My Historical Romance Favorites: A List You'll Want to Read

As an avid reader and listener of historical romances, I've had the pleasure of devouring many books within this genre. In this video, I'm sharing my top six historical romance favorites that I highly recommend to anyone looking for a great read. If you're a fan of historical romances like me, you'll likely enjoy these titles as well.

One book that comes to mind when I think of historical romances is the first one on my list: "The Duke's Secret" by Emma Chase. I remember reading this book and laughing out loud at times, grinning from ear to ear throughout the story. The author has a way of crafting characters that are relatable and endearing, making it easy to become invested in their lives. The only things that might make me hesitant to recommend this one to others are some issues with a gun and a plot twist at the end that might be problematic for some readers. However, I genuinely enjoyed listening to this book on audio and thought it was a really fun experience.

If you like "The Duke's Secret," you'll probably enjoy some of Emma Chase's other books as well. There are similar elements to these titles that make them feel like they belong in the same category. The author has a knack for creating characters that are strong-willed and independent, which is something I look for in historical romances. Additionally, her writing style is engaging and easy to follow, making it perfect for listeners who enjoy audiobooks.

Another author I'd like to recommend is Judith McNaught, known for her epic historical romance novels. One of my all-time favorites is "A Kingdom of Dreams." When I first reviewed this book, I gave it four stars, but after re-reading it, I realized that it's truly a five-star read. This story is about Jennifer Merrick, the daughter of a Highland warrior, who finds herself caught in the midst of war and family obligations. The author expertly weaves together themes of loyalty, duty, and love to create a compelling narrative.

What I love most about "A Kingdom of Dreams" is its feisty heroine, Jennifer, who is super independent and determined. She's also got a great sense of humor, which makes her relatable and endearing to readers. The banter between the characters is exceptional, and I found myself laughing and sympathizing with them as they navigated their complicated relationships. This book is also an excellent example of an enemies-to-lovers trope, with Jennifer and the hero, Royce, starting off as bitter rivals before slowly developing feelings for each other.

One aspect that might make some readers hesitant to recommend "A Kingdom of Dreams" is its problematic elements, such as the initial punishment meted out to Jennifer and her sister. However, I found these scenes to be well-intentioned and ultimately served a purpose in the story. The author handles these sensitive topics with care and thoughtfulness, ensuring that they don't detract from the overall narrative.

If you're looking for more historical romances like "A Kingdom of Dreams," I'd recommend checking out some of Judith McNaught's other works. She has a talent for crafting characters that are complex and multidimensional, making it easy to become invested in their lives. Her writing style is also engaging and evocative, drawing you into the world she's created.

Ultimately, "A Kingdom of Dreams" is a must-read for anyone who loves historical romances. With its epic scope, memorable characters, and swoon-worthy hero, this book has it all. So if you're looking for a great read that will keep you on the edge of your seat, look no further than Judith McNaught's "A Kingdom of Dreams."

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello welcome back to my channel today i'm gonna be doing something that i haven't done in a very long time and that is a recommendations video i am bringing back a series that i started back in 2019 where i give you guys six recommendations based off of a certain genre or trope or theme that i'm trying to i guess give recommendations on i've already done a soft romance recommendations video in the past and a dark recommendations video i'll leave a playlist down below if you want to go check either of those out but today i'm going to be doing a historical romance recommendations video as a title i think implies or shows uh that's we're going to be talking about very excited about it i have been getting more and more into historicals lately i think there has been a resurgence on romance booktube in interest i guess in historical romances now i'm definitely no exception to that so i thought it would be really fun to share my six top historical romance recommendation picks with you guys i'm going to be doing these in order of like i want to say least problematic to most problematic but i would say softest romance to maybe some like older historicals that were written kind of a while ago that might have some themes that people you know nowadays would not find as acceptable so anyway i will definitely give content warnings as we go but we're going to start it out really soft and slow with eden brook by julianne donaldson uh this is without a doubt the most tame and sweet historical romance that i have ever read and surprisingly uh despite what kind of historicals i tend to prefer i adored this book it follows our heroine marianne who is living in bath with her aunt and she is just craving the countryside she is craving fresh air and open spaces so it's perfect timing when her sister cecily sends her a letter and asks to join her at a country estate cecily has her eyes set on a duke who lives at this country estate and she will stop at nothing to get him and she wants the help of her sister in like bagging this duke so she asks marianne to come to the country and uh marianne decides this is the perfect time she's going to go and she's going to go spend some time with her sister but as marianne is making her way to the country home she encounters a highwayman and a saved white man who she does not know and does not recognize and from there the story only gets further complicated when marianne arrives at the country home and starts developing feelings for someone that she is sort of forbidden from falling in love with this book works for me on so many different levels i tend to describe this book to people as pride and prejudice meets anne of green gables there's just this whimsy and this sort of angst that is juxtaposed so perfectly uh without there being any sex scenes i felt a palpable tension and like sexual chemistry i guess between our two main characters which i thought was perfectly lovely and fit the time period i think very very well and on top of that i just adored the sibling relationship i didn't expect to go into this liking anything but the romance because most historicals focus very very heavily on just that romantic relationship but marianne's relationship with cecily i thought was absolutely stunning and you can see both of their kind of insecurities within themselves that is kind of reflected when they are together if that makes sense like they really admire certain traits that the other person has i just felt like that was kind of authentic to the sibling experience you know you really look up to and admire your siblings i just like that but they were never like jealous of each other they had a really good friendship dynamic and i absolutely adored that and of course obviously the love story was super fantastic too i just i loved these two characters and even though there was a bit of like a misunderstanding tension at times i felt like the culmination of the story was beautiful and i loved seeing these two people get together so i think if you're in the market for something sweet and a little bit silly i think you're really gonna like this book so the next book that i have to recommend is sort of an unpopular pick which might surprise you given that the author is super popular and that book is the governess game by tessa dare this is the second book in tessadera's girl meets duke series which is her most recent series and i have heard so much buzz about the series i think this got a lot of people into historical romance and that does not surprise me at all because tessadera does the perfect formula every time to get you to fall in love with both of her characters and um it sort of surprises me i guess why no one likes this book as much as all of the rest in the series this is without a doubt my favorite because of a few things that i'm going to mention now um i think i kind of hinted at the fact that tessa dare definitely sticks to a formula and i think when she does this kind of pairing it just works so well for me and that is the sort of like rake meets a nerdy girl type story um so let me tell you a little bit about the book so this book is about a woman named alexandra and she is a very independent strong-willed intelligent woman and she has been employed most of her life which is kind of surprising given that i think she has some sort of like aristocracy or like aristocratic blood but after a series of events she is forced to take new employment and when she goes into this notorious rake which is just like historical speak for player whenever she goes into this man's home she ends up being kind of unknowingly roped into being the governess for these two young orphan girls that he is kind of taking care of so she didn't intend to be a governess but she kind of like enters his home and he mistakes her for the governess and now she is the governess for these two children she decides to take the opportunity and run with it and in the process she ends up getting close to the guy the guardian of these two children his name is chase and he is so much fun the story really just follows alexandra as she juggles