CONVERSATION: Marriage of Convenience Recommendations
Last Monday we had a conversation about the fake relationship and marriage of convenience tropes. When we were putting that post together, I asked DA contributors for recommendations and/or dis-recommendations of romances involving fake relationships and marriage of convenience. Friday’s post on recommendations for fake relationship books was published last week, and now it’s time for part three of the discussion: marriage of convenience recommendations.
Jennie: I am *terrible* at remembering books and titles, and the ones that I do remember tend to be 10 or more years old, but I think of Mary Balogh as the queen of MoC plots. Sherry Thomas had a really good, tearjerking book (I think it is about 10 years old!) called Ravishing the Heiress. I will try to think of more!
Kaetrin: Mary Balogh is definitely the queen of the MOC – The Temporary Wife, First Comes Marriage, Someone to Wed – but there’s also some classics like An Arranged Marriage by Jo Beverley and Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas.
Janine: I really liked Devil in Winter when I first read it in early 2007, but felt very differently when I read it again in 2019. And you just reminded me of a favorite, Confessions from an Arranged Marriage by Miranda Neville.
But to get back to MOC queen Mary Balogh, here are some recs. A Christmas Promise is a class-difference MOC / arranged marriage book. Eleanor’s father arranged her marriage to Randolph on his deathbed so that Eleanor, his daughter, would be cared for (he dies a day or two after they marry). Randolph and Eleanor have reasons to think badly of each other and Balogh raises the stakes further by making them resolve all this during a Christmas house party with relatives and friends from both sides who don’t know each other. Sunita and I both loved it when we reviewed it in 2010. I’m not sure how it holds up, though.
Slightly Married is another Balogh I loved. Eve’s brother asks Aidan to marry Eve as he is dying on the battlefield. Eve is about to lose her farm and possibly custody of her niece and nephew with it. Aidan is in love with someone else and hopes she’ll say no to his proposal, but she says yes.
Carolyn Jewel has an MOC book where the hero has feelings for someone else, too—Surrender to Ruin, book three in her Sinclair Sisters trilogy. Bracebridge marries Emily to get her out of a bad situation because he is in love with her (married) sister. Some readers feel that Bracebridge doesn’t really come around, but I saw him as having feelings for Emily that he did not want to admit to. I did think he needed to grovel more but the book was sexy and angsty.
An earlier MOC romance in the same series is Lord Ruin, and it’s one I couldn’t finish. The setup is rapey and hard to buy (he mistakes her for someone else and has sex with her while she’s sleeping, oops!). I felt it was boring, too, and that the heroine was a Mary Sue. It was a popular book, though.
Jayne: The MOC books I see most frequently are historicals. And usually they work for me. But there are a few more contemporary ones I’ve liked as well.
MOC for business/job – Marriage or Ruin for the Heiress by Lauri Robinson – he needs a wife because married men are seen as more stable (1930s setting). Free Fall by Emma Barry and Genevieve Turner – she’s pregnant and he’s an astronaut whose shot at walking on the moon could be quashed by any scandal. And oh, does anyone know if the last book in the Fly Me to the Moon series will ever be written – the one with cosmonauts?
MOC for honor – The Substitute Bridegroom by Charlotte Louise Dolan – he’s ruined her chances of a marriage offer when his reckless curricle driving scars her face. The Borrowed Bride by Elizabeth Lane (western) – she’s pregnant but the father has left town so his brother steps in to do the honorable thing.
MOC for revenge – The Anglophile by Dell Shannon (Egan O’Neill, Elizabeth Linington) – he’s an Irish revolutionary looking to get himself into upper class society and doesn’t want to love any wife so he picks (ugh) an Englishwoman.
MOC for protection – The Work of Art by Mimi Matthews – she’s beautiful and has caught the eye of a rich Duke who collects beautiful things. A Touch of Forever by Jo Goodman – he needs protection from an avaricious female while she is a domestic abuse survivor. Beautiful Bad Man by Ellen O’Connell – evil villain wants heroine off her land. Hero is impressed with her feistiness.
