A Dangerous Liaison with Detective Lewis by Jillian Stone (Guest Post/Giveaway)

Today I am happy to welcome back steampunk, historical romance author - Jillian Stone! 

Name Your Favorite Romance Trope

There are many tried and true plots in the world of Romance novels. I know I have quite a few favorites and thought I’d list some of them here today, so we could have a chat about them. I’m pretty sure everyone will be familiar with these storylines, so here goes:

The Wager This one just might be the most over used of the classic romance tropes when it comes to Regency romance. If done well, however it is often a sure fire winner  with romance readers. Typically, these stories almost always begin with a wager in a Gentlemen’s Club in London.

The Handsome Devil Himself: His Hotness Another personal favorite of mine. You want to hate him, but he’s just so hot. This hero can be coarse, disagreeable and arrogant, but despite his hotness, there is no one in the world the heroine is more intrigued with. He toys with her, and is generally condescending––so he couldn’t possibly be attracted to her...could he? He often been called ‘the hero the reader loves to hate or hates to love’. Sometimes, he’s both! Example: Loretta Chase’s Sebastian in Lord of Scoundrel’s.

The Arranged Marriage Another tried and true romance plot which begins with childhood fairytales like Beauty and the Beast, and dogs a woman for the rest of her life. I read somewhere that these kinds of tales were told to young women (in the days of arranged marriages) to prepare them for their eventual husbands! This is another tried and true trope that gets reinvented over and over again.

Star-Crossed Lovers Romeo and Juliet. Enough said.

Furious Attraction. They argue, they bicker incessantly, they argue some more. They kiss. Hands down one of my favs, if it is handled well. Since we are on a Shakespeare roll, a great example is The Taming of the Shrew. Another example is Moonlighting, the mid-1980’s TV show, which notably produced a homage to Shakespeare’s comedy.

Right Under Your Nose Love this plot as well. Hero or heroine has been looking for love in all the wrong places. Ultimately they find it right under their noses. There is great tension in this storyline if the reader is rooting for the two to discover each other. And it takes a skillful writer to pull this one off as the audience/reader is usually way ahead of the characters from the get-go.

The Wallflower A perennial plot which will be retold over and over in fresh new ways until the end of time. Case in point Eloisa James latest release The Ugly Duchess, A more contemporary version might be Bridget Jones Diary.

Off to a Bad Start Hero and heroine are off to such an awful start it takes nearly the whole book for them to admit they’re crazy about each other. A nice complexity for this kind of story is if the hero is a bullying rogue-ish type and heroine is equally feisty. This creates lots of wonderful sexual tension.

Snowbound with a Stranger Heroine and hero stuck together for days with no outside disturbances. High concept, pure romance fantasy! 

Long Lost Love Robin Hood and Maid Marian, for example have been childhood friends and were in love before they were separated and later reunited. There is something about this plot that is classic and timeless for me, which is why I decided to build the love story in A Dangerous Liaison with Detective Lewis around this trope.

Here's the back cover blurb:

When Fanny Greyville-Nugent's father suffers a gruesome death in the clutches of his own machine, mourning his loss is not the beautiful heiress's only heartbreak. Scotland Yard is convinced he was targeted in a plot to halt the rise of industry, and Fanny's former fiancé, dashing and dubious detective Raphael "Rafe" Lewis, has been assigned to the case.
For the estranged ex-lovers, bringing the notorious assassins to justice proves as tumultuous as quelling pent-up desires. Fighting peril and passion at every turn of a dangerous journey from Edinburgh to London, they are pursued by an anarchist group hell-bent on destroying her father's mysterious entry into the London Industrial Exposition.

When an astonishing discovery about the couple's failed engagement surfaces, the sleuthing duo realize they can trust no one. Rafe confesses new details about his infidelity and Fanny risks all to avenge her father's murder. But will Rafe and Fanny triumph over the pain of their past?

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Attention commenters Share your favorite romance trope with for a chance to win a signed copy of A Dangerous Liaison with Detective Lewis! And if you enjoy historical romance, romantic suspense, and “long lost love” is one of your favorite tropes, you just might give A Dangerous Liaison with Detective Lewis a try! ;)

Thanks to Reading Between the Wines for inviting me back to blog today!

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~*GIVEAWAY*~

As Jillian mentioned above, she is giving away one copy of A Dangerous Affair with Detective Lewis to one reader today. (Open Internationally.) To enter, just leave a comment on this post answering her question and then fill out the rafflecopter below. Additional entries are available but not required. Good luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway