In her latest installment in the Penhallow Dynasty series, The Bride Takes a Groom, Lisa Berne takes all the classic elements of a Regency romance and turns them upside down. The most charming surprise is the hero himself, Hugo Penhallow, who stands out from the legion of Regency leading men before him by being kind, pleasant and affable. Hugo is not a cad or a rake, nor is he the relentlessly proper image of decorum. He’s not cold and bitter from a broken heart, nor sarcastic and snide from a chilly upbringing. Instead, Hugo is a genuinely sunny soul, reared by a delightfully quirky family he adores. While he is marvelously well connected through his influential family name and strikingly handsome (in a gentle jab at the usual tropes, nearly everyone he meets compares him to a Greek god while he politely refrains from rolling his eyes), Hugo is so impoverished after his military service that he must marry well or see his family become destitute. Despite this, Hugo never seems gloomy or desperate. He genuinely believes he can live happily ever after, and hopes to build that happiness with heiress Katherine Brooke.

As the daughter of absurdly wealthy and deeply shallow parents (a clever bit of set dressing has their library filled with handsome leather volumes, with weighty and important titles stamped on the spine, and pages that are entirely blank), Katherine’s sole responsibility is to be a dazzling social success. So of course, her greatest wish is simply to be left alone. When she’s forced to socialize, she plays at taking on the personas of the heroines she admires from the novels she sneaks in under her mother’s nose. After all, being herself has never worked out well.

Katherine and Hugo marry quickly, but a true union takes longer to form. The forthright Hugo struggles to connect with a Katherine, who has always known who she was supposed to be but hasn’t the faintest idea who she truly is. It’s her journey to selfhood that makes Katherine so frustrating and fascinating—especially when she starts to move from being the leading lady of a melodrama to being a heroine in her own life. Does she really want to be a belle dame sans merci, or can she let herself choose to be kind? The answer, once she discovers it, is as sweet as the chocolates she also used to sneak behind her mother’s back and that she comes to share with the husband she eventually allows herself to adore.

Meredith Duran delivers an emotional love story of reconciliation and healing in her return to the Rules for the Reckless series.

The Sins of Lord Lockwood begins with a whirlwind romance between the charming William “Liam” Devaliant and Anna Wallace, a confident and courageous Scottish heiress. Though their marriage is one of convenience, their attraction is palpable, and it’s easy to see that their arrangement would lead to something more, if not for a dreadful tragedy.

Following their wedding, Liam goes missing, and Anna’s heart breaks at the thought that her new husband has abandoned her and that she’s misinterpreted their chemistry all along. In reality, he was kidnapped, imprisoned and sent to a penal colony. It takes nearly four years for the pair to be reunited, and even then, their marriage is fraught with dark and dangerous feelings.

Liam is out for revenge, consumed with his desire to unmask the men responsible for his disappearance. He also suffers from severe PTSD, and trying to rebuild a life with the wife he left behind is a huge uphill battle. Duran doesn’t go into the gritty details of Liam’s imprisonment, instead hinting at the traumas and abuse he endured in well-deployed pricks of memory. Anna has had to live with her feelings of neglect and abandonment for years, as well as the knowledge that she’s been a source for all kinds of gossip. And even after Liam returns, she realizes the man she married may still be lost to her.

Duran is incredibly adept at piecing together each part of Liam and Anna’s relationship, flashing back to pivotal moments throughout The Sins of Lord Lockwood. We see their courtship and flirtation, the pain their separation causes both of them, and how much their time apart has changed them. Liam worries he has no room in his heart for love when he’s so fueled by anger. He’s very much a wounded animal, so unlike the charismatic lord Anna married. Tears will be shed over how desperately Anna wants to convey to Liam that she’s there for him, despite how much his shame makes him push her away.

The romance is hard won but worth it. Seeing Liam and Anna fight tooth and nail for one another is exactly what makes a happily ever after so satisfying. It’s raw. It’s real. And honestly, it’s easy to feel jealous of Liam. Anyone would be lucky to have Anna and her perseverance for the people she loves most.

The Sins of Lord Lockwood is a book that readers will adore, even as their hearts are being put through the wringer. Trust me, it hurts so good.

A Devil in Scotland is the satisfying conclusion to Suzanne Enoch’s No Ordinary Hero series. Once upon a time in 19th-century Scotland, in a drunken rage, Callum MacCreath destroyed his relationships with his brother, Ian, and his best friend, Rebecca. Upon discovering they were about to become engaged, Callum demanded she marry him instead and ranted about the dangers of the partnership Ian was about to enter with Rebecca’s father. Rebecca firmly refused him, and his beloved brother ordered Callum to leave and never come back.

Callum spent the past 10 years growing up and building a business in America. But when he learns that his brother has drowned under mysterious circumstances, he ends his exile. Callum realizes now that Ian was justified in banishing him, but he also knows he wasn’t wrong about everything he spewed the last time he saw his brother. He returns to Scotland with a heart bent on revenge. And if those old feelings for Becca are still there, well, he’ll work around them.

Marrying Ian was the smart and practical thing to do, but in Becca’s weaker moments, she still remembers the feelings she once harbored for his younger brother. She has just begun to emerge from mourning not only Ian’s death but also her father’s. Then Callum, whom she believed to have died during the past decade, appears on her doorstep to take his rightful place as the new Lord Geiry. He’s steadier—and stronger—than the wild and reckless boy she remembers. Yet he still inspires the same sneaky fire in her heart that he did as an 18-year-old. But can he give up his thirst for revenge?

Enoch always displays a deft touch with family relationships, and A Devil in Scotland is no exception. The details of how Rebecca’s properties and inheritance are handled are particularly insightful. Enoch’s characters leap from the page, especially Callum, who evolves from a man willing to die for justice to a true hero who seeks a solution that won’t leave mayhem in his wake.

Callum and Rebecca grab the reader’s heart in this rich, sexy and nuanced tale of love and intrigue.