81 Books Like Delicious

I personally love this book because I can identify with the characters, who are both flawed and genuine. All too often I’ve started reading a romance only to discover that both characters are gorgeous, billionaires, and have IQs over 180. I find such perfection uninteresting.

The two leads in To Have And To Hold, Sebastian and Rachel, are both train wrecks, although it is initially easier to see Rachel’s problems as she is currently a convict who is being released from prison. Sebastian’s behavior steps over the line. Way over the line. And the tension in most of the book will give you white knuckles. I have never forgotten these characters and their journey toward love was all the more rewarding for how hard-won it was.

Judith Ivory has one of the most distinctive voices in historical romance. I wish she was still releasing new work! The Proposition is a fun take on My Fair Lady, where Henry Higgins is a down-on-her-luck duke’s daughter and Eliza Dolittle is a charming rat catcher. Yes, you heard that right. We’re a long way from the usual historical romance fare of dukes and rakes. Not only that, Mick Tremore, the rat catcher in question, has the most wonderful dog Win who threatens to steal the show every time she’s on the page. Charming, clever, witty and full of delicious sexual tension, this is a compelling read – and it has a serious message about how often the greatest barriers to our dreams are those our minds place on us. 

Mary Balogh is truly the grand dame of modern historical romance. Not only is she a reader favorite, but she has done her share of pushing the envelope when it comes to writing new and unusual romances. Dancing With Clara tackles a couple of taboos in romance—addiction and infidelity. The hero in the story is riddled with faults, and you will rip out your hair as you watch him undermine himself—and his marriage to Clara—over and over again. 

I’ve read criticisms of Clara—that she is a doormat—but I think Ms. Balogh accurately represented a Regency woman when she wrote Clara’s character. Especially a woman who was confined to a wheelchair and without even the meager options wealthy women had during the era. Don’t worry! There’s a happily ever after, but Clara and Freddie will bleed on the pages before they get it.

I’ve read this m/m romance multiple times for many reasons. First, it takes place in NYC. Second, both characters are working men (no dukes or millionaires!!) and Third, it is a hot, hot, hot enemies to lovers romance that gives the reader a vibrant picture of both the banking business at the end of the nineteenth century, but also tons of fascinating details about daily life and work culture. 

My favorite part of this story is the development of the relationship between the two leads. Both Jonah and Reid practically leap off the page. I love having an anal-retentive control freak paired with a charming, easy-going rogue.

Spending is about a divorced artist and mom. It starts with a middle-aged protagonist reluctantly giving a gallery talk. She complains that male artists often have muses to do their laundry and supply sex, thereby providing practical and “therapeutic” support. A man in the audience stands up and offers to be the artist’s muse. The story is about what happens when this stubbornly independent woman takes him up on it. I totally related to the crusty heroine who has fought for everything she has and distrusts fortune when it offers abundant gifts. 

I confess that almost everything Baxter has written is too intellectually frigid for me. But this novel is one of my favorites. At times sweet, at times intense, it is a meditation on the ways we love, and the various stages of love based on our ages and the duration of our relationships. Baxter explores romantic love, first love, old love, love for our children, and sexual obsession. Grief and hope figure prominently. At first, seemingly a series of short stories, the novel’s characters gradually drift into one another’s orbits and their stories become integrated. I love the author’s mastery of form while telling a brilliantly humane—and sexy—story about what it means to love.

A teenage girl in Maine steals a dictionary at the mall and is sentenced to do community service in her small town’s library. The middle-aged head librarian there has exiled herself from a divorce accompanied by public scandal. A much younger New York City stockbroker who had piles of money turns up in town after losing everything in the 2008 crash. He believes his aunt’s savings booklet from a bank long subsumed by another—he just needs to figure out which one—will put him back on his feet. I love how gently this novel reveals these damaged characters’ foibles and hopes. They seem to have nothing in common, yet they heal each other. And there is (spoiler alert) a sexy little romance between the librarian and the stockbroker.

Ms. Wesley didn’t publish until she was seventy, which I find inspiring. She produced ten slim interconnected novels. Like the heroine of Delicious although a century later, this one cooks. She cooks for elderly ladies, visiting for a week or two to stock their freezers with fabulous meals. Her less innocent sideline is “visiting” with men. These occupations earn her enough to keep her fatherless son in an excellent private school. Then, the unthinkable happens: two men who were previously unknown to each other discover they may be sharing the same mistress. The problem is they thought their arrangements were exclusive. A comedy of manners ensues. Wesley’s prose cuts like a finely honed knife. And she does her cutting with very few words. I so admire that skill!  

Private Arrangements was my introduction to Sherry Thomas’s absolutely exquisite prose and story-telling. The setting is the Edwardian period and gives us a couple who were once passionately in love. The day after their wedding everything goes wrong with no way to pick up the pieces. Indeed, the two have lived apart for the last ten years. Now she wants a divorce, and he has a shocking proposal for her. How on earth can two people who have made such terrible mistakes find their way back to each other? Thomas takes you on an emotional ride on the way to the answer. She’s an amazing writer whose characters come to life on the page in a way few can match. If you haven’t read her work, you should.

A philosopher writes about love in the most extraordinarily ordinary way. It is a story about a couple and how they fall in love and why the two of them fall in love with each other. That is fascinating in itself. Then he follows how the love between them develops—and he comments on it as they move along. It is a book that gives a deep insight into how love works when it works—and when it doesn’t. I felt much better about the mistakes I’ve made in love when I read his book.