u/SinSotto

Please hear me out because I'm looking for a very specific dynamic and I'm having a hard time finding books that capture it.

I recently watched a French film called Les Égarés (Strayed, 2003).

>!It takes place in 1940 and follows a 17-year-old boy who has escaped from the Mettray reformatory. He meets a young widow in her late twenties who is fleeing the war with her two small children. He stays with them, helps them survive, becomes attached to the children and eventually falls in love with the widow.!<

>!Unfortunately, he is eventually caught and taken back into custody, where he commits suicide.!<

>!To explain what affected me so much about this story, I need to give a little context about Mettray.!<

>!Mettray was a reformatory/penal colony for boys. You did not necessarily have to be a hardened criminal to end up there. Boys could be sent there for relatively minor offenses, vagrancy, theft, or simply because adults had essentially given up on them. Some came from extremely deprived backgrounds and had very little experience of a normal childhood or family life.!<

>!The conditions were brutal. The institution operated under an extremely harsh, quasi-military system. The boys were subjected to exhausting labor, hunger, cold, severe punishments and isolation. There are accounts of boys deliberately injuring themselves just so they could spend a few days in the infirmary and get a temporary break from work and punishment. Add violence among the inmates to all of that and it isn't difficult to understand the desperation these boys experienced.!<

>!So when the hero of the film escapes, what gets to me isn't simply that he falls in love.!<

>!For the first time, he gets a taste of life.!<

>!Freedom. A home. Eating together. Helping with ordinary chores. Children becoming attached to him. Someone caring whether he comes back. Physical affection. Being wanted. Falling in love.!<

>!All those completely mundane things that most people wouldn't even notice are extraordinary to someone who has barely experienced normal life.!<

>!And the heroine becomes his doorway into that world.!<

That's the dynamic I'm looking for.

>!There is also a sexual scene in the film that illustrates what I mean particularly well. When they sleep together, she undresses and he uses his lighter to illuminate her body because he wants to look at her. He tells her he has never seen a naked woman before.!<

>!Later, he turns her onto her stomach and begins preparing her for anal sex. Confused, she asks what he's doing. He tells her that it's the only way he knows and that she should tell him if it hurts and she wants him to stop.!<

>!The film never explicitly explains what happened to him before, so I don't want to claim a specific backstory that isn't confirmed. But the scene gives us a pretty disturbing glimpse of how limited and abnormal his previous experience of intimacy has been. He knows sex, but he doesn't know intimacy with a woman. Even that is something he has to discover with her.!<

This is the kind of MMC I'm looking for.

He doesn't literally have to have grown up in a prison or reformatory. He could have been imprisoned, institutionalized, held captive, severely isolated, raised somewhere cut off from normal society, abused, hidden away, etc.

What matters to me is that he has been deprived of ordinary life for so long that after meeting the FMC he begins experiencing things that are completely mundane to everyone else for the first time.

I want to see him discover normal life through her.

A proper home. Going somewhere just because he wants to. Choosing his own food. Sleeping somewhere safe. Celebrating something. Being touched affectionately. Having someone worry about him. Having a person who is his. Maybe discovering sex and physical intimacy with her too.

Ideally, she is the first woman he has ever been genuinely close to, both emotionally and physically. She doesn't need to be older than him. That isn't the important part for me.

And because she represents not only romantic love but his first connection to a normal life, I especially love when his attachment to her becomes extremely intense. Clingy, possessive, obsessive, almost desperate. Not simply "I love her", but more like "she is the first good thing I've ever had and I don't know how to exist without her."

The closest book example I can think of is Archer's Voice by Mia Sheridan. Archer hasn't been imprisoned, but he has lived in extreme isolation for years. Bree becomes his connection to the outside world and through her he begins experiencing things that are completely ordinary to everyone else. That's a huge part of why his attachment to her feels so intense to me.

Another Mia Sheridan book I've read that scratches a similar itch is Unwanted.

So please give me more recommendations!

Genre doesn't matter at all. Contemporary, historical, fantasy, sci-fi, dystopian, dark romance, alien romance, whatever. I genuinely don't care.

I'm looking for the dynamic, not the setting.

MMC has been imprisoned, isolated or otherwise deprived of normal life for years. He meets the FMC. She becomes his first real connection to ordinary life and intimacy. He starts discovering the world with her and forms an incredibly intense attachment to her.

The more emotionally intense it is, the better.

