Recs?

[seekingferret]

I've been reading Elmore Leonard lately and was wondering if people had recommendations for authors of color in a similar vein- gritty settings, colorful characters, a bit of a light touch? Other writers in a broadly similar vein might be Florida Crime writers like Carl Hiaasen or John MacDonald. Doesn't need to be crime stories, though, if you feel it's similar in other ways.

Sherry Thomas, Ravishing the Heiress

[dorothean]

Sequel to Beguiling the Beauty, which I wrote about here. I liked this one a lot more!

Here is most of my review from Goodreads, minus some prefatory thoughts on sexual monogamy in romance novels. (Short version: Skip this book if the protagonist being in love with/sleeping with someone who's not the official love interest is a dealbreaker for you in romance novels.)

Ravishing the Heiress --- ugh, I wince every time I type that. Can I rename it just for this review? I promise to choose something relevant and interesting! Okay, thanks -- Dormice and Demolition starts off with your typical marriage of convenience. Heroine (age 17) is the only child of a wealthy manufacturer whose ambition is to unite his family with a title. Hero (age 19) has unexpectedly inherited an earldom, an almost irredeemably derelict estate, and overwhelming debts. Unable to escape any of these, he's forced to conclude that he must marry wealth, and has the heroine thrust upon him.

The problem is that the hero is desperately in love with someone else, whom he could have married if not for the money problem. This does not escape the notice of the heroine -- brought up passionless and dutiful -- who has quickly fallen in love with him, despite her best intentions. Since she cannot hope to win the kind of love he has already given to this other girl, she determines to save herself from heartbreak by insisting on a marriage in name only. They'll live together, appear in public together, and make financial decisions together, but nothing else. When she proposes this plan, the hero assumes that she strongly dislikes the idea of intimacy with him. They agree to wait eight years before trying to have children. Apart from this, they will behave as though they're not married: he can have discreet affairs and so (after the child-rearing period) can she.

I've read other romance novels that begin this way, and what happens next is that the other woman turns out to be horrible, the hero realizes that the heroine is whom he truly wants, and they live happily ever after. This either happens immediately, or after months or years of separation during which they do not interact at all. Dormice and Demolition doesn't work this way.

What happens is this: ( Not particularly spoilery, just long )