11 Deliciously imperfect heroes and heroines

Ever heard the myth that all romance heroes and heroines are too perfect? That people like that don't exist in real life? Well, as we've said before, that's just patently untrue. In fact, here are a few of our favorite deliciously imperfect heroes and heroines in romance today:

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Priceless
Author: Linda Kage

Amazon blurb:
Three things in my life were fact.
I needed Sarah to survive.
I needed sex to remain sane.
And I could never mix sex with Sarah.

I just knew—deep in my marrow—that if I did, I’d somehow lose her. All my deepest darkest secrets would crack open, bleed out, and ruin everything between us. I wouldn’t unleash the shit inside me on my worst enemy, let alone her. So she stayed strictly in the friend zone.

People probably thought I never went there with her because of her cerebral palsy, but f*ck them. She knew she was the most important person in my world, and I wasn’t about to risk hurting our relationship just to make my c*ck happy.

Until the moment she begged me to take her virginity.

Now it’s all about to hit the fan, because how the hell do you resist the one person forbidden to you when she says please?

—Brandt Gamble

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Hart Broken
Author: Annie Arcane

Amazon blurb:
Mickey Hart doesn’t do one-night stands. Until she wakes up in a luxury penthouse. With nothing but a t-shirt and no idea whom it belongs to.

Enter Cale Windermere. Driven. Ambitious. Successful. And so gorgeous he could've walked straight out of a romance novel...

Except I can’t walk.

Not that it ever stops me from getting what I want.

And I want her.

Even if she's keeping secrets.

That could tear me to f*cking shreds.

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fugly
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Amazon blurb:
UGLY IS IN THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER...
My name is Lily Snow. I am twenty-five years old, and despite being born with an unattractive face, I have never doubted who I am: smart, driven, and beautiful on the inside.

Until I met Maxwell Cole.

He's handsome, excessively wealthy, and the owner of Cole Cosmetics. It's been my dream to work for this man for as long as I can remember. The good news is he wants to hire me. The bad news is he wants me for all the wrong reasons. Ugly reasons.

In exchange, he's offered me my dreams on a silver platter. The job. The title. A beautiful future. But this man is as messed up and ugly as they come on the inside. I'm not sure anyone can help him, and he just might take my heart down with him.

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Within These Walls
Author: J.L. Berg

Amazon blurb:
Within these walls, he became my solace, my sanctuary and my strength.

I am not strong. I am just a survivor of circumstance.
Isn’t that what we all do? Survive?

Each of us has our own set of circumstances to muddle through. Mine are just more…complicated.

Born with a severe heart defect, I’ve seen the inside of a hospital room more than my own bedroom.

I was drowning, a prisoner to the illness that owned me, until he appeared. He thinks he’s blocked out the world with his tattoos and hard exterior, but I see the real Jude, the one he so desperately wants to forget.

But is he the answer to my prayers or will he break my already damaged heart forever?

My name is Lailah Buchanan, and this is our story of hope, redemption and sacrificing it all for the one you love.

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Split
Author: JB Salsbury

Amazon blurb:
What do you do when you wake up with no memory of what you did last night?

Lucas spent the first half of his life protecting himself from others, but now his own mind is his biggest enemy. He doesn't know what happens when the blackouts overtake him, but he can recall the feelings—the rage, the confusion, the fear. Thankfully the quiet life he's found in Payson, Arizona has kept the darkness at bay. Until his boss's estranged daughter shows up in town, asking questions she shouldn't and sparking a desire Lucas can't control. Getting close to Shyann is the best thing that's ever happened to him, but when his blackouts return, unleashing the truth he's battled so long to hide, he may just lose her forever . . .

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Saving Steele
Author: Anne Jolin

Amazon blurb:
Kennedy Cross had her heart broken early in life. It wasn't someone or something who betrayed her—it was her own body. Despite it being all she’s ever wanted, Kennedy will never know what it feels like to feel her baby’s feet kick from the inside out. Having been pronounced infertile at only eighteen, she redirected her life the best way she could.

Eight years and a degree later, Kennedy is one of the most well-loved first-grade teachers at Rock Falls Elementary School. It doesn’t matter that her college boyfriend left her because he wanted children of his own. She has twenty-two of the most gorgeous six-year-olds who adore her and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

Jackson Steele deals only in extremes. He falls victim to manic episodes lasting for days, sometimes weeks at a time, sending him reeling from volatile highs to devastating lows. It’s a living hell just being inside his own mind, and that hell has taken everything he’s ever loved away from him. But what if, this time, it gives him something? An untimely gift from God and a brunette with legs eight miles long will bring him the most unforeseen joy but also his most challenging of tests.