Thank all of you for taking time to read this request and all the recs.

I'm looking for books where the FMC gets cheated on or dumped by her boyfriend/fiancé, but instead of crumbling and crying over him, she does something completely unhinged: she marries his brother/cousin/uncle/best friend/rival/etc.

And I mean fast. Ideally, the marriage happens so suddenly and comes so completely out of nowhere that the ex is convinced FMC and MMC must have been having an affair behind his back the whole time.

Bonus points if:

• MMC is richer, hotter, more powerful/successful, etc. basically an undeniable upgrade from the ex.
• FMC initially agrees to the marriage partly out of spite/revenge. She wants her ex to see exactly how badly he screwed up.
• MMC has his own reasons for proposing, namely, he's wanted FMC for a long time and sees this as his chance to finally have her.
• The ex is absolutely losing his mind over their marriage and becomes jealous/suspicious/obsessed with the idea that something must have been going on between them before the breakup.
• FMC doesn't spend half the book devastated and pining for her ex. I want more "You dumped me? Fine, I'll marry your hotter brother" energy.
• Lots of jealousy, family drama, awkward encounters, and the ex being forced to watch FMC thrive with someone better than him.

Marriage of convenience/revenge marriage is perfect, but I want the FMC and new MMC to be the actual endgame. I don't want her getting back together with the cheating/dumping ex.

Basically, give me maximum petty revenge + sudden marriage + jealous ex + MMC who has secretly wanted her all along.

Thank you!

Ages ago I read a book with a trope/vibe I’ve been chasing ever since and I’m DESPERATE for recs like it.

It was set in college. On her very first day, the FMC catches the attention of the MMC, one of the popular guys on campus, when he helps her carry her luggage into the dorms. From there, he slowly but very intentionally starts folding her into his friend group, and before long she’s basically part of the pack.

The thing is: he’s an EXTREME case of the quiet, broody, barely-speaks type. Like, this man does not communicate. At all.

Everyone in his circle knows she’s “his,” but the FMC is completely oblivious to the fact that he likes her. Anytime someone suggests there’s something between them, she immediately denies it and insists they’re not even close friends. Meanwhile, there is literally zero communication between them, so in her mind everyone else is clearly delusional.

The dorm setup was something like girls on the lower floors, boys on the upper floors, but everyone could move around freely between them.

And then one night, while she’s getting ready for bed, there’s a knock at her door.

It’s the MMC. Freshly showered. Sweatpants. T-shirt. Ready for bed.

Without saying a word, he walks into her room, climbs into her bed, turns over, and goes to sleep.

She’s COMPLETELY confused but too awkward to ask what’s going on, so she just lies there beside him and eventually falls asleep too.

And then it happens again the next night.

And the next.

And then every single night for weeks.

Nothing physical happens besides sleeping together, and because he still barely talks to her, she somehow convinces herself this means absolutely nothing and changes nothing between them.

Meanwhile all her friends are telling her this man is obsessed with her, but she is in DEEP denial.

He’s also deliciously jealous and fully convinced she’s dating multiple guys at once (they’re actually her brothers), but instead of confronting her properly he just silently suffers and keeps pursuing her anyway.

I remember at one point he says something like:
“What else do I have to do to make you stop talking to all these guys calling and texting you day and night? What do I have to do to be the only man in your life?”

PLEASE give me books with similar vibe.

Thank yo SOOO MUCH in advance!

The book I'm referring to is {Evelyn Vine Be Mine by Chelle Mitchiter}

Hi,

I’m looking for reads where the MMC can’t perform sexually. He either can’t orgasm or can’t get hard at all. It’s either something he’s always had, or he used to be a regular, horny teenager/young adult, but over time he developed issues that kept getting worse until he was completely blocked.

He might try therapy or medication, but nothing really helps. Eventually, he just accepts it and pours all his energy into building his career.

His issue can be caused by a curse, something that runs in the family, fated mates, or just be unexplained (especially in a contemporary setting).

Years later, he meets the FMC and he get instant, earth-shattering, physical reaction to her. He knows she’s IT for him and is ready to burn the world down to keep her.

His condition isn’t magically "cured" all the way. He’s still not interested in other women at all, but he can’t keep his hands off HER and her alone

Bonus points if the FMC isn’t into him at first. I’d especially love something with blackmail or forced marriage/relationship vibes. I'm okay with all genres.

Any recs?