between her new job and her desire for independence and also her desire for chase and it just worked so well for me like i said i think tessa dare does these formulas pretty well i have been reading a lot of tests of darius's backlist for another video that i'm going to be putting up on my channel very soon and just for me the combination of like that nerdy independent woman with that kind of like playful duke works so well and the banter ends up being very intelligent and fun as a result so i really really like this book for that reason and i also surprisingly really liked the two young girls in the story i feel like they added a sort of like lightheartedness and levity that the story really needed even though there are some times when the two girls are kind of morbid i don't know i just think they lend a very like precious needed touch to the story and i think they help bring the like romantic partners together which i also really enjoyed and overall i just feel like this book perfectly bridges the gap between those like sweet and tame historicals like pride and prejudice or eden brook and brings you into the more like passionate historical romance territory without being a little overwhelming there are definitely sex scenes in this book so be aware of that if that's something that you do or do not like i don't think they're like gratuitous or anything but they're definitely in there so this book i guess like all of the others on the list is a favorite but unlike the other books on this list this one is a female female romance and that is ladies guide to celestial mechanics by olivia waite so this book is about one of our heroines named lucy and at the start of the story she is absolutely devastated because the woman that she has had a relationship with for the past few years has unexpectedly left her for a man she's gonna get married and start life elsewhere and lucy is absolutely devastated obviously as a result she's looking for a distraction and one day the perfect distraction comes along there is a woman a countess who is looking for someone to translate a french astronomy text her husband has recently passed away and her husband was really really passionate about astronomy and while our contest catherine really wants nothing to do with his pursuits anymore she wants someone to translate this text because she knows it meant a lot to her husband and she in the meantime is going to kind of pursue her own interest for once because when her husband was alive she didn't really get to do what she wants so this story is about the contest katherine and lucy coming together to get this text translated and to encourage each other i guess to pursue their own passions and interests and i loved it i think this book is one of my favorites because i think olivia wait does such a fantastic job at giving each woman their own characteristics their own character flaws and their own past that really affect the way in which they interact with each other i think historical romance can either be super super deep and complex or it can be super light and fluffy neither is like better or worse than the other but i think this one does a perfect job at kind of playing that middle ground between and like not having any plot and having way too much plot you definitely get romance in the story but you definitely get a feel for the characters and you just root for them i will say if you don't really like astronomy or you don't really like science this might not be the book for you because it is sort of astronomy heavy you don't have to have any like background knowledge going into the book but you definitely should know that this book moves a little bit more slowly than some historicals you might be used to if you have been reading something like a tessa dare book but don't let that scare you away i absolutely love this book i think if you've not read a female female romance before this one's fantastic and if you have i think this one is also fantastic because another thing that i like about this book is the fact that there is such passion between the two women i think oftentimes in the female female romances i've read there tends to be a lack of passion i think people think i think people think i think authors think that women who read female female romances only want these like soft sweet interactions and while that's mostly true when they're having sexy times i want it to be passionate and fiery just like any heterosexual or like male male story so this one definitely has that so if you want some passionate steamy scenes and a female female romance this definitely will fit the bill i feel like i've been talking a lot about this one book but i do really really enjoy it and really recommend it and like i said if you want something substantial and you want something with amazing characters a lot of fighting the patriarchy i think you're really gonna love this book okay now let's move on to the last three books in this video they are my most favorites of these six favorites one because they're a little sexier and two because they're a little darker which i've come to really appreciate in my historical romances because i feel like a darker historical tends to lend itself to a more original plot but you know that's just a personal preference thing i will say for these three books if you are going to read them and pick them up i would definitely recommend looking at reviews and looking up trigger warnings i'm going to try to include all the content warnings but i haven't read all of these books super recently so i might be forgetting something like i said check out the warnings before you read these books but let me get into my thoughts on the books first we have the highwaymen by kerrigan byrne so this story opens up with our heroine farah she works for scotland yard which is super rare and historical romance for a woman to have a job let alone a job helping law enforcement especially and she's working there because she is trying to uncover some of the paths of her childhood she remembers her rough upbringing and she wants to track down some people that both hurt her and helped her and she thinks that working with scotland yard is the best way to do this and one day a mysterious criminal named dorian blackwell arrives in jail it is her job to interrogate dorian and in the process she finds herself kind of inextricably attracted to him she thinks she might know him from her past she's getting hints that this might be someone that she knew and the story kind of goes from there i'm realizing that this is probably a very vague synopsis but i think part of the fun of this book is the mystery aspect and the intrigue that goes with it and i don't want to spoil that for you but this book is so fantastic and i think it was my gateway into carrick and burn books because it just really likes an interesting setting i really liked that our heroine had a job and i really really liked the chemistry between our two main characters i will say at times the misunderstandings and the mystery aspect of the book can get to be a little bit frustrating but i really did appreciate all of the tension and the backstory that was faked in and the steamy scenes in this book were very hot in terms of content warnings this book was published after 2000 so the content is a little bit more i don't say tame than the other two books but you're not going to find any harmful interactions between the hero and the heroine however there's an attempted assault in the intro to this book that i think everybody should be aware of but other than that scene there is not really any questionable content that i can remember and i just really loved this book i loved the characters and if you're looking for something a little bit different and you've read historical before i would definitely definitely recommend this book so this book and the next one that i'm going to talk about were written prior to 2000 and i think that's important to know because there were a lot of different uh tropes and conventions in these stories that are no longer acceptable to us today so when i read these books i went in with kind of a different lens as i was viewing them i don't necessarily remember all of the particular content and trigger warnings for these books so again please look them up if that is something that is concerning to you but this story is about our heroine jessica trent and she is going to france to track down her brother her brother is in france because he is in leagues with a notorious rake named sebastian ballister and sebastian is a marquess and he just has a bad history of drinking of gambling of womanizing and jessica doesn't want her brother with someone like this primarily because the family fortune is dwindling and jessica has to live off of this fortune until she gets married so she decides to go track him down in france but when she does so she gets to meet the notorious player sebastian and of course she falls i don't say head over heels for him but there's an instant attraction there and there's instant banter from this instant banter though comes a very compromising situation that she finds herself in and she has to convince sebastian to marry her so that she is not ruined and it becomes sort of a marriage of inconvenience the story is really about this marriage of inconvenience and them trying to kind of work together also not fall in love but kind of fall in love and deal with some secrets that are coming out about sebastian's past this worked so well for me on so many levels i think i really appreciated that this book took a more historical approach to history that makes it sound like some of these other books aren't historical but i really did appreciate that the characters get married about 50 of the way through the book and then they have to get to know each other after that i feel like for most of the kind of more modern historicals that i've read again like tessa dare books they sort of fall for each other have this kind of banter have sex then they get married and that's fine but i feel like it's more maybe accurate to history to have our characters have a little bit of banter get married and then have to deal with the consequences of that marriage and what that marriage is going to be like and you definitely get that in this story i think that can be a little bit exhausting for some people or something that some people don't like but i personally adored it it felt really real to me and i feel like the things that they both had to deal with in their marriage just made a lot of sense like i said this book is about fighting attraction it's about marriage it's about obligation and um it's just really hot and i just love the banter like there is nothing like loretta chase banter i have read a couple of books from her after this one and they all have the same feel so if you like this one you'll probably like some of her backlist but i was listening to this on audio and i genuinely remember laughing out loud and grinning at times it was just a really fun experience the only things that kind of make me hesitant to recommend this one i guess is i do remember there being some issues with a gun where a heroin shoots the hero there's a reason behind it but if that's something that is um unforgivable to you i wouldn't read this book and there's also a plot twist at the end of the book that's not like questionable um in terms of being harmful but it is a trope that i know that some people don't enjoy i'm being very vague on that but um it was something that i actually thought worked really well so i would read maybe some of the spoilers for this book if you are curious but not sure if you want to go into it and then lastly we have one of my all-time favorites i gave this book four stars when i initially reviewed it but upon further inspection it is just a five-star read for me all around i really adore this book and it is a kingdom of dreams by judith mcnaught so like i said again i don't know how many times i can say it this book is definitely um i would say the most problematic on this list or definitely shows the most signs of age compared to the other books because of when it was written but this story is about jennifer merrick who is the daughter of a highland warrior and he is the leader of the clan and he is