A dryad is a tree nymph or tree spirit who are often tied to the very tree they spring from thus if the tree dies the dryad does as well. However, for the purpose of this list, I am counting heroes and heroines who are botanically based or have botanical powers. 

 

Fun! We need more dryads! 

 

My lists are never in any particular order.

 

1. Garden by Viola Grace

 

Garden has been called in on a rescue and she carries it out without any second thoughts. With her weapons all in the biological range and her body the pinnacle of genetic manipulation, she is ready for anything.

Mercury is a Guardian mistaken for a robot on a planet that fears technology. Pinned in place and not wanting to hurt the locals, he waits for a rescue and is shocked to find it in the purple-haired woman with the twinkling eyes.

Together, they face attacks and decide that their destiny is worth pursuing. Together.

 

2. Libriomancer by Jim C. Hines

 

Isaac Vainio is a Libriomancer, a member of the secret organization founded five centuries ago by Johannes Gutenberg.  Libriomancers are gifted with the ability to magically reach into books and draw forth objects. When Isaac is attacked by vampires that leaked from the pages of books into our world, he barely manages to escape. To his horror he discovers that vampires have been attacking other magic-users as well, and Gutenberg has been kidnapped.

With the help of a motorcycle-riding dryad who packs a pair of oak cudgels, Isaac finds himself hunting the unknown dark power that has been manipulating humans and vampires alike. And his search will uncover dangerous secrets about Libriomancy, Gutenberg, and the history of magic. . . .

 

3. Blood of the Maple by Dana Marie Bell

 

A seduction-gone-wrong leaves vampire Parker Hollis with a new vegetarian lifestyle and on the run from a vengeful witch. Moving to small-town Maggie's Grove, Parker meets a redheaded dryad with green, leafy blood that draws him in a way he hasn't experienced in decades. His new neighbor smells divine, and it isn't long before craving gives in to need.

 

In a unique community of supernaturals, tree-loving outcast Amara Schwedler has never quite fit in. She's scarred by a traumatic incident and feared by the local townsfolk. She's convinced Parker will look elsewhere for a mate once he discovers she's not one of the O-positive set, and can't believe it when Parker finds her irresistible.

 

When the witch who's been plaguing Parker's life discovers the newfound attraction between Parker and Amara, she takes out her anger on the town. Can the supernaturals of Maggie's Grove accept Amara and band together in time to withstand the assaults of the enraged witch?

 

4. Remedy Maker by Sheri Fredricks

 

Man by day, Centaur by night, Rhycious is a remedy maker who needs his own healing.

He's the royal physician, famous for his cures. War and posttraumatic stress disorder have broken his spirit, preventing him from finding true happiness. Then a direct order from the queen to investigate an uprising forces him out of his secluded cabin at the edge of the Boronda forest.

Patience is an optimistic, good-natured Wood Nymph who works as a mediator to ensure harmony within the Nymph sector.

Environmental pollution in the aquifer stream that feeds the taproot tree of her heart is slowly killing her. Resigned to the fact she will not live long, she sets out to discover the mysterious disappearance of her sister. Experience has taught her to deny herself the love of a male, but the gruff Centaur is different. He doesn't push his expectations on her, only his healing nature.

When Rhycious loses his grip on reality, he believes his inability to control his disorder will drive Patience away. Nevertheless, desire flares, and Patience draws him close. Kidnapping and betrayal turn their mythic joint venture into a deadly bout.

Will their love endure when survival hinges on trusting each other?

 

5. The Duke and the Dryad by Elizabeth Rose

 

uke Odwolfe of Manterra is known to his friends as Wolfe, and to his enemies as Duke the Destroyer. When his prized bull goes missing, he sets out to find it. It has been stolen for a sacrifice by the druids who are conducting their pagan ritual in the forest, within the circle of standing stones. And when he finds he is too late to save his animal, he demands one of them come to his castle as his servant in exchange for his loss.

Rae-Nyst is an elemental of the earth, better known as a dryad. She has both fae as well as human blood running through her veins. She gets her power from the earth, however, fire can kill her. And when the Duke of Manterra decides to take her in exchange for his bull, she finds herself not able to fight him, as her power is draining quickly by the flaming torch he keeps waving in her face.

Can a man who believes in nothing but war and destruction accept the exotic fae girl who honors all life instead of death? Or will she have to give up the ways of her nearly extinct kind in order to be with the man who has stolen her heart? Passion and fury rage in an epic adventure as two headstrong people find themselves faced with a dilemma that could either kill them or bring them closer together in The Duke and the Dryad.