MOC because she’s a plain/desperate thing and he feels somewhat sorry for her – Lots of Neels books fall into this category – The Bachelor’s Wedding by Betty Neels (fairly contemporary). Jo Beverley’s An Unlikely Countess is a historical example.
MOC for family/the succession – Temporary Wife Temptation (aka The “I Do” Dilemma) (The Heirs of Hansol 1) by Jayci Lee (contemporary) – Grandma wants him married, he doesn’t want to marry her handpicked bride. The Convenient Marriage by Georgette Heyer – he’s engaged to her sister but the sister is in love with an impoverished military man so little sis steps in and marries the rich nobleman. “The Wedding Banquet” is actually an older (2004) movie in which a gay man needs to keep his sexual orientation from his conservative family. Several of the Rockliffe series have aristocratic men marrying to start their nurseries, as one does.
Janine: I have never read it but The Convenient Marriage A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer is famous for dividing readers. The hero was in love with another woman when he married the heroine and some readers felt cheated because they felt he never came around to feeling that he did more than settle. Others disagree and say he saw the heroine’s worth, it was just conveyed subtly.
(I’ve always wanted to see “The Wedding Banquet”! It was directed by Ang Lee, one of my favorite directors.)
Jayne: Little Darlin’ by Cheryl Reavis (contemporary) – he might be the father of an abandoned child, she was pressured into fostering said child, he’s on active duty and sent overseas.
Kaetrin: In Suddenly Engaged by Julia London the couple contemplate getting married so that her daughter, Ruby, can be covered by his health insurance when Ruby needs expensive medical treatment. In the US that seems like a thing that would actually happen. Probably there are citizenship marriages too but I can’t think of any books I’ve read which have this trope. I’m sure it happens in real life but the stakes are too high for this to be admitted by anyone.
Noelle Adams managed a marriage of convenience in a contemporary setting well in A Negotiated Marriage and Married for Christmas. Xeni by Rebekah Weatherspoon is another modern MOC story which arises out of a will – the couple have to be legally married for at least 30 days to inherit a large sum of money. I think arranged marriages fall into this bucket as well and there are some wonderful multicultural contemporaries that use this as the basis for the romance – The Bride Test by Helen Hoang springs to mind here.
Janine: Three of us–you, Jayne, and me–recommended The Bride Test.
Layla: Some of my favorite marriage of convenience are Julia Quinn’s The Duke and I, Lisa Kleypas’s The Devil in Winter, How to Love a Duke in 10 Days by Kerrigan Byrne (crazy but crazy good too!), About a Rogue by Caroline Linden, The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley, The Chief Monica McCarty, Never Seduce a Scot by Maya Banks.
Sirius: Marriage of convenience work for me very well in many long romances by Megan Derr. She usually mixes it with enemies-to-lovers trope and I very often enjoyed it a lot. She literally has from enemies to lovers in almost all books of hers and marriage of convenience features prominently in many.
There is Unbreakable Soldiers trilogy. It became trilogy only recently, so I so far have read only first two books The Engineered Throne and The Painted Crown. In both books the marriage of necessity/ convenience takes place basically for the purpose of finding peace between two imaginary states at war. It is not something as simple as “you marry him, there is peace right away”, because there are some other more immediate purposes but this is the end goal. Both books worked very well for me.
There are also Tales of the High Court. There are five books now, I believe I read four. In these books marriages of convenience/necessity also take place for political purposes. I liked The High King’s Golden Tongue the best I think.
I also reviewed Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell and the marriage of convenience there worked for me too despite pacing issues.
Janine: I have heard good things about Winter’s Orbit.
Sirius: I actually thought that the pacing in the first half was wrong – it made sense that author would want the men to get to know each other slowly but a previous spouse was killed so in a book full of tension and elephant in the room (the murder), the slow pacing felt wrong. Having said that, the men had chemistry and when the story started to move faster it became almost perfect for me. The book is SFF, but also a good example of when marriage of convenience works for me in SFF books. We have an imaginary empire ruling an imaginary coalition of the planets, so it felt right to me that marriage of convenience would have worked for political purposes.
