Seasoned romance (& some of Lisa's favourite titles!)

Hi, everyone! How are you doing?

It's been a slow reading week for me so I'm a bit uninspired to write a blog post today, but then I saw that today's #rombklove topic is Seasoned Romance a.k.a romance featuring characters who are 35+ years old. Guys, I squealed because I have lowkey been waiting for this day in the challenge because I'm old and I need more characters my age, demmit! I'm duly grateful to whoever responsible for coming up with the name seasoned romance because Romance Featuring Older Characters is a bit mouthful for a title. You can check out today's post here; most of the titles are new to me and I'm excited to check them out.

Anyway, here are some of my favourites:

Kristen Ashley is one of my ultimate favourite authors, and she's written so many older characters (35+) in her romance it's hard to pick just one, but for the sake of this post let me at least attempt it.

One of my KA favourites, Soaring featured a heiress heroine (47) and a firefighter hero (48), and both of them are single parents and neighbours. Good old KA combining all my favourite tropes in one book--a legend.

For You is also my KA favourite; H/h (in their 40s) were the It Couple in their town once upon a time, and they reconnected again when a dead body was found outside the heroine's bar, and the hero (a police lieutenant) was called upon to investigate. We're talking second chance romance after 20 years here, people!

KA's latest standalone, Complicated also featured older characters; the hero (42) is a recently divorced father of 3, and the heroine (38) is a hairdresser and a part-time lounge singer.

See? I'm literally unable to pick just one KA.

I've talked about my love for Pamela Clare's I-Team in this post. She wrote a seasoned romance novella in this series called Soul Deep. The hero, Jack (63) is a rancher and also a former Army Ranger, and the heroine, Janet (45) is FBI Special Agent. They met for the first time in the previous book in the series, and sufficed to say the meeting did not go well. They met for the second time after Janet got stranded in the snow and Jack rescued her.

I love Jack and Janet's relationship development; they bonded over good food (Jack's an amazing cook) and horses. Jack West is what I hope my future husband would still be when he's old (dude is fit, iykwim).

Pamela Clare also wrote another seasoned romance novel called Close to Heaven in her other series (hero is 47, heroine is 37, and they've been friends and colleagues for 20 years).

Nina Lane's Sweet Life is one of my favourite seasoned romances. The heroine, Julia turned 50 in the beginning of the story, while Warren, the hero, is a few years older, iirc? and a single father of seven grown up children (this book is  #5 in the series; books 1-3 are about his sons'). Also, it might be a deal-breaker for some but Warren is also Julia's brother-in-law (he was married to Julia's older sister until her death a decade or so ago). What I love about this book is how Julia and Warren are a solid team. They both co-parent Warren's kids, and both have high powered careers, but outside of that they have a separate, strong relationship together. 

I still love this quote by Warren, when Julia asked him how dating younger women was for him: "The sex was great. The rest... not so much. They went on about music and movies I didn't care about, and I kept wanting to advise them on their financial portfolio. Not a dynamic that worked."

I laughed so hard at this part. Poor Warren.

I also recently finished Maggie Wells' Play for Keeps, featuring H/h in their 40s (and the heroine is older than the hero!). The heroine, Millie is a PR specialist, while Ty is a basketball coach.I love Ty and Millie together, they're just meant to be. I'm a sucker for relationships where the hero and heroine flirt with and make each other laugh all the time. Their relationship is so easy, I'm a fan. They are also unafraid of confronting each other with their dissatisfactions, I love clear communication in a relationship.

I was told that Maggie also wrote other books with older characters, and I planned to check them out.

Honorable mentions

• So Sweet by Rebekah Weatherspoon (hero is 50),  
• Act Your Age by Eve Dangerfield (hero is 46), 
• Retrosexual by Ainsley Booth and Sadie Haller (H/h are in their 40s, iirc), 
• Liberating Lacey by Anne Calhoun (heroine is 36), 
• Completely by Ruthie Knox (heroine is 39), 
• The Love Experiment by Ainslie Paton (hero is 36), 
• Pretty Face by Lucy Parker (hero is 40), and 
• By the Hour by Roni Loren (heroine is 39). 

Okay, now that I'm done, time to check out the Twitter tag for more recs!

Do you read any seasoned romance?
Feel free to rec me titles in the comments!