Royalty – andrea's galley

Genre: Romance, Royalty
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Content Warning: Sexual content, as per usual in this series.

“To Marry and to Meddle”, the last book in The Regency Vows series, follows the sweet Lady Emily Turner and the scandalous Lord Julian Belfry. Emily has found no acceptable suiters in the six seasons she’s been part of due to her family’s troubles, while Lord Julian is still cast off from society as he owns a theater with a dubitable reputation. Emily wants to be married off to someone half decent-not her father’s creditor-while Lord Julian wants his theater to become a respectable one-one where men take their wives, not their mistresses. Settling down for a marriage of convenience, Lord Julian hopes Emily will help bring higher society into his theater while Emily will finally be free of her family’s shame, but they weren’t counting on any feelings that may arise.

As soon as I read that this book would be about Lord Julian, I knew it would be the funniest of the lot, and I wasn’t wrong. I think Lord Julian has been my favorite character and ever since we met him in the first book, “To Have and to Hoax”, I have absolutely loved his quirkiness and his bravery, as I don’t think I would’ve been able to do what he did, leaving his family to own a theater and be an actor, in the period of time that he lived.

I feel like this last book in The Regency Vows series was relatively slower-paced than the books that preceded it… Or perhaps it was just that I had grown tired of the dynamics of these books, as I felt like they all told the same stories to some extent. I would concede that this was the sweetest of them all, but oh well. I’m not sure if I would recommend reading these books back to back. The series was lovely, but I guess somewhat repetitive.

I would recommend this book to fans of the first season of Bridgerton and this series to any lovers of period dramas. It has been a truly entertaining ride, and I am so glad I found this series when I did: a few weeks before the second season of Bridgerton dropped, and just as its third and last book was released.

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Genre: Romance, Royalty
Actual Rating: 3 stars
Content Warning: Sexual content, death of a family member, and grief.

“To Love and to Loathe” follows Jeremy, the Marquess of Willingham, and Diana, Lady Templeton, as they become lovers of sorts. The Marquess and Lady Templeton have known each other forever and their sexual tension has been evident for just as long—but they’d never be the perfect match for the other, the Marquess is a player and Diana’s brother’s best mate. That’s why, when they’re younger, Diana marries someone else, someone much older, becoming Lady Templeton and then just as quickly becoming a widow. Now, years after becoming a widower, Lady Templeton is approached by the Marquess of Willingham because his pride has been wounded. Having a previous lover critique his sexual skills and branding them as mediocre, the Marquess asks Lady Templeton to take him as a lover, as to be reassured that his skills are indeed acceptable and so other men are aware that she’d be interested in taking in a lover. Through a regal friends-with-benefits situation, this book will transport you to the 1800s and make you fall in love (again).

This was a very lighthearted book with the same storytelling, dynamics, and tropes as the first book in this series. Following two characters we met in “To Have and to Hoax”, this second installment was told through different points of view and had some enemies-to-lovers action going on—just like the first installment did. The only reason this book had a lower rating than the first book in the series did is that I got bored at times. Objectively, this book wasn’t extremely slow-paced, but I just lost interest and had to stop reading it. This book did not hook me as intensively as “To Have and to Hoax” did.

In essence, you’ll love this book if you loved the first book in the “The Regency Vows” series, but at the same time, I feel like this book would work well as a standalone. Yes, you’ll understand some backstory better if you’ve read “To Have and to Hoax”, but if you get your hands on “To Love and to Loathe” first, don’t hesitate to read it.

I would recommend this book to readers who like the friends-with-benefits and enemies-to-lovers dynamics.

If you click here, you’ll be redirected to Goodreads, so you can add the book to your TBR list.

Or you could click here, and be redirected to Amazon, so you can order the book.