 

6. The Dryads' Tower by Judy Mays

 

or twenty long years, no druid has inhabited the tower in the dryad's valley, leaving them vulnerable to humans who'd cut down their trees. Finally, though, a mage who can protect their sacred grove has arrived seeking the magical knowledge the tower contains.

Navaar isn't a druid but they've waited long enough. No children have been born to them in too long because a dryad's tree consort, after all, cannot sire her children. A human male is needed for that. The mage Navaar is perfect, for the night they captured and seduced him, three of the dryads became pregnant. Yes, Navaar is a worthy successor to the druid who left them so long ago.

But then Navaar rescues a druidess from a Blood mage who'd wanted the tower for himself. Dylana, daughter of the druid who'd last inhabited the tower and a dryad mother, has returned to the place of her birth; and she wants the tower for herself, and no man, even if he is a powerful -- and enticing -- sex mage, is going to keep her from claiming it.

 

7. Free Spirit by JennaKay Francis

 

Diesa de Tyronmen escapes from a brutal master only to be sold to an elf. Though mesmerized by his beauty, Diesa struggles for both her freedom and her growing love for the elf. Unwittingly, Diesa learns that she was bought only to win a wager, and she realizes her mother's words were right: An elf will claim your heart with his words, your soul with his touch.

 

8. Sinful Sundaes 4 by Leanne Strange

 

Sundae: Sprinkles & Hot Hunks, Laurance went into Sins for a specialty banana split, he didn't expect to get a helping of trouble from Dina.--Mondae: Munchies & Hot Monsters, A witch doctor attends the Mad Scientists Bash, and unearths monstrous passions in the most improbable place.--Thursdae: Things & Hot Taffy (Part 1), Taffy & Manny work hand in hand to help each other solve problems, but fingers do the walking in the realm of love.--Wednesdae: Wizards & Hot Wings, When Willa, an estranged angel with hot red wings, meets ghostly wizard Synkor, strange sensations happen.--Tuesdae : Taffy & Hot Things, (Part 2), Things get even hotter as Manny and Taffy unearth clues that lead to surprising results.--Fridae: Furies & Hot Flambé, Some one put a misfortune hex on Logan. The only one who can remove it is the Fury who's carrying out the hex!--Saturdae: Shifters & Hot Fudge, Adam Spellfire a demvir and Tristine Havoc, a witch, always feuded. Tris can't help but succumb to Adam's special hot fudge delights.

 

9. Big, Blooming & Wild by Eve Vaughn

 

Daria West has met the man of her dreams. Ethan Granger is handsome, charming, and funny -- and the biggest plus -- he loves every inch of her voluptuous curves. Unfortunately, he forgot to mention, he’s a tree. And there are two of him. And Daria West is not a woman who likes being played.

Identical twins Ethan and Cole Granger have always done everything together -- including falling in love. They’ve searched for their perfect mates since they reached pollisexation. The problem is, they keep falling for the same woman. The perfect solution: a mate who falls for them both -- if they can just get past the shape-shifting tree thing… before she shreds them limb from limb.

 

10. Alice and the Green Man by Constance Sprague

 

Angry, and newly divorced, Alice Owens found solace in a beautiful garden she planted on the abandoned lot next to her tiny house in Falls Church, Virginia. But when a developer threatens to pave over her paradise, Alice has no way to stop the corporate bulldozer until a mysterious Green Man steps out of a tree and into her life. Fergus, one of the legendary immortal Green Men whose job it is to nurture and protect all green and growing things of Earth, offers to help Alice protect the garden. She is skeptical of the Green Man's claims, but unable to ignore the way her body and soul respond to his. As Alice and Fergus work together to prevent the destruction of the garden, the developer pushes ahead with his agenda. While Alice’s teenage sons take opposite sides in the conflict, her ex-husband schemes to put an end to her garden and her new romance in the hope of winning her back. But when the Green Man casts a magical Web of Protection to shield the garden, a firestorm of media attention rages out of control, and Alice must risk losing everything she holds dear to save the one man she can’t keep

 

Do you have more? Let me know! 

 

Vote for the best of the best on my Goodreads list: Dryad: Heroes and Heroines in Romance

Have you ever read a Romance novel and thought to yourself, this is the most ridiculous cliched bullshit I’ve ever read? How did this get published?? I’m obviously in the wrong business…

 

Well, this is almost that book. But it’s not. Because this book is a cliched ridiculous mess on purpose (which makes it funny). This book has it all: beautiful red-haired “spitfire” heroine (with green eyes, of course); handsome and rich hero; being kidnapped by aliens for weird alien sex; princesses; cat people; assassins….