trying to keep the clan safe and to do so he sends jennifer and her younger sister to a convent to kind of hide out but unfortunately that is not the safest place for them to be because the wolf royce westmerlin who's part of the english army ends up capturing the two girls and taking them captive for ransom so about half of the story is about jennifer trying to escape the clutches of royce and then the other half of the story is her trying to fight her attraction and kind of reconcile the issue that she has between the obligation to her family and the love she's developing for voice like i said i really like this book and i really like historicals that have that feisty heroine who's super super independent and a historical that has so much good banter to me that is the sign of a great historical if you can get me to laugh and sympathize with these characters based purely on the banter and the dialogue they have between each other that's the sign of a great historical and i also like to call this book the ultimate enemies to lovers because this one does enemies sluffers pretty pretty extremely i mean they're like i don't say mortal enemies but essentially mortal enemies from the very beginning of this book it's not like they meet each other hate each other and then become enemies like their enemies at the beginning and then they slowly become not so enemies and i didn't really mention it but royce is such a fantastic hero there are some kind of like questionable elements at the beginning of the book because he ends up punishing jennifer and her sister for trying to leave which makes sense given that she is a captive but beyond that i think he is a lot softer than you would expect from the characterization of him at the beginning of the book and of like the synopsis you expect him to be this big scary guy but pretty early on you realize that he has this deep attraction to jennifer and he wants to treat her really softly and i just love it i love when a really grumpy guy turns soft i wouldn't say this is like you know grumpy sunshine sort of dynamic it's definitely not that but i just loved royce as a hero so that's pretty much it those are my six historical romance favorites i hope you guys found a book maybe on this list that you want to give a try if you guys have any recommendations for me for your favorite historicals please leave them down in the comments down below also let me know what other kinds of recommendation videos you guys would like to see i had a actually really good time filming this i feel like i always avoid doing recommendations videos because i feel like they're not very exciting to film and i have to sit here and just like talk the camera forever which i guess is sort of what i do all the time but it just feels overwhelming i guess sometimes to sit down but i did like this and i would like to do this more in the future so let me know if you guys have any like tropes genres whatever that you would like recommendations on and i will try to pull that together but i love you guys so much thank you so much for watching this and uh until next time youhello welcome back to my channel today i'm gonna be doing something that i haven't done in a very long time and that is a recommendations video i am bringing back a series that i started back in 2019 where i give you guys six recommendations based off of a certain genre or trope or theme that i'm trying to i guess give recommendations on i've already done a soft romance recommendations video in the past and a dark recommendations video i'll leave a playlist down below if you want to go check either of those out but today i'm going to be doing a historical romance recommendations video as a title i think implies or shows uh that's we're going to be talking about very excited about it i have been getting more and more into historicals lately i think there has been a resurgence on romance booktube in interest i guess in historical romances now i'm definitely no exception to that so i thought it would be really fun to share my six top historical romance recommendation picks with you guys i'm going to be doing these in order of like i want to say least problematic to most problematic but i would say softest romance to maybe some like older historicals that were written kind of a while ago that might have some themes that people you know nowadays would not find as acceptable so anyway i will definitely give content warnings as we go but we're going to start it out really soft and slow with eden brook by julianne donaldson uh this is without a doubt the most tame and sweet historical romance that i have ever read and surprisingly uh despite what kind of historicals i tend to prefer i adored this book it follows our heroine marianne who is living in bath with her aunt and she is just craving the countryside she is craving fresh air and open spaces so it's perfect timing when her sister cecily sends her a letter and asks to join her at a country estate cecily has her eyes set on a duke who lives at this country estate and she will stop at nothing to get him and she wants the help of her sister in like bagging this duke so she asks marianne to come to the country and uh marianne decides this is the perfect time she's going to go and she's going to go spend some time with her sister but as marianne is making her way to the country home she encounters a highwayman and a saved white man who she does not know and does not recognize and from there the story only gets further complicated when marianne arrives at the country home and starts developing feelings for someone that she is sort of forbidden from falling in love with this book works for me on so many different levels i tend to describe this book to people as pride and prejudice meets anne of green gables there's just this whimsy and this sort of angst that is juxtaposed so perfectly uh without there being any sex scenes i felt a palpable tension and like sexual chemistry i guess between our two main characters which i thought was perfectly lovely and fit the time period i think very very well and on top of that i just adored the sibling relationship i didn't expect to go