Tag Archives: Historical Romance

Books for Fans of Netflix’s Bridgerton

The Duke and I | Julia Quinn | Author of Historical Romance NovelsI’m sure you’ve heard of Netflix’s show Bridgerton, based off of Julia Quinn’s best-selling romance novels revolving around the Bridgerton family. As someone who wrote a whole spiel about how much they’ve been loving historical romance novels lately, I felt like my time has arrived when the show started.

I won’t say much about the show other than to say that it was exactly what I was hoping for, which was a dramatic story filled with swoony romance and some shocking twists. While our physical copies of the book have some wait times, you can actually read the first book through Hoopla instantly! Now that we’re all more aware of the wonders of historical romance, I thought this would be a perfect chance to recommend some Regency era historical romance novels. I tried to focus on titles that we have available digitally, so you can read it instantly, and I tried to focus on authors with more than one book so if you particularly enjoy one, you can continue the series.

Wicked and the Wallflower by Sarah MacLeanWicked and the Wallflower. This series is one of my absolute favourite historical romances and I just love all the books. While there are not many dukes involved, the novel still revolves around the London ton and has more than its fair share of ladies. It has themes of revenge, found family and a whole lot of swoon. This title is even on Hoopla so there’s no wait times and you can start reading it now (and I mean yes, you want to read it immediately)!

The Trouble with True Love by Laura Lee Guhrke. If you’re looking for an author with lots of books that you can dive into, you can’t go wrong with Laura Lee Guhrke. Even Julia Quinn recommends them! This book is about a woman who writes an advice column for the newspaper and the rake whose advice she takes for the column. The two enter a secret alliance but as we know with Bridgerton, that alliance can only stay platonic for so long.

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A New Reading Obsession: Historical Romance

*all links will take you to the VPL catalogue where you can check out these books for yourself!

If you’ve read any of my previous posts then you know that my main reading expertise is graphic novels, contemporary romance or anything to do with reality TV. Lately though, I have found myself more and more into historical romance. Now, I can’t say that I’ve never read the genre (any self-proclaimed romance nerd has read at least one!) but I always read one or two a year at most. Over the last few months however, I found myself binge-reading more than one series and I’ve quickly caught up on some major backlist books for a few authors.

Unmasked by the Marquess (Regency Imposters, #1) by Cat SebastianOne of my favourite authors is Cat Sebastian. In the past, I read her Seducing the Sedgewicks series which are all gay historical romances. Of course, there will always be skeptics who think that such series are far too frivolous or historically inaccurate, but any queer person will tell you that LGBTQ+ people have existed for centuries, it is merely the labels that are now more modern. One title from Sebastian’s latest series that I recommend is Unmasked by the Marquess. The marketing and cover promo align more with mainstream historical romances and despite that, I enjoyed the fact that the main character, Robin, was non-binary (though such language was never outright said, as the term is definitely more modern than when the novel takes place). Though the mainstream historical romance reader may find such titles a bit too scandalous, I think that Sebastian’s writing is sure to win anyone over as she is an expert in writing characters that anyone will want to root for, regardless of who those characters may be.

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