Henrietta Redford has always known she was born the wrong gender. Boys get to climb trees, fight with swords, and run their own lives. Girls get come-outs, drawing rooms, and husbands chosen for them by people who’ve never met them. Henrietta has agreed to the come-out and the eventual husband—anyone will do, really, as long as it isn’t Giles Thorpe, the arrogant, insufferable neighbor’s son who has spent years looking down his nose at her tomboyish ways. 🌿
Emily Royal writes Regency romance with genuine wit and a sharp eye for the social constraints that made Georgian England simultaneously glittering and suffocating for women of Henrietta’s temperament. The enemies-to-lovers dynamic here is built on a foundation of real history — Giles has watched Henrietta grow up, has formed opinions, has been very wrong about most of them — which gives their eventual pivot considerably more weight than the usual manufactured antagonism. 💫
The passionate kiss that disrupts both their certainties arrives at exactly the right moment, and Royal handles the aftermath with the kind of slow, reluctant reckoning that makes this subgenre so compelling when it’s done well. Giles’s internal conflict between prudence and feeling is rendered with particular care. 🌷
What makes this irresistible: A sparkling Regency romance with a heroine who refuses to be diminished and a hero who has to unlearn everything he thought he knew about the woman next door. Perfect for fans of Georgette Heyer and Eloisa James who want their historical heroines spirited, their heroes worthy of the effort, and their happy endings properly earned.
Lady Mary Beresford has set off alone for the Congress of Vienna — impulsively, independently, and to the considerable exasperation of Lord Stephen Stanhope, a duke’s diplomat son tasked with escorting his friend’s wayward sister. He hasn’t even met her yet and he’s already exhausted by her. By the time he catches up with her at an Alpine inn, snowbound and surrounded by guests who are all insisting her traveling companion never existed, he’s both furious and, reluctantly, intrigued. 🏔️
Cheryl Bolen is a USA Today bestselling author with a gift for adventure-forward Regency romance — stories where the heroine is in actual danger rather than merely social peril, and where the hero’s protective instincts have genuine stakes to attach themselves to. The mystery of the vanishing traveling companion gives Lady Mary’s Dangerous Encounter a Hitchcockian undertone that lifts it well above the standard drawing-room romance. 🕵️
The Alpine setting is beautifully deployed — the blizzard trapping everyone together, the conspiracy of silence among the inn’s guests, and Stephen arriving as the one person willing to take Mary’s side. The enemies-to-allies dynamic develops with satisfying speed once the danger becomes undeniable. ❄️
Why this grips from page one: A wonderfully atmospheric Regency adventure romance that combines a genuine mystery, a headstrong heroine, and a hero who comes around at exactly the right moment. Perfect for fans of Bolen’s previous series and anyone who wants their historical romance with a proper plot and a European setting to get lost in.
Honora Drevenport fell hopelessly in love with the Earl of Southwell when she was young, awkward, and barely acceptable by Society’s standards. Then came the humiliation — engineered by Southwell’s friends, searing enough to shape the rest of her life. She married. She endured. She emerged on the other side as a stunning widow and the toast of London, with a plan so elegant it almost qualifies as art: make Southwell fall in love with her, then destroy him. 💎
Kathleen Ayers builds her revenge romance on a foundation of genuine emotional history, which is what separates it from the typical enemies-to-lovers setup. Honora isn’t simply prickly — she has specific reasons for every wall she’s built, and watching Southwell encounter those walls without understanding why they exist gives the story a dramatic irony that sustains considerable tension. 🌹
The ton setting is rendered with sharp social detail, and Ayers has a gift for secondary characters who feel like they have their own stories rather than simply providing comic relief. The central question — at what point does revenge become self-sabotage? — gives the romance its moral spine. 🕯️
What makes this irresistible: A compulsively readable Regency revenge romance with a heroine whose plan is flawless right up until her heart starts undermining it. Perfect for fans of Lisa Kleypas and Lorraine Heath who want their historical romance with genuine emotional stakes, a properly humbled hero, and a resolution that feels completely earned.
America’s Comfort Foods
Gooseberry Patch has built its entire brand on the kind of cooking that feels like a hug — recipes shared by real home cooks, rooted in community and tradition, built for tables where people actually gather. America’s Comfort Foods is that philosophy at its most expansive, pulling recipes from across the country that all share the same quality: they taste like home. 🏡
The range here is genuinely satisfying. Breakfast brings Amish Breakfast Casserole and Irresistible Crumb Buns. Lunch offers Fried Green Tomato Sandwiches and Slow-Cooker Cincinnati Chili. Dinner runs from Southern Fried Chicken to Deep-Dish Pizza to Salsa Verde Enchiladas — regional favorites that reflect how wonderfully varied American comfort food actually is. 🍽️
The Gooseberry Patch approach has always been democratic and unpretentious, and this collection reflects that. These are recipes designed to be made on a Tuesday night or brought to a potluck, not performed for a dinner party. The instructions are clear, the ingredient lists are manageable, and the results are reliably the kind of thing people ask for the recipe afterward. 🥧
What makes this irresistible: A warm, generous cookbook that reads like a cross-country road trip through America’s best home kitchens. Perfect for anyone who believes the best meals are the ones that remind you of somewhere you love — and wants a reliable collection to cook from for years.
At seventeen, David Archuleta became a household name as the runner-up on American Idol Season 7, his voice captivating millions. Behind the warmth and the talent was a young man carrying a secret he feared would cost him everything: he was attracted to men, and a deeply committed member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. 🎤
Devout traces the full arc of that impossible position — from a childhood shaped by a controlling father who was eventually banned from the American Idol set, through the pressures of sudden fame, a two-year missionary sabbatical in South America, three engagements, and a private reckoning with thoughts of suicide. It is, in every sense, a story about survival. ✨
What makes the memoir remarkable is Archuleta’s refusal to cast himself as simply a victim or a hero. The faith was real. The struggle was real. The eventual decision to leave the Mormon Church and live authentically as a queer man is rendered not as triumph but as the hardest, most necessary thing he ever did. 🕊️
Why this deserves your attention: A searing, deeply honest memoir about fame, faith, identity, and the cost of living in contradiction with yourself. Essential reading for anyone navigating the intersection of religion and LGBTQ+ identity — and a remarkably brave book from someone with a great deal to lose by writing it.
Five years ago she made a bargain with the fae king. Now he’s come to collect — and the price is marriage. She’ll share his home, his bed, his immortal life. He expects a pretty, compliant werewolf he can use to dull the constant pain that plagues him. What he’s going to get is considerably more complicated. 🐺
Lola Glass has built a devoted following in paranormal romance with her fated mate series, and Pretty Little Wolf delivers the formula she’s refined to a high shine: a heroine who refuses to be diminished by a powerful, difficult hero, and a slow-burn enemies-to-lovers dynamic that earns every degree of warmth it generates. The immortal stakes give the romance genuine weight. 🌙
The voice here is sharp and fun — our heroine is playing along with the fae king’s expectations while quietly plotting her own agenda, which gives the novel a delicious dramatic irony that keeps the pages turning. She’s pretending to be his pretty little wolf. She’s actually the most dangerous person in the room. ✨
What makes this irresistible: A propulsive paranormal romance with a heroine whose bite is very much as good as her bark, and a brooding fae king who has absolutely no idea what he’s gotten himself into. Perfect for fans of fated mate romance who want their heroines with teeth and their heroes worth the trouble.