into this liking anything but the romance because most historicals focus very very heavily on just that romantic relationship but marianne's relationship with cecily i thought was absolutely stunning and you can see both of their kind of insecurities within themselves that is kind of reflected when they are together if that makes sense like they really admire certain traits that the other person has i just felt like that was kind of authentic to the sibling experience you know you really look up to and admire your siblings i just like that but they were never like jealous of each other they had a really good friendship dynamic and i absolutely adored that and of course obviously the love story was super fantastic too i just i loved these two characters and even though there was a bit of like a misunderstanding tension at times i felt like the culmination of the story was beautiful and i loved seeing these two people get together so i think if you're in the market for something sweet and a little bit silly i think you're really gonna like this book so the next book that i have to recommend is sort of an unpopular pick which might surprise you given that the author is super popular and that book is the governess game by tessa dare this is the second book in tessadera's girl meets duke series which is her most recent series and i have heard so much buzz about the series i think this got a lot of people into historical romance and that does not surprise me at all because tessadera does the perfect formula every time to get you to fall in love with both of her characters and um it sort of surprises me i guess why no one likes this book as much as all of the rest in the series this is without a doubt my favorite because of a few things that i'm going to mention now um i think i kind of hinted at the fact that tessa dare definitely sticks to a formula and i think when she does this kind of pairing it just works so well for me and that is the sort of like rake meets a nerdy girl type story um so let me tell you a little bit about the book so this book is about a woman named alexandra and she is a very independent strong-willed intelligent woman and she has been employed most of her life which is kind of surprising given that i think she has some sort of like aristocracy or like aristocratic blood but after a series of events she is forced to take new employment and when she goes into this notorious rake which is just like historical speak for player whenever she goes into this man's home she ends up being kind of unknowingly roped into being the governess for these two young orphan girls that he is kind of taking care of so she didn't intend to be a governess but she kind of like enters his home and he mistakes her for the governess and now she is the governess for these two children she decides to take the opportunity and run with it and in the process she ends up getting close to the guy the guardian of these two children his name is chase and he is so much fun the story really just follows alexandra as she juggles between her new job and her desire for independence and also her desire for chase and it just worked so well for me like i said i think tessa dare does these formulas pretty well i have been reading a lot of tests of darius's backlist for another video that i'm going to be putting up on my channel very soon and just for me the combination of like that nerdy independent woman with that kind of like playful duke works so well and the banter ends up being very intelligent and fun as a result so i really really like this book for that reason and i also surprisingly really liked the two young girls in the story i feel like they added a sort of like lightheartedness and levity that the story really needed even though there are some times when the two girls are kind of morbid i don't know i just think they lend a very like precious needed touch to the story and i think they help bring the like romantic partners together which i also really enjoyed and overall i just feel like this book perfectly bridges the gap between those like sweet and tame historicals like pride and prejudice or eden brook and brings you into the more like passionate historical romance territory without being a little overwhelming there are definitely sex scenes in this book so be aware of that if that's something that you do or do not like i don't think they're like gratuitous or anything but they're definitely in there so this book i guess like all of the others on the list is a favorite but unlike the other books on this list this one is a female female romance and that is ladies guide to celestial mechanics by olivia waite so this book is about one of our heroines named lucy and at the start of the story she is absolutely devastated because the woman that she has had a relationship with for the past few years has unexpectedly left her for a man she's gonna get married and start life elsewhere and lucy is absolutely devastated obviously as a result she's looking for a distraction and one day the perfect distraction comes along there is a woman a countess who is looking for someone to translate a french astronomy text her husband has recently passed away and her husband was really really passionate about astronomy and while our contest catherine really wants nothing to do with his pursuits anymore she wants someone to translate this text because she knows it meant a lot to her husband and she in the meantime is going to kind of pursue her own interest for once because when her husband was alive she didn't really get to do what she wants so this story is about the contest katherine and lucy coming together to get this text translated and to encourage each other i guess to pursue their own passions and interests and i loved it i think this book is one of my favorites because i think olivia wait does such a fantastic job at giving each woman their own characteristics their own character flaws and their own past that really affect the way in which they interact with each other i think historical romance can either be super super deep and complex or it can be super light and fluffy neither is like better or