What happens when circumstances of life threaten the one thing both Jackson and Kennedy love? Saving Steele from himself may prove to be too much for Cross to bear.

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Making Faces
Author: Amy Harmon

Amazon blurb:
Ambrose Young was beautiful. The kind of beautiful that graced the covers of romance novels, and Fern Taylor would know. She'd been reading them since she was thirteen. But maybe because he was so beautiful he was never someone Fern thought she could have...until he wasn't beautiful anymore.

Making Faces is the story of a small town where five young men go off to war, and only one comes back. It is the story of loss. Collective loss, individual loss, loss of beauty, loss of life, loss of identity. It is the tale of one girl's love for a broken boy, and a wounded warrior's love for an unremarkable girl. This is a story of friendship that overcomes heartache, heroism that defies the common definitions, and a modern tale of Beauty and the Beast, where we discover that there is a little beauty and a little beast in all of us.

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Skin Deep
Author: Pamela Clare

Amazon blurb:
Broken on the inside



Megan Hunter has worked hard to get back on her feet, leaving the nightmare of her teenage years behind. The last thing she wants or needs in her life is a man. But when she is attacked by someone from her past, a scarred stranger intervenes, saving her life and that of her little girl. Looks can be deceiving, for despite the man’s rough appearance, she feels safe with him. And for the first time in her life, she knows the stirrings of desire.



Broken on the outside



Nathaniel West paid a high price serving with the Marines in Afghanistan. He returned to his family’s ranch in the Colorado mountains to heal—and be alone.

Disfigured as he is, he has put all thoughts of sex and romance aside. But something about Megan brings him back to life, heats his blood, makes him feel like a man again. As danger pursues her, and the truth about her past is revealed, he vows to protect her—and to heal her wounded spirit.

But confronting the past is never easy—especially when it’s carrying a gun. Megan will have to learn to trust Nate to survive and to claim a passion that is much more than … Skin Deep.

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Under Her Skin
Author: Adriana Anders

Amazon blurb:
Battered by a life determined to tear him down

This quiet ex-con’s scarred hands may be the gentlest touch she’ll ever know.

…if only life were a fairy tale where Beauty was allowed to keep her Beast
Ivan thought the world was through giving him second chances. Who’d want a rough ex-con with a savior complex and a bad habit of bringing home helpless strays? Everyone in Blackwood, Virginia knew he wasn’t good enough for the fine things in life; they knew he was too damaged to save. He just needed to keep his head down, work himself to the bone, and pretend he was content with the lot he was given.

Until she came into his life. Until she changed
​everything.

​Until he realized he would do anything, fight anyone, tear the world apart if it meant saving her.

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The Strongest Steel
Author: Scarlett Cole

Amazon blurb:
In Scarlett Cole's The Strongest Steel, Harper Connelly never expected to find herself outside of a tattoo parlor at one in the morning. The scars that decorate her back are just one more reminder of things she'd rather forget, the past she wants to leave far behind her, but before she can move on, she needs him.

Trent Andrews has his own reasons for specializing in inking over scars. And there's no way in hell he's going to turn Harper away. Not when a swirling mix of tenderness and desire slams into him every time he sees her. Being with Harper is like going ten rounds in the ring—exhilarating, powerful, and dangerous. She stirs feelings in him he thought were long gone... if he can only get past her carefully constructed defenses.

Running was the only thing that saved Harper last time, but each session at Second Circle Tattoos brings her closer and closer to Trent. His lingering touches seduce her, making her believe in a life without fear, where she can be happy, whole, in love. But when cryptic messages start appearing on Harper's phone, strange deliveries arrive at her door, and Second Circle is vandalized, Harper is convinced that her ex-boyfriend has tracked her down, and worse, that he knows about Trent. She ran from her past once before; this time will she have the strength to fight back?

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Fighting Shadows
Author: Aly Martinez

Amazon blurb:
I come from a family of fighters. I always thought I’d follow in their shadows, becoming unstoppable in the ring. That changed the day I saved the life of a woman I loved, but could never have.

My brother hailed me as a hero, and my reward was a wheelchair.

Paralyzed, my life became an inescapable nightmare.

Until I met her.

Ash Mabie had a heart-stopping smile and a laugh that numbed the rage and resentment brewing inside of me. She showed me that even the darkest night still had stars, and it didn’t matter one bit that you had to lie in the weeds to see them.

I was a jaded asshole who fell for a girl with a knack for running away. I couldn’t even walk but I would have spent a lifetime chasing her. 

Now, I’m on the ropes during the toughest battles of my life. 
Fighting the shadows of our past. 
Fighting to reclaim my future. 
Fighting for her.

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