who was allowed to grow up thinking that sex was not necessarily a capital sin or even something shameful. That’s not to say sexism and gender inequality are not rampant (still), but that attitudes to sex and romantic relationships have evolved over the past 30-40 years. I was also extremely lucky in managing to disentangle myself from a highly religious, conservative background. I think having seen “both sides”, in this respect, informed my own preferences when it comes to “bad boys” in fiction and in romance in particular.
I adore morally grey characters. I think a redemption arc makes for far more compelling story telling – it speaks to something deeply rooted in my own psyche (and perhaps in many of us). It nurtures the hope that, despite being humanly flawed, we are still worthy of forgiveness and love. That is why I do love reading about “bad boys”, but my definition of what makes a “bad boy” can be quite specific.
I can’t abide morally black-and-white characters or characters whose “bad” nature is simply an authorial device to increase angst and drama. I love fictional men who live in their moral twilight for a good reason, who understand that and strive to do better – not through their falling in love with their love interest, but because of it, motivated by it. Not to offend anyone, but I could never finish Gaffney’s “To Have and To Hold”.
Personally, I need the characters to be redeemable and that means that their “evil”, questionable actions should have a reason I can follow (and no, being “damaged” by a difficult childhood is not good enough for me). I need to be able to understand where the reprehensible behaviour (or attitude/belief) is coming from and I need this to be compelling enough, otherwise I could never believe in a HEA. I personally can’t enjoy a “bad boy” as a trope on its own – it somehow hits too close to home, to my mundane reality – there are still a lot of nasty and entitled people (in this case, men) out there.
Lastly, I am also very grateful for the variety we enjoy nowadays – while I agree that many characters appear bland and carbon-copied from one novel to the next, I think there is still enough to choose from and, personally, I am glad we are no longer in the bodice-ripper days.
Again, thanks for the discussion.
Great thoughts! Thank you.
ITA. Morally grey characters are probably the ones I find most interesting provided, as you say, the reasons behind it are explored and they’re ‘redeemable’.
Yes–I also am here for leads who made a disastrous choice at some point and are now changed for the better.
Bad Boys has never been a trope I sought, although I’ve certainly read a few. I agree with both Madeleine and Bona. Like Madeleine, I have hard limits as to what I put up with in a male lead. And like Bona I find MM romances often offer a masculine hero without the problems I find in MF romances. I personally find it easier to navigate conflict between the MM lovers without it sparking back to negative female (and sometimes male) stereotypes. But I have my limits and have no interest in motorcycle or mafia romances, etc.
Interestingly, I almost couldn’t finish the Adrien English series by Josh Lanyon because I thought Jake was a selfish arsehole who bordered on being cruel, and Adrien was a pushover. However, finish it I did, and I know darn well that if Jake had been treating a woman like that, I probably wouldn’t have finished the first book, much less the series. Double standard, I know, but there it is. “Bad boys” are easier for me to take when they aren’t inflicting themselves on women.
Agreeing with some of the other comments…bad boys in the context of MC gangs or with cheating/sharing can be offensive to read so I avoid these stories.
What I do find compelling are the anti-heroes who become obsessed with a specific person (whether M/F or M/M doesn’t matter much to me). They don’t have to be redeemed or become a “good” person. It’s the emotional arc and growth of the character that makes for a more interesting and satisfying read. These gems are becoming harder to find. Some that come to mind:
Dark In You and Devil’s Cradle series by Suzanne Wright
Any of the more angsty reads from Alessandra Hazard
Midnight Men series by Lisa Marie Rice
After the Night by Linda Howard
Death Angel by Linda Howard
Duke of Sin by Elizabeth Hoyt
Duke of Winter by Lisa Kleypas
Amagarian series by Stacy Reid
Entreat Me by Grace Draven
Heart of Obsidian (Psy-Changeling, #12) by Nalini Singh
I’m so very glad you mentioned both Grace Draven and Nalini Singh.
In my, admittedly very subjective view, Draven’s “Entreat Me” and her absolutely brilliant “Master of Crows” showcase some of the most compelling, interesting, complex and three dimensional anti-heros I’ve read in fantasy romance.
Master of Crows is another good one! Need to re-read.
Interesting discussion. It seems that everyone has a different definition of “Bad Boy” and mine is someone who treats others, including the heroine, badly. Someone who lies, cheats, steals, is violent, cruel, etc. If that is the correct definition, then I want no part of that person. I don’t believe in a big redemption arc for someone who is that bad. If someone shows you who they are, believe them. If a heroine falls for someone that bad, I deem her TSTL, and DNF instantly.
However, if the hero is a good person “underneath” and demonstrates that in a number of ways, and perhaps has learned a poor way of relating or is in a job that requires them to be harsh and heartless (e.g., a spy in wartime, such as in some Joanna Bourne Spymaster books) then I might be more interested in learning more about that character or see how they could be attractive to the heroine.
Note that I say hero and heroine. That is because, as mentioned by others, I typically don’t see that dynamic in m/m. I have come to prefer m/m because the characters tend to be more equal and the m/f sex role stereotypes don’t come into play.
