My Top Fire & Ice Reads (Romance)

Posted February 13, 2013 | 63 Comments

Happy Valentine’s Day! I’m going to share my top Fire & Ice reads as part of the Fiery Hot Reads for Icy Cold Nights event. I don’t usually seek out a lot of romance books but I do enjoy a good love story. As you can see I love time travel and the circus. 😀

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The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger

This is my #1 book ever!  Henry and Clare’s love story gets me every time. It’s beautiful and complex. No, I’m not a fan of the movie.

A dazzling novel in the most untraditional fashion, this is the remarkable story of Henry DeTamble, a dashing, adventuresome librarian who travels involuntarily through time, and Clare Abshire, an artist whose life takes a natural sequential course. Henry and Clare’s passionate love affair endures across a sea of time and captures the two lovers in an impossibly romantic trap, and it is Audrey Niffenegger’s cinematic storytelling that makes the novel’s unconventional chronology so vibrantly triumphant.

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Outlander by Diana Gabaldon

Oh how I love Jamie and Claire. I read this years ago and completely fell in love, but I haven’t read the rest of the series yet.

The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon–when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient stone circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach–an “outlander”–in a Scotland torn by war and raiding Highland clans in the year of Our Lord…1743.

Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into intrigues and dangers that may threaten her life…and shatter her heart. For here she meets James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, and becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire…and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.

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Time Between Us by Tamara Ireland Stone

Aw, Anna and Bennett are so sweet. I adored their story!

Anna and Bennett were never supposed to meet: she lives in 1995 Chicago and he lives in 2012 San Francisco. But Bennett has the unique ability to travel through time and space, which brings him into Anna’s life, and with him a new world of adventure and possibility.

As their relationship deepens, the two face the reality that time may knock Bennett back to where he belongs, even as a devastating crisis throws everything they believe into question. Against a ticking clock, Anna and Bennett are forced to ask themselves how far they can push the bounds of fate, what consequences they can bear in order to stay together, and whether their love can stand the test of time.

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The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

-sigh- This was an absolutely beautiful book.

The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not. Within the black-and-white striped canvas tents is an utterly unique experience full of breathtaking amazements. It is called Le Cirque des Rêves, and it is only open at night.

But behind the scenes, a fierce competition is underway—a duel between two young magicians, Celia and Marco, who have been trained since childhood expressly for this purpose by their mercurial instructors. Unbeknownst to them, this is a game in which only one can be left standing, and the circus is but the stage for a remarkable battle of imagination and will. Despite themselves, however, Celia and Marco tumble headfirst into love—a deep, magical love that makes the lights flicker and the room grow warm whenever they so much as brush hands.

True love or not, the game must play out, and the fates of everyone involved, from the cast of extraordinary circus per­formers to the patrons, hang in the balance, suspended as precariously as the daring acrobats overhead.

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Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen

This was another beautiful book that I loved.

Orphaned, penniless, Jacob Jankowski jumps a freight train in the dark, and in that instant, transforms his future.

By morning, he’s landed a job with the Flying Squadron of the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth. By nightfall, he’s in love.

In an America made colourless by prohibition and the Depression, the circus is a refuge of sequins and sensuality. But behind the glamour lies a darker world, where both animals and men are dispensable. Where falling in love is the most dangerous act of all…

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63 responses to “My Top Fire & Ice Reads (Romance)”

  1. Barbara

    You’re going to make me think at this hour? 😉 Some of my favorite Fire & Ice reads (some different than my usual):

    Caressed by Ice by Nalini Singh
    Lord of Scoundrels by Loretta Chase (now I want to go reread it)
    Holiday in Death by J.D. Robb
    Because of Low by Abbi Glines

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  2. Carol L

    I’d say Outlander series for me. And there’s a series out there that is an amazing read. It’s called Free Men And Dreamers by Laurie Lewis.
    Carol L

    Reply
  14. erinf1

    thanks for this fun post/series! I loved the Time Traveler’s Wife! I read it 3x in a row in order to get the entire story straight 🙂

    Reply
  17. Dita Škarste

    My personal pick would be Anna Karenina.
    From your picks I`d love to read The Time Traveller`s Wife and The Night Circus, both of the books have been on my TBR list for some time.

    Reply
  18. Kristin

    Awww, thanks for posting this list! I always love to see what everyone says are their all time favorites!!! And I actually haven’t read any of these! I haven’t been reading long enough or they just haven’t hit my radar.

    I think my favorite fire and ice book is Lover Avenged by J.R. Ward (Rhevenge’s story). That one I can read over and over and over. I just have a thing for it 🙂

    Also, Simone Elkeles’ Perfect Chemistry series, most importantly book #2, is right up there. LOVE!!!!! I don’t like contemps but this one I loved!!!

    Thanks for the great giveaway!!

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  21. Heidi

    I can’t believe I still haven’t read Night Circus I started the audio this summer but just wasn’t feeling it… i want to read it instead. Time Traveler’s Wife is so sad. Outlander is good…I have not read Time Between Us. Yeah I know working on it. Oh Water for Elephants. I really did not like that book. Let’s see my picks… this sucks…how about The Notebook that book always makes me cry….Gone with the Wind of Course, Really liked Meant to Be, and oh Wolves of Mercy Falls. Happy VD Christy and no I don’t mean the STD 🙂

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    • Christy

      “Happy VD Christy and no I don’t mean the STD”

      Because that’s EXACTLY what I think when I hear/see that.

      Hmm.. not sure if I’d try listening to The Night Circus. Definitely try reading it.

      Reply
  26. Candace

    I have read all of these except for The Night Circus (which I have) and loved them! I too am a huge fan of time travel books. Have you read Doomsday Book by Connie Willis? It’s an old book and it’s suppose to be futuristic so it’s a bit silly on that aspect but when they are back in time it’s AMAZING! LOVED it! And Household Gods by Judith Tarr and Harry Turtledove is another time travel book where she travels back to Rome in A.D. 170 and it’s different because she becomes that person, like slides into her body so no one knows any different. And it’s just so ANCIENT. I hadn’t read a time travel book that is so far back in time and just putting yourself in that place, it’s mind boggling how things were. This is one of my most favorite books EVER.

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  27. Meghan Stith

    You’ve got some good choices up there and actually my very top pick is also “Outlander!” I LOVE that book! Jamie and Claire are EPIC!

    mestith at gmail dot com

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  28. Gea Bridged (

    i love that “the time traveler’s wife” since I had read several of awesome reviews about it. now im dying to have a copy! Thank you for the reviews and great giveaway! ^_^

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  38. Kara

    Some of my favorite Fire and Ice picks would have to be Pushing the Limits and the Slammed series! I can’t get enough of either author!

    Reply
  42. Dione Sage

    Pushing The Limits & Hopeless…. Those two are AMAZING books! But I definitely need to read a lot of the others that were in these giveaways!
    Thanks so much..Oh and Outlander is also on my list that I must read soon!

    Reply
  50. Mimi Smith

    Outlander, Dragonfly in Amber, Voyager (why break up perfection?), along with The Time Traveler’s Wife and The Bronze Horseman.

    Reply
  53. Aline Tobing

    Some of my fire & ice top picks would be Almost Heaven by Judith McNaught & Devil in Winter by Lisa Kleypas 😀

    Reply
  55. HollyB

    Hollander (and the rest of the series) is just about perfection, isn’t it?! Such a great love story… when I first read and was into those books, I sooo wished I could be Claire and have Jamie!!! DG writes writes some verrrry sexy scenes 😉

    Reply
    • HollyB

      Just realized my comment got screwed up by my darn spellchecker! That first word is supposed to be OUTLANDER 🙂

      Reply

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