Kaetrin: Strange Love by Ann Aguirre which is a SFF MOC book – it’s a fantastic book, super funny and a really interesting take on the trope given its setting. I enjoyed Winter’s Orbit too Sirius – I think I liked it better than you did even, although I agree it was a bit slow in parts.
Share your thoughts with us, readers. What marriage-of-convenience novels do you recommend to us and to other readers, or recommend we avoid? Have you read any of the books we’ve mentioned, and did you like them if so?
You’ve named many of my favorites, and you’re right, Mary Balogh is the queen of MOC. A Temporary Wife and Slightly Married are two keepers on my increasingly crowded shelves.
A contemporary MOC keeper that I’m not certain would fly today is Perfect Strangers, by LouAnn Gaeddert. They really are strangers (he’s camping on her land) but she convinces him to marry her…and then leave. For some reason it struck a chord with me, and it too is on my keeper shelf.
Also, Jayne Ann Krentz had some contemporary MOC books when she was writing for Silhouette, but they’re all likely out of print now.
I’ve read and enjoyed quite a few of the books you mentioned ~ The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie by Jennifer Ashley, Strange Love by Ann Aguirre, and Winter’s Orbit by Everina Maxwell to name a few. In the initial post, @TinaNoir mentioned MORNING GLORY by LaVyrle Spencer which is a longtime favorite of mine. Two contemporary MoC romances I’ve enjoyed are The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata and Roomies by Christina Lauren.
Janine, you’re confusing two Georgette Heyer MOC titles. The Convenient Marriage is fairly early Heyer with a Georgian setting. In that one the hero falls for the heroine immediately but it takes her awhile to catch up. It’s also one with a much older hero. It isn’t one that I reread a lot, probably because of the gambling elements. I don’t care for gambling being a major part of stories.
The MOC Georgette Heyer title you’re thinking about that divides readers is A Civil Contract. It’s one of her least romantic books but I do enjoy it. The heroine is a wealthy Cit’s daughter and the hero has inherited an estate encumbered by debt with two sisters and a mother to look after. I feel that the hero really does come around and realize the treasure he’s found in the heroine.
A modern MOC title that I have a fondness for is Beloved Stranger by Joan Wolf. It’s a category title from long ago (1984) where the hero is a famous baseball star who marries the young pregnant heroine because of a one-night stand that was very romantic. They are very different, but learn to appreciate and love each other.
Carla Kelly wrote one of my all-time MOC favorites, Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand. The hero is divorced and a pariah in Regency society. The heroine is a clergyman’s widow in a bad situation about to lose custody of her daughters because of the machinations of her lustful brother-in-law. It’s both amusing and heartwarming. A Wedding Journey is another Kelly favorite with this trope. Also, With this Ring by Kelly. Good books! Some of her other stories and novellas also use the MOC plot.
I really love a 1989 category by Nora Roberts, Gabriel’s Angel. The pregnant heroine is on the run from her dead husband’s wealthy parents and is found by the hero in a tight spot. He’s an artist trying to recover from the death of his much-beloved older brother. He offers to marry her to protect both her and the baby. It’s sweet.
I also really love Radiance, an arranged marriage by Grace Draven. It’s fantasy romance and the hero and heroine are of two different species! It’s a marriage of state; both are minor royals, married to cement an alliance. They fall in love despite the fact that they don’t find each other at all attractive at first. It has a sequel, Eidolon. That one deals with the fact that they are infertile together. (And a bunch of other stuff.)
@Darlene Marshall: Kathleen Gilles Seidel has a book with a similar premise. The heroine is a teenager (sixteen years old) and the hero (also pretty young) when they marry to get her out of a home situation with a child predator. She and the hero then part ways and she goes to live with the hero’s family (the whole thing was his father’s idea). They are in a sibling situation but I think he goes to college. They both ignore their attraction until adulthood, when she’s a music singer with a drug addiction and she moves in with him so he can help her kick it. I may be misremembering some details. I liked the book a lot when I read it, but that was years ago.