 

Well, you get the point. It’s like…everything is here. There is no way this wasn’t written tongue in cheek. How does Brianna communicate with these people from a different galaxy? They use a Medirian ghena instead of a Babel fish…but it’s the same thing and performs the same function. There are also several hints in the book that shows that Mays is writing a comedy.

“I will not panic. I will not lie here shaking and crying like some too stupid to live heroine in a bad romance novel. I can handle this. I will handle this!”
- Chapter 3, pg 37 Brianna

 

“What was he saying to her? Would he understand her like Miklan did? Why was he naked? What was she doing here? Had she been kidnapped for sex? Were all those lurid stories about alien sex in those trashy tabloids true?
- Chapter 3, page 39 Brianna

“Brianna leaned back and mused silently on her current situation. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined the life she now led. Even though she missed her own family, she was now the pampered daughter of a powerful and rich merchant clan on a planet across the galaxy from her own, married to and pregnant with the child of a sexy alien who absolutely adored her. She’d been adopted into the royal family of another alien culture and managed to become bloodsister to a powerful family of aliens on yet a third planet. No one was capable of imagining this, not even Hollywood’s best scriptwriters.”
- Chapter 16, pg 272

Let’s start by meeting the primary characters:

 

The Heroine
Brianna is a tall, beautiful, fiery redhead with flashing green eyes. She mistakenly gets taken aboard an alien spaceship but as soon as she’s there the evil sex-crazed alien bad guy tries to get her. She’s saved by her incredible beauty: the handsome rich captain of the ship wants her. So he keeps her in his quarters and marries her to keep her safe (and bonk her silly). She is the MarySue of all MarySues. She is beautiful, she is spunky, she is smart, she is exotic, all the men want her, all the women want to be her friend (except the bitches, all the bitches hate her). Her attitude stinks but everyone finds it adorable and charming. In fact, it makes them like her more. Her red hair is a beautiful vivid red that falls to her waist. In Drakan hair only comes in shades of brown and never gets longer than shoulder length. This is the description we get when the hero first sees Brianna: at this time she’s been wounded (by a man who once tried to rape her, of course) and is unconscious.

“A woman – a beautifully exotic woman.
Fiery read hair tumbled over the side of the table in an auburn waterfall. Pale skin, which any woman in his family would envy, glowed under harsh laboratory lights. Full breasts with rosy nipples rose and fell with harsh breathing. A narrow waist tapered to flared hips where a splash of equally fiery public hair curled at the juncture of her thighs. Long legs stretched to the end of the table.
…

The agonized expression on the woman’s face didn’t hide its exotic beauty. Her face was rounder than those of his people, her lips fuller. Stunning green eyes fluttered open and stared unseeing into his. Thick, dark lashes rimmed those eyes while the well-shaped auburn brows above them contrasted sharply with her wan complexion Even with blood seeping from her shoulder, she stirred him as no woman had in a long time.”
- Chapter 2

The Hero
Captain Alalakan don al’ Chardadon (Char) is a tall, handsome, rich alien captain. He is from the planet Drakan where everyone is fixated on sex all the time and they have tails. His people are comfortable with all types of nudity and sex. He decides to marry Brianna to save her from (and destroy) Bakom. His family is very powerful, extremely rich as well as the head of one of the larger clans on Drakan. The family is on a first name basis with royalty.

 

The Evil Bad Guy
Dr. Rodak don al’ Bakom (Bakom) is a medical doctor as well as an all around horrible person. Even in a world full of 60′s style sexual freedom, Bakom is a kidnapper and rapist. So, of course, he wants to keep and rape Brianna. Brianna is the Most Beautiful of all the beautifuls. He is also the First President of the Academy of Science where – for some reason – newly discovered human forms of life are required to have sex with an examination team to prove their humanity. Ha!! As head of the Academy of Science Brianna – a newly discovered humanoid lifeform – belongs to Dr. Bakom so he can perform the Tests for Humanity on her.

“…You must accept an injection of mithrin into your body. The dosage is such that you would become sexually insatiable from anywhere from four to eight hours, and most if not all of the members of the examining team would have sexual intercourse with you. Once the dosage wore off you would be subjected to a brain scan to determine intelligence quotients. Then you would be given a physical, which would include sexual intercourse without mithrin. If your responses are not satisfactory, you could be declared nonhuman.”
Chapter 2, page 46-47

The Story
Brianna is a biologist working for the military. One day her boss calls her in to assist with a dissection. Shocked that the subjects are humanoid, Brianna steals the aliens and rushes them off the base. The aliens manage to show her where to go but the military were hot on their tail. Since the soldiers chasing Brianna were willing to use deadly force, the aliens take Brianna with them. Now Brianna is the alien. Dr. Bokom steals Brianna as soon as she is transported aboard but Char rescues her. Later Char decides to marry Brianna in order to keep Dr. Bakom from performing his Tests, making her Alalakan dem al’ Brianna. Brianna quickly becomes pregnant, making Chardadon the heir of the Alalakan Clan (meaning he will be the next head of the clan after his father).

