In mood to let you hair down? It is only Tuesday and I want to climb out the window!

Enjoy these Rapunzel Themed Romance Novels! 

My lists are never in any particular order.

1. Zelle and the Tower by Rrebekah R. Ganiere

Sweet and naïve Rapunzelle possesses a dangerous and powerful magick. Her entire life has been spent in a mage tower built by her father, to keep her safe. Or so she's been told. Flint Gwyn has spent the better part of the last year wandering Fairelle, wanting nothing more than to wash away the pain of letting his family down. Between drinking and womanizing he plummets in to despair, with only Dax the werebear to keep him from getting himself killed. When Flint and Dax stumble into Zelle's tower while running from a dragon, she finds herself drawn to him in a way that awakens startling memories she cannot place. And the longer he stays, the closer she comes to losing her heart. Unable to control his feelings for the lonely maiden who brings him peace for the first time in his life, Flint fights to release her from her prison. But in doing so, he may very well bring down the wrath of an evil that's plagued Fairelle for a hundred years.

2. Tarnished Knight by Shiloh Walker

ne look at Jack Wallace and Perci knows he’s going to be trouble. Even surrounded by soul stealers, he’s a one-man wrecking crew. What does he need Grimm training for? He’s already hell on earth, a warrior bent on destruction. And something…more. 

He’s too strong and fast to be a mere mortal. Even covered in blood, he makes her forget she’s only here to do a job and get out. It’s twisted. Sick. She hasn’t felt this alive in three centuries.

Born with a natural talent for killing unnatural things, Jack has always known things he shouldn’t. The fact that Perci is one of them glows all over her. Giving him an unholy urge to see just how far he can push her before don’t touch me melts into touch me there.

When they come together, it isn’t careful or cautious. It’s heaven and hell, exposing all their raw and wounded places to healing heat, resurrecting memories of a destined love from the distant past. But the evil that destroyed them once before has tracked them here, threatening their second and last chance at forever. Demanding a sacrifice no one—Grimm or human—should ever be asked to make…

3. Rapunzel in New York by Nikki Logan

Galloping up a crumbling tower block, he crashed into the chamber where she was imprisoned! The Maiden gasped and said – that she was perfectly happy, thank you very much, and certainly didn’t need saving, especially by a smug, designer-suited billionaire, and why had he just kicked in her front door?

It’s sometimes hard for a modern damsel in distress to admit she needs rescuing – but at least this heroine plans to rescue her hero right back!

4. The Chocolate Kiss by Laura Florand

The Heart of Paris

Welcome to La Maison des Sorcieres. Where the window display is an enchanted forest of sweets, a collection of conical hats delights the eye and the habitués nibble chocolate witches from fanciful mismatched china. While in their tiny blue kitchen, Magalie Chaudron and her two aunts stir wishes into bubbling pots of heavenly chocolat chaud.

But no amount of wishing will rid them of interloper Philippe Lyonais, who has the gall to open one of his world famous pastry shops right down the street. Philippe's creations seem to hold a magic of their own, drawing crowds of beautiful women to their little isle amidst the Seine, and tempting even Magalie to venture out of her ivory tower and take a chance, a taste. . .a kiss. 

Parisian princesses, chocolate witches, pâtissier princes and sweet wishes--an enchanting tale of amour et chocolat.

5. Golden Stair by Jennifer Blackstream

A devil-may-care incubus with a ravenous appetite . . . 

Adonis is a demon prince determined to bury his desire for love in the pleasures of the flesh. Bound by a vow to maintain his physical form, Adonis requires a great deal of energy just to live, energy he can only absorb through the carnal arts…more energy than any one woman could ever provide. Adonis knows he could never offer a woman the fidelity she would deserve as his wife, and so carries on with his wild ways, his cryptic smile hidden behind a puff of smoke. No woman can reach beyond the heat of his embrace to touch his heart. Not even the golden-haired maid whose lonely eyes keep wooing him back to her side. 

A damsel in distress with the power to destroy him . . . 

