Thanks to the wonderful members of the newly formed Romance Forum Refugee group at Goodreads, I have a huge new list of romance novels with bearded heroes! Dark beards! Blond beards! Dark staches, too! Yee haw!!!!!!!
And thanks to their recommendations, I discovered a new-to-me romance writer who appears to love beards as much as I do. All of her heroes are hairy! Beards, staches, nice furry chests.....yowzah! I am now the official #1, A++ Fan Of Elizabeth Lowell. Where have you been all my life, lady? Her Medieval Series was originally published in the 1990's, so these are "oldies but goodies" which have eluded me until now.
As soon as I read this sentence, I knew this was the book for me....
"Dominic stroked his closely clipped mustache and black beard as he studied her."
Schwing!
Jackpot!
So far I have sucked down the first two books of this series...Untamed (#1), and Forbidden (#2). Coming up next is Enchanted (#3), Simon's story.
All beardy goodness aside, these books are fabulous. Even if they didn't have beardy heroes (whimper, whimper), I would still be in love with them. They are incredibly emotional, intense, sexy historicals. The characters sing...both hero and heroine. The lush settings are beautiful. I am totally digging all the cool stuff about falconry. And the endings are so romantic and satisfying....these are off-the-charts romantic. These books have some of the most swoon-worthy dialogue I have ever seen in a romance novel.
There were only a few things that bothered me. One was jarring POV changes, which I got used to pretty fast. The second thing is the drawn-out misunderstanding (in both books) about the heroine's state of innocence. Nevertheless, I found these books spell-binding, could not put them down.
The second book, Duncan's story, made me fall in love with "The Stache"!! Check out this sentence....
"When his breath and mustache brushed over her sensitive fingers, it gave her a pleasure so great that she trembled." (me, too...hee hee hee!)
My only truly horrified moment was when Dominic shaved his beard off right before his wedding (NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!). I just pretended that scene didn't happen.
So, guess what I'll be doing this weekend? Reading about the blond-bearded Simon. He better not shave his beard off before his wedding, or I'm gonna get peeved.
Untamed: Grade A
Forbidden: Grade A
Penelope: Grade A (Ha haa, just kidding...oh, what the hell, I deserve an "A" too!)
Happy Weekend,
Pen
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