 

During the ride back to Drakan, Brianna is introduced to Princess Merilinlalissa – Meri – from the world Mediria (who are green and have gills). While chatting the princess discovers that Earth has dolphins and orca (killer whales) – also known on Mediria as the sacred dols and orcs who were lost to the Mediria eons ago. This information moves the King of Mediria to adopt Brianna into the royal family. Now Brianna is the wife of a rich and powerful man and a Princess. Alalakan dem al’ Brianna, Princess Hardan.

 

Later, on Drakan, Brianna is introduced to a rich and powerful family from a different planet named Gattan. The Gatten are a fierce, war-like race of people who resemble humanoid versions of predatory Great Cats (Big Cats). The Gatten are proud, secretive, war-like and easily offended. Normally, saying/doing the wrong thing around a Gatten would cause a blood feud. Brianna pulls one of her snotty moves and manages to become blood-sister to this family. The Gattens all appreciate and revel in Brianna’s bad attitude and worse temper. Of course, they don’t get upset at her actions at all.

 

All of these families (three rich, powerful families from three different planets) conspire to save Brianna from Bakom, making it an inter-galactic incident. They are able to expose Bakom as the horrible kidnapping rapist he really is.

 

Wow. Brianna sure gets around, doesn’t she? In every way, in almost every context, this book delivers on the cliche and it delivers hard. But its fun! Lots and lots of fun. There are only two reasons this book gets 4 stars instead of 5: Brianna’s attitude and the oh so bad sex. Brianna is annoying. She’s always snapping at people and confronting people. It’s pretty irritating. But worse that Brianna’s attitude is the sex. The entire book is focused around sex but Brianna has some of the worse sex I’ve ever had the misfortune of reading. The sex is almost cringe worthy, to be honest. But I just skip the sex scenes and go for the rest of the story. Luckily there is very little sex in this book that revolves around sex.

 

My favorite parts of this book are the Gatten. They are fierce, proud warriors who just make me grin. I feel that the Gattan steal whatever scene they appear in.

 

While I really enjoy Brianna, I can’t help but to also note issues: one [female] character is raped, one [female] character is raped and tortured. While none of this action takes place on page, it’s still a bit disturbing considering the otherwise lighthearted tone of the book. Which is another point that bothers me – this is a very lighthearted book…but the entire plot actually revolves around the threat of rape and torture.

 

 

 

 
 
 
About Judy Mays
Judy Mays is a really sweet author who wrote really fun and sexy books. She had a full time job as a teacher in a small town…until someone outed her. Somehow someone managed to connect Ms Mays pen name to her real name… and the shit hit the fan. She was reviled in the local media and suspended from her job. I already owned this series but I went and purchased a new copy of Brianna just for support. Later it was said in the comments section:

Just heard from Judy, and I passed her email on to the SB’s, but I thought I’d share here, too. It would seem the women who began this witch hunt should look for new work. it was unsuccessful and Judy’s gotten hoards of support from not just the Snyder County community, but the ROMANCE COMMUNITY!
–Dakota Cassidy

An enjoyable erotic paranormal romance. A fast paced action packed story and once all the alien beings with their customs were established the plot was pretty good including lots of sex. Biologist Brianna helps a couple aliens escape earth and accidentally gets on the space ship piloted by Char.

I found this for free at All Romance and picked it up since it sounded interesting and was a full length book. I was very suprised at how much I enjoyed it. I don't love the cover, and it doesn't make a lot of sense to me since so much of the story includes so much content about the Brianna's dislike of how much nudity her husband's home planet displays. I enjoyed Brianna and Char's story, and the humanoid planet politics that were included in this love story.

Brianna (Celestial Passions, #1) - Judy ... Brianna is helping two aliens escape dissection and ends up on their spaceship because her former colleagues are shooting at her. But when she gets on the ship, the aliens also have their own mad scientist. The only thing to save her is become the wife of the captain. Char will marry her to save her and then end the marriage down the road. That's what he thinks!

I liked that Brianna was given to futile fighting. I didn't like that her being rude and quick tempered made everyone like and admire her. She was a little too bitchy sometimes, and it was like people would just shrug. There were good parts to the book, but it was a little mushy toward the end for my taste. If you like a super happy HEA, then you'll like this book.