Hi all!! If you’ve been paying any attention to our monthly reading wrap-up, then you know I’ve been pretty solidly reading Historical Romance for the better part of the year. I’m not sure how I got hooked, but I’m there. I actually just wrapped up the Playful Brides series by Victoria Bowman and was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed them. The series is 11 books plus novellas so instead of writing all those reviews I’m going to prove my laziness and talk about them all here in one post!
Bowman got on my radar because a friend of mine posted a picture of a couple of her books, and I trust this friends opinion so I grabbed them and immediately dove in!
I enjoy historical romance because there is almost always a formula to the story, and I know some of you don’t like that, but I love it. I love my happy endings, I love my romance, and for whatever reason I love rakish men. Rakes and Rogues are my new thing and I won’t apologize.
Bowman does a great job of linking all the books together and introducing you to characters in each novel, and I, of course, had my favorites. I kind of loved book 4 The Irresistible Rogue (see) the best.  Daphne and Rafe were absolutely wonderful and the spy theme totally worked for me in this novel and a couple of the others. If I had to give a thumbs down to any of them and believe me, this surprised me a lot – it would be for book 6 – The Legendary Lord. I loved Christian in the first few books and thought I’d love his story, but it just didn’t work for me, and maybe it was because I didn’t really know or care for Sarah much when we were introduced to her, and then I didn’t care for Christian when they met… either way it was my lowest rated of the full series.
I really enjoyed Lucy’s continuous meddling and scheming and I loved that at the very end we finally get to see the men step in and do their own meddling as well! All the books were fun and sweet and definitely had the right amount of steam!
If you’re a fan of Historical Romance and haven’t picked up this series yet, I definitely recommend you give it a go!
About Valerie Bowman
Valerie Bowman is an award-winning author who writes Regency-set historical romance novels aka Racy Regency Romps!
Valerie’s debut novel was published in 2012. Since then, her books have received starred reviews from Publisher’s Weekly, Booklist, and Kirkus. She’s been an RT Reviewers’ Choice nominee for Best First Historical Romance and Best Historical Romance Love and Laughter. Two of her books have been nominated for the Kirkus Prize for fiction.
Valerie grew up in Illinois with six sisters (she’s number seven) and a huge supply of historical romance novels. After a cold and snowy stint earning a degree in English Language and Literature with a minor in history at Smith College, she moved to Florida the first chance she got. Valerie now lives in Jacksonville with her family including her rascally dogs. When she’s not writing, she keeps busy reading, traveling, or vacillating between watching crazy reality TV and PBS.
Visit Valerie on the web at www.ValerieBowmanBooks.com and sign-up for her newsletter at: http://www.valeriegbowman.com/subscribe/
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