I don’t consider book to be MOC if the characters are caught in a compromising position and forced to marry (e.g. Confessions From an Arranged Marriage, The Duke and I). Being forced to marry is decidedly inconvenient. Balogh’s Slightly Married is definitely a MOC, and a really good one.
A contemporary/MC novel with a marriage of convenience is Heavy by Cate C. Wells, in which Dina and Heavy marry so they can do criminal things without having to testify against one another. This is far from my favorite by her, but it does involve the resolution for the nasty uncle from Hitting the Wall.
Another contemporary MOC is Karla Sorensen’s The Marriage Effect. It’s a pretty silly setup, but the romance pretty good and the hero is the guardian to his four teen/preteen sisters, who definitely act their age.
@Kareni: Yes, Morning Glory is a good one (or was when I read it years ago). I have been wanting to try the Maxwell and have had some internet in the Zapata; however, Zapata’s books tend to be intimidatingly long.
@Kari S.: Thanks for the correction on the Heyer! I really liked Mrs. Drew Plays Her Hand when I read it. But when I reread it it bothered me that the hero felt no remorse whatsoever for shooting his ex-wife’s lover in the
tentaclestesticles even years later. Whatever he feels about the man’s betrayal (and it was deep—I think they were friends and the hero was fighting in the Napoleonic wars when he came home on leave to find them in bed together at his own home), he deprived the guy (and any future wife he would have) of children and the man’s parents of grandchildren. It seems like a severe punishment to these other people who did nothing to harm him. His feelings of righteousness turned me off.With this Ring was too sad for me with regard to the woman the heroine had been a companion to. I couldn’t stop thinking about how horrible that kind of guilt would be. My favorite Carla Kelly is Miss Whittier Makes a List— not an MOC but I loved it. I also really liked One Good Turn.
Grace Draven’s voice doesn’t work for me but I might try the Joan Wolf book. I’ve been wanting to read more of her.
@Kari S., I second your recommendation of Radiance by Grace Draven.
@Janine, yes, Zapata’s books are indeed long and generally the romances are slow to develop, so patience is helpful.
Your comment, “…shooting his ex-wife’s lover in the tentacles…” amused me!
@Rose: Good point. I guess the reason I have lumped Confessions with an Arranged Marriage in is because they weren’t actually involved at all when they married—the compromising situation came about because of a case of mistaken identity. So they were close to strangers and had to get to know each other before falling in love. The book was about how they learned more about each other and came to love each other, all while married, and I associate that with the MOC plot. But you’re right, it’s not an MOC in the strict sense.
The Duke and I is a different situation than that since Daphne is already in love with Simon by the time they get married. I actually consider it more of a fake relationship (courtship) book!
Re Slightly Married—it is actually inconvenient for Aidan at first. But yes, for Eve it is convenient.
Heavy sounds terrible.
@Kareni: LOL! That is a hilarious copy error.
Janine, now you’re mixing up your Carla Kelly books! The Lady’s Companion is the one with the guilt-ridden lady. That book doesn’t really count as MOC, by the way. The hero and heroine do marry hurriedly in order to help their employer stay in her own home, but they pretty much admit their love before the wedding. That title has a hero and heroine from different classes.
With This Ring has a heroine who helps with the nursing of soldiers from the Napoleonic Wars and learns some bitter truths about how badly the soldiers are treated. She disgraces herself publicly and is evicted from her home. The hero, a commanding officer who spent a lot of time with her, needs a wife for Reasons. So he offers to marry her! On their journey to his estate in Northumberland she finds the self-confidence she lacks when she has to cope with some serious problems. It’s very sweet.
Beloved Stranger is really good, but the hero is Colombian and has old-fashioned ideas about male and female roles, so be prepared!
Yay, some new MOC to try. I read a few last year that were B range:
To Have and to Hold R.S. Grey
Marriage for One Elle Maise
Part-Time Husband Noelle Adams
@Kari S.: LOL. You are so right! It’s been ages since I’ve read these books, but I don’t think I ever read With This Ring. Kelly is hit or miss for me and at some point I burned out (I think Beau Crusoe was the one that did me in).
@Jenreads: I’ll check those out. I assume Noelle Adams’ book is contemporary–what about the other two?