Ivy has lived in a tower, locked away from the rest of the world, for her entire life. Her mother, a witch who leads the resistance against the bloodthirsty kings of the five kingdoms, is her only company. Ivy knows that her battle-weary mother relies on the golden power flowing through her veins for the energy to continue the good fight, but she can’t completely smother the selfish yearning to see the world beyond the safety of their hidden valley…especially when her wildest fantasy almost literally falls into her lap. Despite their best intentions, they’re drawn together like phoenixes to flame—and if they’re not careful, they’ll both burn. 

An incubus can only deny his nature for so long . . . 

Long golden hair. A tower with no stairs. A witch with serious possession issues. Debilitating blindness. None of these are enough to keep a demon from climbing…the Golden Stair. 

6. Cress by Marissa Meyer

Cinder and Captain Thorne are fugitives on the run, now with Scarlet and Wolf in tow. Together, they're plotting to overthrow Queen Levana and prevent her army from invading Earth.

Their best hope lies with Cress, a girl trapped on a satellite since childhood who's only ever had her netscreens as company. All that screen time has made Cress an excellent hacker. Unfortunately, she's being forced to work for Queen Levana, and she's just received orders to track down Cinder and her handsome accomplice. 

When a daring rescue of Cress goes awry, the group is splintered. Cress finally has her freedom, but it comes at a higher price than she'd ever expected. Meanwhile, Queen Levana will let nothing prevent her marriage to Emperor Kai, especially the cyborg mechanic. Cress, Scarlet, and Cinder may not have signed up to save the world, but they may be the only hope the world has.

7. Rapunzel by Selena Kitt

Rachel runs Rapunzel’s, a high-end salon on the lower level of a downtown Chicago high rise and lives happily in self-imposed exile in an apartment at the top of the tower—that is until Jake Malden walks in with his teen daughter, Emma, and presents Rachel with a dilemma. 

Young Emma is determined to defy her mother’s wishes and get her long, beautiful, untouched hair cut off so she can donate it to charity to honor a friend with cancer. 

Rachel’s decision to cut the girl’s hair starts a snowball of drama, turmoil and hidden secrets rolling downhill on a course with destiny that no one is able to stop, one that ultimately threatens not only Rachel’s livelihood, but her slowly melting heart as well. 

8. Braided Silk by Ella Drake

Rapunzel was made with technologically advanced hair. As a trained Mother agent, Zel can't escape the DNA that makes her a pawn in corporate espionage. Kidnapped and held in a tower on Gothel Island, she falls to the sexual allure of her captor’s son, Langley, a man whose every tantalizing touch makes her forget she wasn’t born human. 

Langley Gothel protests the existence of creations such as Zel, but when faced with losing her, he sees the truth: Life is precious, whether born, modified, or shaped in a Petri dish. He does the one thing he's thought he'd never do. He has to give up Zel, or become a mod. But will that be enough to get them down from the floating islands and safely to ground?

9. The Crystal Heart by Sophie Masson

 girl in a tower. An underground kingdom. A crystal heart split in two, symbolising true love lost . . . 

When Kasper joins the elite guard watching over a dangerous prisoner in a tower, he believes he is protecting his country from a powerful witch.  

Until one day he discovers the prisoner is a beautiful princess - Izolda of Night- who is condemned by a prophecy to die on her eighteenth birthday. Kasper decides to help her escape. But their hiding place won't remain secret forever. 

Will they find their happily ever after?

10. Golden by Cameron Dokey

efore Rapunzel's birth, her mother made a dangerous deal with the sorceress Melisande: If she could not love newborn Rapunzel just as she appeared, she would surrender the child to Melisande. When Rapunzel was born completely bald and without hope of ever growing hair, her horrified mother sent her away with the sorceress to an uncertain future. 

After sixteen years of raising Rapunzel as her own child, Melisande reveals that she has another daughter, Rue, who was cursed by a wizard years ago and needs Rapunzel's help. Rue and Rapunzel have precisely "two nights and the day that falls between" to break the enchantment. But bitterness and envy come between the girls, and if they fail to work together, Rue will remain cursed...forever.