worse than the other but i think this one does a perfect job at kind of playing that middle ground between and like not having any plot and having way too much plot you definitely get romance in the story but you definitely get a feel for the characters and you just root for them i will say if you don't really like astronomy or you don't really like science this might not be the book for you because it is sort of astronomy heavy you don't have to have any like background knowledge going into the book but you definitely should know that this book moves a little bit more slowly than some historicals you might be used to if you have been reading something like a tessa dare book but don't let that scare you away i absolutely love this book i think if you've not read a female female romance before this one's fantastic and if you have i think this one is also fantastic because another thing that i like about this book is the fact that there is such passion between the two women i think oftentimes in the female female romances i've read there tends to be a lack of passion i think people think i think people think i think authors think that women who read female female romances only want these like soft sweet interactions and while that's mostly true when they're having sexy times i want it to be passionate and fiery just like any heterosexual or like male male story so this one definitely has that so if you want some passionate steamy scenes and a female female romance this definitely will fit the bill i feel like i've been talking a lot about this one book but i do really really enjoy it and really recommend it and like i said if you want something substantial and you want something with amazing characters a lot of fighting the patriarchy i think you're really gonna love this book okay now let's move on to the last three books in this video they are my most favorites of these six favorites one because they're a little sexier and two because they're a little darker which i've come to really appreciate in my historical romances because i feel like a darker historical tends to lend itself to a more original plot but you know that's just a personal preference thing i will say for these three books if you are going to read them and pick them up i would definitely recommend looking at reviews and looking up trigger warnings i'm going to try to include all the content warnings but i haven't read all of these books super recently so i might be forgetting something like i said check out the warnings before you read these books but let me get into my thoughts on the books first we have the highwaymen by kerrigan byrne so this story opens up with our heroine farah she works for scotland yard which is super rare and historical romance for a woman to have a job let alone a job helping law enforcement especially and she's working there because she is trying to uncover some of the paths of her childhood she remembers her rough upbringing and she wants to track down some people that both hurt her and helped her and she thinks that working with scotland yard is the best way to do this and one day a mysterious criminal named dorian blackwell arrives in jail it is her job to interrogate dorian and in the process she finds herself kind of inextricably attracted to him she thinks she might know him from her past she's getting hints that this might be someone that she knew and the story kind of goes from there i'm realizing that this is probably a very vague synopsis but i think part of the fun of this book is the mystery aspect and the intrigue that goes with it and i don't want to spoil that for you but this book is so fantastic and i think it was my gateway into carrick and burn books because it just really likes an interesting setting i really liked that our heroine had a job and i really really liked the chemistry between our two main characters i will say at times the misunderstandings and the mystery aspect of the book can get to be a little bit frustrating but i really did appreciate all of the tension and the backstory that was faked in and the steamy scenes in this book were very hot in terms of content warnings this book was published after 2000 so the content is a little bit more i don't say tame than the other two books but you're not going to find any harmful interactions between the hero and the heroine however there's an attempted assault in the intro to this book that i think everybody should be aware of but other than that scene there is not really any questionable content that i can remember and i just really loved this book i loved the characters and if you're looking for something a little bit different and you've read historical before i would definitely definitely recommend this book so this book and the next one that i'm going to talk about were written prior to 2000 and i think that's important to know because there were a lot of different uh tropes and conventions in these stories that are no longer acceptable to us today so when i read these books i went in with kind of a different lens as i was viewing them i don't necessarily remember all of the particular content and trigger warnings for these books so again please look them up if that is something that is concerning to you but this story is about our heroine jessica trent and she is going to france to track down her brother her brother is in france because he is in leagues with a notorious rake named sebastian ballister and sebastian is a marquess and he just has a bad history of drinking of gambling of womanizing and jessica doesn't want her brother with someone like this primarily because the family fortune is dwindling and jessica has to live off of this fortune until she gets married so she decides to go track him down in france but when she does so she gets to meet the notorious player sebastian and of course she falls i don't say head over heels for him but there's an instant attraction there and there's instant banter from this instant banter though comes a very compromising situation that she finds herself in and she has to convince sebastian to marry her so that she is not ruined and it becomes sort of a marriage