I am moving house shortly, downsizing sadly. Two days ago I had to discard around 250 beloved romance novels, mainly HR, particularly Regencies, and comprised of favourite authors like Balogh, Kelly, Putney, Landsdown, Metzger, Layton, et al. It broke my heart but charity shops are inundated, secondhand dealers don’t want them and there isn’t time to try to sell them on eBay, etc. BUT I did retain 25 books I cannot live without (my DIKs of DIKs) and one of them was The Rake and the Reformer by Mary Jo Putney because Reggie Davenport is my all time favourite Bad Boy. Up there with Lord Damerel in Venetia but definitely a badder Bad Boy. And Honourable Mention to Miles Calverleigh in The Black Sheep. Bad Boys are wonderful but, for me, ONLY if they can be redeemed and have innate good qualities that need exposure to light via the love of a good woman.
Oh, you poor thing! I will definitely have separation anxiety when I have to part with the books on my bookshelf.
Thank heavens for my Kindle as many of the beloved books can be resurrected that way without taking up space.
I love, love, love morally questionable heroes. Not into rapey-storylines but pretty much everything else is fair game. If they do truly awful sketchy things, I’m there for it.
Because then they get to suffer and crawl through the mud in order to grow in virtue enough to be worthy of the heroine. That said, they have to earn their redemption and HEA. I don’t like when jerks are jerks until the very last 20 pages, after which they’re magically transformed into lovesick swains and simply saying they’re sorry is enough.
For me the stories I have a really hard time with are ones where there’s a perfectly nice, not-very-flawed hero and heroine who for some weird reason have made it to their 30s without a single serious relationship. To me, that is unbelievable.
We live in a time where companionate marriage is the norm, where no one’s family is going to forbid them to marry the partner of their choice. So if its’ a contemporary story and the person is not a womanizer or a commitment-phobe or an addict, or an asshole or a reprobate in some way, not deficient in some character trait, then why the heck are they single?
That said, I can compartmentalize pretty well I’m Indian and Jewish and I love the Secret Garden even though the depiction of Indian people is pretty terrible. I enjoyed Merchant of Venice even though it’s wildly antisemitic.
I think my problem comes when the hero is doing things that just clearly don’t equal love in any sense of the word, but we’re meant to read it as such. So “To Have and to Hold” didn’t work for me because it just didn’t compute how his actions = love. And frankly, a lot of other books that are “classics” like Whitney, My Love fall into the same camp for me. And yet I do have some DIK that I’m pretty sure would be burned by lots of other folks.
I like To Have and To Hold because of Rachel’s story. It’s one of those books that because the heroine says “this is the man for me,” I accept that.
Short answer to this question: yes. Of course it’s complicated. We all have our own boundaries and experiences and quirks that don’t necessarily make sense to others. I went back to reading romance in the last couple of years while undergoing some really tough life transitions (after not having really read it at all since college, unless you count fanfiction), and for M/F, I’ve been reading older historicals almost exclusively. For M/M, F/F, or any sort of menage, sub-genre hasn’t really made a difference for me. But something I’ve discovered about myself is that I have a much higher tolerance for awful behavior from historical heroes. Whether it’s because of the separation created by the historical setting, the greater angst that arises from more limited options for the characters, or other factors, I’ve DNF’d M/F contemporaries — my own perimeters for this are books released in my remembered lifetime — out of frustration and repulsion for actions and characterization that I can read without hesitation in historicals. This is a change in me; at a previous time, I think I would be an avid reader of contemporary dark romance.
At any rate, some of my favorite HR discoveries definitely fall under the bodice ripper umbrella, and I would only recommend them with caveats (a few titles I hesitate to even name!). The Wyckerly trilogy have become some of my favorite HRs ever, and Rachel from To Have and to Hold is one of my most beloved heroines. Sebastian is not “deserving” of her, but I remained completely absorbed in their relationship. He’s completely aware of his immorality and this alone, an aristocrat who is not benevolent, who knows he holds the upper hand and doesn’t hesitate to use it for his own amusement, made him intriguing to me, if obv not sympathetic as any sort of hero. In other words, I wanted to see what will result from his interactions with her. I felt so deeply for Rachel, not only in her powerlessness after her release from prison so that Sebastian is her only option, but in her loss of herself. She’s so utterly traumatized and has lost any ability to feel joy or pleasure, and it’s this lack that intensifies Sebastian’s obsession with her and eventually sparks a transformation in him, little inklings of guilt and a better nature that he rejects until his final epiphany. Ultimately, he goes from seeking to provoke a response from her as a cruel diversion to wanting to help her rebuild her trust and capacity to feel joy. YMMV on Gaffney’s success in developing Sebastian’s character arc, but by the end, I feel that Rachel has regained herself, Sebastian has been changed by her, and he makes her happy. All that being said, I understand why this book is a DNF for many. Just wanted to offer a different and admittedly personal perspective.
Angela, I love your analysis. THANK YOU!!
I too have a much greater tolerance for bad behaviour in historicals. One of my favorite HRs is Anne Stuart’s Reckless. Adrian would be a no go in a contemp, but in a historical context, his arrogance and his redemption work.