Vote on my Goodreads list so the best retelling win: Rapunzel Themed Romance Novels . 

Right from the start of this book I felt there was something missing, even though I liked Kasper and Izolda as characters.
However, I found a number of the plot developments unconvincing. Kasper saves a prisoner who he believes is an evil witch who can turn him to stone with one look and who is desperate to destroy his land. Why? Because he has a vision that indicates she is not what she seems. He has no history of visions or anything around him to indicate that it might be real, however, he instantly sets about trying to rescue her. The explanation given for this is that he is 'reckless', but even then, given the information he was raised with about this prisoner, I would have found it more convincing if he at least took a day or two to think about it. Accepting the vision as instantaneously as he does seems to be a bit of a stretch.
This stretch is a theme that is repeated numerous times in the book, with a couple of character about-faces that were a bit too fast to be believed. The explanation for one is given as magic. Many things in this novel were explained away as magic. Normally, I wouldn't have a problem with this, as in worlds where there is magic it is used in this way, but the way it was employed here seemed to be as a convenient plot device to get the protagonists out of trouble, rather than feeling like an organic part of the storyline.
The climax also felt a bit piecemeal, not to mention the frequent long scenes of exposition as the plot was explained. There were also plot points that I felt weren't given sufficient explanation, so the resolution didn't feel satisfying to me.
However, it was still a nice, fun romp and had some interesting developments along the theme of forgiveness, mercy and restoration.

Helen is taking a holiday in Russia with her mother, desperately trying to get some space from her disastrous break up and collapse of her career. She never expected to find a place so alien to her – and she certainly never expected to find the rich and intriguing Alexey

But Alexey has more on his mind than romance – his father and father’s 2 business partners have all been murdered within a short space of time. People are whispering about a curse – and not only is the murderer still uncaught, but other forces have their eyes on his father’s business, looking to wrest it from his inexperienced and idealistic hands.

The first thing that struck me about this book was the amount of research that has gone into it. From my unfamiliar eye, this author seems to have made the effort to ensure the Russia of the book wasn’t just a Russia of bad stereotypes and alien culture – there has been some work into making this real and authentic. I can’t say how good a job has been achieved since I am neither Russian nor especially experience in all things Russian, but I can feel the effort behind it.

I just feel it’s a shame that so little has been done with it.

I don’t understand why Helen is the protagonist. In fact, take a step back, I don’t understand why Helen is in the book at all. All the action, all the story twists, all the mystery and the investigation and everything else? It doesn’t involve her. It cannot involve her. It’s all completely beyond her experience, affecting people she’s only just met and investigating/resolving it requires knowledge she doesn’t have, skills she doesn’t have and working with/speaking to a lot of people she’s only just met, most of which she doesn’t even share a common language with.

Rather reasonably, because of that, she doesn’t actually do anything. And it is reasonable – even her few interjections about whether Alexey can trust someone or not (for example) come across as ridiculous because she is so outside of her experiences, her skills or her specialities that her intervening would be ludicrous. She doesn’t. She can’t. She spends the vast majority of this book just following Alexey around and occasionally taking little breaks to work on the romance (I’d say “develop” the romance but that would be a stunningly generous description of what happened). Honestly, she could be entirely removed from the book and very little of real value would change.

So let’s get to that romance – firstly, it also adds very little to the plot. It’s an odd tool used to pull Helen (and, therefore, the protagonist) into the story as audience without having to come up with an actual reason for her to be there. Helen and Alexey meet (he nearly runs her over), they arrange a second meeting. Boom. LOVE FOREVER, Alexey (a man receiving death threats) is now happy to have Helen follow him around everywhere, be party to all of his company’s secrets and generally be with him every second of the day when business doesn’t drag him away (and she is free to roam around his work place/home as you would any near stranger). The romance is tooth-achingly saccharine and quite dated - Helen actually uses the words “Oh, Alexey”. She says this more than once; I started picturing everyone in black and white after that. It’s also comically speeded up with Helen happily considering moving to Russia and spending the rest of her life there after… a week? Less?

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