of inconvenience the story is really about this marriage of inconvenience and them trying to kind of work together also not fall in love but kind of fall in love and deal with some secrets that are coming out about sebastian's past this worked so well for me on so many levels i think i really appreciated that this book took a more historical approach to history that makes it sound like some of these other books aren't historical but i really did appreciate that the characters get married about 50 of the way through the book and then they have to get to know each other after that i feel like for most of the kind of more modern historicals that i've read again like tessa dare books they sort of fall for each other have this kind of banter have sex then they get married and that's fine but i feel like it's more maybe accurate to history to have our characters have a little bit of banter get married and then have to deal with the consequences of that marriage and what that marriage is going to be like and you definitely get that in this story i think that can be a little bit exhausting for some people or something that some people don't like but i personally adored it it felt really real to me and i feel like the things that they both had to deal with in their marriage just made a lot of sense like i said this book is about fighting attraction it's about marriage it's about obligation and um it's just really hot and i just love the banter like there is nothing like loretta chase banter i have read a couple of books from her after this one and they all have the same feel so if you like this one you'll probably like some of her backlist but i was listening to this on audio and i genuinely remember laughing out loud and grinning at times it was just a really fun experience the only things that kind of make me hesitant to recommend this one i guess is i do remember there being some issues with a gun where a heroin shoots the hero there's a reason behind it but if that's something that is um unforgivable to you i wouldn't read this book and there's also a plot twist at the end of the book that's not like questionable um in terms of being harmful but it is a trope that i know that some people don't enjoy i'm being very vague on that but um it was something that i actually thought worked really well so i would read maybe some of the spoilers for this book if you are curious but not sure if you want to go into it and then lastly we have one of my all-time favorites i gave this book four stars when i initially reviewed it but upon further inspection it is just a five-star read for me all around i really adore this book and it is a kingdom of dreams by judith mcnaught so like i said again i don't know how many times i can say it this book is definitely um i would say the most problematic on this list or definitely shows the most signs of age compared to the other books because of when it was written but this story is about jennifer merrick who is the daughter of a highland warrior and he is the leader of the clan and he is trying to keep the clan safe and to do so he sends jennifer and her younger sister to a convent to kind of hide out but unfortunately that is not the safest place for them to be because the wolf royce westmerlin who's part of the english army ends up capturing the two girls and taking them captive for ransom so about half of the story is about jennifer trying to escape the clutches of royce and then the other half of the story is her trying to fight her attraction and kind of reconcile the issue that she has between the obligation to her family and the love she's developing for voice like i said i really like this book and i really like historicals that have that feisty heroine who's super super independent and a historical that has so much good banter to me that is the sign of a great historical if you can get me to laugh and sympathize with these characters based purely on the banter and the dialogue they have between each other that's the sign of a great historical and i also like to call this book the ultimate enemies to lovers because this one does enemies sluffers pretty pretty extremely i mean they're like i don't say mortal enemies but essentially mortal enemies from the very beginning of this book it's not like they meet each other hate each other and then become enemies like their enemies at the beginning and then they slowly become not so enemies and i didn't really mention it but royce is such a fantastic hero there are some kind of like questionable elements at the beginning of the book because he ends up punishing jennifer and her sister for trying to leave which makes sense given that she is a captive but beyond that i think he is a lot softer than you would expect from the characterization of him at the beginning of the book and of like the synopsis you expect him to be this big scary guy but pretty early on you realize that he has this deep attraction to jennifer and he wants to treat her really softly and i just love it i love when a really grumpy guy turns soft i wouldn't say this is like you know grumpy sunshine sort of dynamic it's definitely not that but i just loved royce as a hero so that's pretty much it those are my six historical romance favorites i hope you guys found a book maybe on this list that you want to give a try if you guys have any recommendations for me for your favorite historicals please leave them down in the comments down below also let me know what other kinds of recommendation videos you guys would like to see i had a actually really good time filming this i feel like i always avoid doing recommendations videos because i feel like they're not very exciting to film and i have to sit here and just like talk the camera forever which i guess is sort of what i do all the time but it just feels overwhelming i guess sometimes to sit down but i did like this and i would like to do this more in the future so let me know if you guys have any like tropes genres whatever that you would like recommendations on and i will try to pull that together but i love you guys so much thank you so much for watching this and uh until next time you\n"