Janine: All are contemporaries. The Adams is the best of the bunch (if you ignore the awful grandfather). He sets the MOC in motion and is a piece of work.
Janine, I liked One Good Turn very much but have a harder time believing in the HEA for Miss Whittier and her captain, so I don’t reread it often. I didn’t care much for Beau Crusoe either. I actually find the three MOC books I mentioned up thread and The Ladies Companion my favorites of the Signet titles she wrote. If you haven’t read With this Ring I highly recommend it, as well as her last Signet title, The Wedding Journey, about a young army surgeon who marries a girl to rescue her from a malicious officer who “won” her in a bet. They have to travel across a very hazardous war-ridden Spain. The book is almost entirely told from the POV of the hero, who’s a sweetheart.
Carla Kelly’s four historical mysteries beginning with The Double Cross start with a couple in a sort-of MOC situation, and an actual arranged marriage between the heroine’s shrewish cousin and the hero’s friend, but they’re set in the Spanish period in New Mexico and all marriages were arranged!
Also, the first novella in Coming Home for Christmas, “A Christmas in Paradise,” is a rescue MOC. The heroine is in dire straits, friendless and penniless. The hero marries her out of pity. This anthology is unique because all three stories are by CK. She’s an excellent writer of short fiction and I’ve been known to spend too much money on anthologies just because she has a story in them.
One more Carla Kelly recommendation: in her short story collection Here’s to the Ladies: Stories of the Frontier Army, is one unique story, “Kathleen Flaherty’s Long Winter,” about a young Irish army widow who’s given the choice between marrying a young Swedish-American soldier she barely knows or being mistress to an officer. She chooses marriage (of course!) to a stranger, and has to deal with the consequences.
I enjoyed Mary Jo Putney’s trad Regency “The Would-Be Widow”, a marriage of convenience story. The heroine must be married by 25 to keep her inheritance. She picks an injured soldier who is deathly ill in hopes of soon regaining her independence, and he agrees to marry her for a fee in order to support his sister after his death. He then has the audacity to recover and they must work out the details of their now inconvenient marriage. A nice secondary romance where the sister and his doctor fall in love. Putney rewrote this years later, but I’ve not read the rewrite.
@Susan/DC: Oh yes, I read that one too—the original version. It was good.
BTW, that’s an old school trope that Kathleen Woodiwiss popularized with her bestselling historical romance, Shanna. The heroine needs a husband; I had to read a plot summary to refresh my memory on why, but her father has given her a deadline to find one and she’s determined never to marry, so she picks a man who is supposed to be hanged. She promises the hero to keep him fed and living in better quarters until the hanging and he agrees to marry her for that reason. Of course he doesn’t die (from what I read a dead man is substituted for him? I don’t understand how) and they end up meeting again.
I read this book as a young teen and thought it was boring and slow (her books were so slow, so many words). But this trope became a bit popular later, I think. I read a few books in the 1980s where the heroine digs up a husband who is about to die because she needs to marry for some reason, he agrees because she offers some kind of compensation, and then of course he survives. The Would-Be Widow was the best of the lot.
@Kari S.: Thanks for the recommendations. Truthfully, I find Carla Kelly’s books samey these days, and I also prefer characters with more shades of gray than she generally offers. But I appreciate your thinking of me.
By the way, I edited the post to include your correction.
@Janine: I love Carla Kelly’s books/novellas but I have to agree with the “samey” description. These days I find I need a few months between reading them as the “voice” of her MCs is so similar.
@Susan/DC: I liked “The Would-Be-Widow,” too with my preference being for the original shorter trad book rather than the rewritten and longer one.
@Kari S.:
Oh, I love that whole book and that story in particular.
Drat – reading all these comments makes me want to dive into my dusty “already-read” stacks of books and revisit them!
@Janine: I think we’ve established that Cate C. Wells is very much not for you ;)
Kate Canterbary has a new release coming up that sounds kind of like an MOC setup, but it may be something else – it’s not really clear from the description: https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/59650449-in-a-jam.
