And thus Grace is healed by kind actions of a relative, right? Wrong. Grace remains prickly, defensive, sometimes self-sabotaging in her quest to stand on her own feet and keep the world at arm’s length. If you read the lower-starring Goodreads reviews of this book, there are a lot of disappointed readers who disliked this book for the very reason I loved it: Grace is a romance heroine who is completely and utterly unaware of that fact. Meeting Cole Rawlins has zero effect on her at first, other than possibly making her even grumpier and pricklier than usual.
Reader, I love this kind of heroine. The kind who really needs to work through a lot of issues. Someone who’s been through the wringer and is not inexplicably sunny. Someone like Bruce Banner who is always angry, stomping through life in combat boots with a snarl on her face. Someone who’s really not looking for love, but ends up finding it anyway. Here are a few recommendations for contemporary romances with “prickly” heroines: