And Balogh always seemed to have a keener fous on him whenever he came on the page-it effectively built up the anticipation, it made sure that we were invested in Wulfric long before his own book ever made it to the shelves. Every Bedwyn spouse had to pass his muster a good portion of the Bedwyns themselves butted heads with Wulfric.

He was forbidding, he was cold, he took his duty seriously. In the first six books, Wulfric Bedwyn, the head of the family as the Duke of Bewcastle, was a constant presence. They helped me realize that Regencies, that the ballgowns and the cravats, the stifling social conventions-they were my jam. Those books, unbeknownst to me then, would establish my deep (and obviously lasting) ardor for historical romances. They were bootleg copies, and I would spend the afternoons lounging on my bed back at home, my belly uncomfortably warm from my prehistoric hand-me-down laptop. I read those books in the span of a week, and I think it was during a break in my freshman year in college.

I like how volatile they can be, if she lets them.Īnd I’ve thought back to the first Baloghs I ever read, the Bedwyn saga-six books about high society misfits, with lots of brooding and lots of angst and lots of marrying beneath their station. I like how they can seem so calm and quiet, even when emotions are running high. I like the grace with which she tells her stories.

I’ve been reading a lot of the more recent books in her backlist, and then some of the reissues from the eighties and early nineties, as well as keeping an eye out for her new releases. Mary Balogh is one of my go-to authors, pretty much an auto-buy. (Fine: It’s pretty much all I read.) So it’s all just, I think, a matter of figuring out which books those are. (I’d reread that so many times, my borrowed copy fell apart on me.) But there’s definitely a lot more historical romance novels in my canon-it is, after all, the subgenre I love the best, the subgenre I read more than any other. There’s also Susan Elizabeth Phillips’ Kiss An Angel, which I read in high school and after a very long break from reading the genre. It naturally spans genres for romance novels, the book that immediately comes to mind is Jude Deveraux’s The Duchess, which holds the dubious honor of being the first romance novel I ever read.

angst over abusive past lover If one lover chases another.Before the demise of my inner self, I’d been thinking a lot lately about my personal canon-I don’t know what else to call it, haha, so that lofty phrase will have to do for now. Click on a plot link to find similar books! Plot & Themes Time/era of story - Regency eraįorbidden/mismatched love? - Yes How mismatched? - royalty loving nonroyalty Difficult/unusual lover? - Yes How difficult? - snooty or fancy-fancy Inner struggle subplot - Yes Struggle with.

Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh