Regencies: How much time do you really want to spend in England?

I have gotten into a total rut reading Regencies. It isn't hard to end up in this rut; an estimated 17% of ro nos are historical, and many, MANY are Regencies. There is something nice about England in the 1820s. A war with Napoleon just ended, so there are plenty of solider heroes; there begins to be some blurring between classes; and money is even more of a motivator for marriage among the 'ton.' The  manners and cultural mores are strict! If you're going to do it in the drawing room, make sure it is nighttime and your host/butler/ward is not nearby! Mostly, though, the recurring theme in this period is witty repartee between our fated lovers. Write that stuff well and I'll read it all day long.

These authors fall into the Earl Grey of books in the Regency subgenre (they are nearly all series. Maybe this is another convention of the times?):

• Loretta Chase has penned more than a few and is one of my favorite authors. Start with Lord of Scoundrels, move quickly into Last Hellion, and then celebrate the adorable Carsingtons in Miss Wonderful, Mr. Impossible, Lord Perfect, Not Quite a Lady, and Last Night's Scandal. Rupert, from Mr. Impossible, is my all-time favorite hero. WHAT A STUD. Loretta's other stuff is satisfying, but not delectable as the aforementioned tomes are. I like her recent Dressmaker's series (not sure these are actually Regencies in terms of when they occur). Definitely avoid her earliest books - she has become popular enough that they are coming back into print, but you'd be wasting your time reading any of these: Isabella, Devil's Delilah, English Witch, Viscount Vagabond, Sandalwood Princess, or Knaves Wager (this one was so terrible my sister said it almost made her hate Loretta's entire oeuvre! So, you know it is bad).

• Oh! The Bridgertons! I'm so glad you had so many children so that Julia Quinn had to write a book for each one of you and I could enjoy a very happy month of reading. My sister and I are in love with 90% of these books; the first one violates the tenet of good coupling. Thankfully it is an anomaly. Just skip it and read the rest of the series, or read it and keep in your mind a great big asterisk that JQ would write a plot like that. Ugh.

• Not a series, per se, but Yours Until Dawn is an awesome regency ro no (her other books? Not so much, but good if you're desperate).

• I discovered Sherry Thomas in 2013, and I loved the Fitzhuh series (these occur too late to be Regencies, but I'm listing her here because several of her other books do fall in this decade, and because several of the plots involve events from that time period). She is a talented writer with vividly realized characters - makes me realize how flat so many of the ro no heroes and heroines are. My sister wasn't so into this series or her other books (Private Arrangements was brilliant, in my opinion). While the elements are all there, these stories can involve some really mean behavior, although the witty banter is definitely still there! Thomas has a tendency to rely too heavily on flashbacks to tell a story - this was especially annoying in Delicious, so I recommend you skip that one. 

• Eloisa James is a genius (and a professor of Shakespeare!). She's written a number of regency series, but without a doubt the best is Desperate Duchesses. These five books MUST be read in order! I'm not sure I've read anything that really unfolds across several books and manages to deliver the classic HEA while describing flawed, human, lovable characters. And, to make all her fans deliriously happy, she wrote a sixth book, Three Weeks with Lady X, that may very well be her best book ever.

• The Spindle Cove series by Tessa Dare is proving to be a real winner! The first book was just fine, but the second book was good and I was totally hooked by the time A Week to Be Wicked came out. I read the most recent book, Any Duchess Will Do, in a day. The Spindle Cove series features a number of charming novellas, which tides me over while I wait for the next book!

• Romancing the Duke, another Tessa Dare (part of her new Castles Ever After series) was outstanding. I was blown away by how good it was. The story seemed to just begin with now background or introduction and you're suddenly just THERE with these two people meeting at a rundown castle. And then the story and the romance and the history all come together and it is just perfect. I had a goofy grin on my face half the time I was reading this book.

No one turns down a Darjeeling on the menu!

• Lisa Kleypas' Hathaway series is one of my sister's favorites, although I found several of the books pretty meh. It felt like Bridgerton-lite, but I think it is just because I was looking for a JQ replacement when I found the Hathaways? One of my favorite books is in this series - Love in the Afternoon. Awww, so sweet. 

• Mary Balogh wrote the charming Slightly series and it was irresistible! The five Bedwyn siblings are adorable people. The final book with Wulfric was so good I wish I could go back in time and discover the series again. I wish I liked her other books as much. The Mistress books about the Dudley siblings were also good, but no comparison to the Bedwyn books - although I did find another hunk for my top 10 list (Jocelyn in More than a Mistress). Her characters often cross series, and those who inspired the other series in her catalog were my least favorite characters in her books! I tried the Huxtable series and couldn't get into it. Alas.

• Eloisa James' fairy tales are a bit hit or miss. E and I both ADORED the Beauty and the Beast book (When Beauty Tamed the Beast) but the Rapunzel story was meh and the Sleeping Beauty story (The Duke is Mine) was silly. She did a creative job reinterpreting all the classic fairy tales, so she gets some credit! And, really, the Beauty needs to be added to my heroine list stat. She's a hoot.

• Elizabeth Hoyt's Maiden Lane series is another that starts off sort of meh but has some really good books in the mix. The books should be read in order, but there is not a lot of continuity between the different stories aside from their fixation on very poor section of London called St. Giles. Scandalous Desires may be one of E's favorite books! And we both adored Thief of Shadows. I was also partial to Lord of Darkness. Regretfully, Duke of Midnight was terrible and coercive and just icky. UPDATE - Darling Beast came out Oct 2014 and I did indeed read it, but was only skeptical at the beginning. It was decent.

• The Rules of Scoundrels series by Sarah MacLean is great. The first book, per the norm, is a bit of a snooze fest, but the series picks up pace nicely, and the third book was not only awesome, it has left me very excited for book #4.  I love when an author seems to get better and better the more she writes, and that definitely seems to be true for Sarah MacLean! UPDATE - fourth book was absolutely worth the wait!

Sometimes you're just in the mood for a tasty herbal blend- not as good as the good stuff, but passable.

• Jennifer Ashley's MacKenzie brother's series falls into this category for me. Some of the characters are unique, memorable, and pretty damn sexy. But the plots get confusing and the endings are all a little *too* tidy. I never trust an author who relies heavily on epilogues to tie things up (that is a blatant lie. I love a good epilogue. I just like to write "I never trust a..."). She actually managed to write a whole new short novel (Mackenzie Family Christmas) that comes between one of her other books and an epilogue!

• Anne Stuart's House of Rohan series is Regency-era, but definitely not your typical Regency fare. We wrote about it here. 

• The Gamblers series by Lisa Kleypas is a bit of a snore, but well written. Some people are OBSESSED with Then Came You, the first in the series, and I enjoyed it well enough. I have a hard time with books that involve small children possibly being hurt. Since I didn't like the character in this book who took the lead in the sequel, I didn't read this whole series, but my sister liked it.

• Sarah MacLean's Love by Number's series is about the Ralston family and the characters are a little uni-dimensional but the story lines are interesting. The last book is sweet and the relationship is hinted at in the first two books, so that holds the series together nicely. If you're going to read the Rule of Scoundrel's series, these books come first. This author has a way with titles that is a bit too twee for my taste (did you enjoy my alliteration there?) and a few of the sex scenes were too long and kinda boring. I blame it on the underdeveloped characters.

And, tragically, sometimes you want something hot, anything will do, but you're left unsatisfied with a bad taste in your mouth. The Bargain by Mary Jo Putney is a perfect example of all that is totally boring, cliché and predictable about Regencies. She is a real Lipton author, sad to say. She is in good company; my sister and I have both tossed books aside because we can't get through them. These include Christine Merrill's The Inconvenient Duchess and Lisa Kleypas' Stranger in my Arms. If you're going to write a lame book, at least add some spice! I have to add to this list the Duchess Quartet series by Eloisa James. It is a shame given some of the amazing books she has written, but this series is TERRIBLE. I especially recommend that you avoid it if you're trying to stay away from books with contrived pregnancy storylines. You will thank me.