Is Mary Jo Putney’s Shattered Rainbows fake relationship or MOC? I don’t really remember. The China Bride and/or The Bartered Bride may be MOC.
Reading back over some of my reviews for Carla Kelly – I should have marked this one https://dearauthor.com/book-reviews/overall-b-reviews/review-marrying-the-captain-by-carla-kelly/ as a MOC, too.
@Rose: It’s a fake marriage I believe!
@Rose: Re the Canterbury, those will codicils that require the heirs to get married to obtain something are absurd. Jane (a lawyer) used to rail against them. It kind of ruined them for me!
@Janine – Regarding Shanna; They meet up again through plot convenience! He oh so conveniently ends up as a bondsman sent to work her father’s island.
Joan Wolf has done quite a few MOCS. I like her stuff because she packs a lot of story into her books (most of them were the thin Signet regencies), creates a good intense romantic connection, and and always adds a touch of suspense to the romance… not enough to make it full on suspense but enough that it adds a touch of menace and often includes the uncovering of long held family secrets.
GOLDEN GIRL – is one where an broke Duke marries as super duper rich merchant’s granddaughter. They know it is an arrangement and clear-headedly decide the arrangement works for both of them.
THE PRETENDERS – childhood BFFs. The hero is a young Baron who has inherited a crack ton of money but can’t control it until he marries or reaches a certain age. He inveigles his BFF who is a young well born lady who is living kinda on edge of almost poverty with her mother, to fake betrothal (which he hopes would be enough) but alas it isn’t so they end up doing the whole MOC thing — he gets money and she and her mother are lifted from genteel poverty. Also some family secrets are revealed!
MARGARITA – I think this one is divisive because it is a true MOC and the hero has a mistress at the start of the marriage. So that is a deal breaker for some people, but I think in-story it makes sense. The H&H barely know each other and are forced to marry. The heroine is the granddaughter of an Earl who had been brought up in Venezuela and comes of England as a refugee. The book has a lot of history packed into it as it takes place during the time of Simon Bolivar and he revolution to gain independence from Spain. She’s lost her entire family to the war and is basically numb at the start. The The hero is the heir to the Earldom and is hated by the Earl. He resents being forced to marry. I liked this one because it unpeeled the characters in layers and they really grew into their relationship. Also like I mentioned, JW uses a lot of real history in this one.
THE AMERICAN DUCHESS – the heroine is a very rich American Boston shipping heiress. Hero is a broke Duke and needs money. She agrees to marry him because of her father. I liked this one because the heroine is American and very politically involved. Also she is not on board with the noble class in England so that is the cause of some friction. But even so, they begin to like and respect each other. Like MARGARITA this one mines history and the political landscape of the time. Also I thought it was interesting that she allowed the heroine to show signs of post partum depression which, imo, was unusual to include in a hist rom written in 1982.
@TinaNoir: LOL re Shanna. I was wondering, what did Shanna’s father hold over her head when he gave her that deadline to marry? And also, how is it that marrying a convict satisfied that condition or resolve her problem? I’m sure that’s not what he meant.
I like Joan Wolf, though I’ve only read a few. A London Season was my favorite of them–so unique and different. I also liked His Lordship’s Mistress. The only one I didn’t like was an MOC romance; The Counterfeit Betrothal. Like Carolyn Jewel’s Lord Ruin, it was another “oops, accidental rape leads to an MOC” book. However, I am interested in some of the ones you mention. Margarita actually sounds the most intriguing to me. Balogh had an MOC regency where the hero also had a mistress during his MOC at first, and then the heroine finds out and gets angry and hurt–The Obedient Bride. Some of the other Joan Wolf books you mention also sound good and I’d like to try them.
Do you know how if her digital reissues are good? I’m not sure if they are the same as the original versions or expanded like Putney’s The Would-Be Widow was.
THE LONDON SEASON is my absolute favorite of hers. The heroine in that is just… I love how she just has no f**ks to give. LOL. Ditto HIS LORDSHIPS’S MISTRESS. The angst is gorgeous in that one.
The digital re-releases are very well done also some have been released in audio. I am not 100% sure if they are word for word, but I didn’t notice any difference.
@TinaNoir: Thanks! And sorry, I meant The Counterfeit Marriage, not betrothal (that one’s a Balogh title).
Do you remember the details re Shanna?
Amazingly, I know the details of Shanna because I just did a re-read of that book earlier this year. Once in awhile I do a re-read of an 80s romance that I remember liking to see if it will stand up. Surprisingly Shanna wasn’t too bad. There were one or two cringey things, but my 2020s self is not appalled at my 1980s self for liking it.
Basically Shanna’s father is a self made rich man and she is his only remaining family. He wants her to get married and have kids so he can die knowing he left all he worked hard for to the next generation, Shanna goes on this expensive grand tour supposedly to find a husband but Shanna is haughty and picky and she comes back still single. They have a raging argument and he gives her an ultimatum, either she marries a member of the aristocracy by some deadline or he will force her to marry a guy of his choosing. He might have also threatened to disinherit her? Not sure about that part. But he owns the island they all live on so I think he can force her to marry. So off she goes to scheme.
@TinaNoir: I see. But if she comes back widowed, what’s to stop her father from giving her that ultimatum again if she doesn’t have a child / children? And does the father not care at all about the background of her groom?
I hear you, Jennie. MoC is one of my favorite tropes, but can I remember any to recommend? No. It’s so irritating. My memory for books has really dropped off lately. I’ve looked through my catalog of books and found a few that way. I think it’s partly that I haven’t read historical romance in a while.
Here are a few I remember enjoying:
-The Admiral’s Penniless Bride by Carla Kelly
-Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know by Mary Jo Putney & The Best Husband Money Can Buy by Mary Jo Putney. These are novellas/short stories in several anthologies. (I loved the holiday anthologies that used to come out.)
-The Wise Virgin by Jo Beverley. Another short story. It’s a love match disguised as a MoC. They meet and fall in love but their families are enemies. The hero finagles a marriage to seal the peace.
Some of the comments have jogged my memory! Jayne Ann Krentz’s Light in Shadow/Truth or Dare duology is a modern MOC that made sense to me. The heroine has a psychic ability and they end up marrying to keep her safe from her family.
@Janine – Well there you go applying logic to things! Yeah, in story Shanna’s plan makes NO sense! All she does, I think is, buys herself a year or mourning. But then MAGIC PLOT CONVENIENCE happens and Ruark, her not dead husband, ends up on the same island as her.
@TinaNoir: LOL. Well, the first part of that actually makes more sense than I gave the book credit for. If she knows all she’ll buy herself is another year, that’s better than thinking it gets her completely out of the jam. And yet that is a glaring contrivance! Some of those old skool books were pretty unashamed about having characters out of the blue run into each other halfway around the planet from where they met without either one knowing that’s where the other was.
Happy sigh. My favorite trope.
@Darlene Marshall, Perfect Strangers is The first romance I read – as it first appeared in one of my mom’s monthly magazines. The story was so popular it was then issued as a paperback. Thank you for a sweet memory.
@MaryK: Thank you so much for recs! I haven’t read Kelly, Putney or Beverly in ages – I should consider picking them up again!
As much as I love Carla Kelly, I’m not crazy about a few of her books, including The Admiral’s Penniless Bride. Yes, a MOC, but the hero really blows it, and I had a hard time forgiving him.
I’m not crazy about Joan Wolf’s Regencies and Regency Historicals. And while I enjoyed Golden Girl at first, after several readings it got to me. The portrayal of the villain would be extremely offensive to modern sensibilities. Plus the plot is uncomfortably similar to Heyer’s A Civil Contract.
My favorite books by Joan Wolf once upon a time (besides Beloved Stranger, a category MOC) were No Dark Place and The Poisoned Serpent. These two books are the beginning of a mystery series that apparently didn’t sell well enough to be continued. They were set during England’s 12th century Anarchy period, and I loved them. Nothing to do with MOC, however!
@Janine: Canterbary posted a snippet from In A Jam. Looks like MOC, the characters know the will is ridiculous and unenforceable, but apparently figure it’s easier to go with it than to fight it.