Martha Waters’ fifth and final Regency Vows romance, To Woo and to Wed, ends the series on a high note. In this second-chance romance, Waters once again brings us into a world full of heat and charm, where love matches are plentiful and happily ever afters are guaranteed.
Life as a widow isn’t half-bad for Lady Sophie Bridewell. In fact, it’s quite freeing. She can spend her days in the library reading and eating French pastries to her heart’s content. Not too shabby! But when her sister Alexandra, who is also a widow, shares that she is being courted but doesn’t want to get married and leave Sophie alone, well, that just won’t do. A decade ago, she rejected her own true love, the Marquess of Weston, rather than jeopardize her sisters’ potential betrothals, and she refuses to let that sacrifice be for nothing. Instead, Sophie approaches West with a proposition: They’ll fake an engagement until Alexandra is married, then go their separate ways. This actually works out quite well for West, whose malevolent, meddling father has begun pushing him to marry. A fake engagement to the woman he loves—er, loved—should be easy. But as their “fake” feelings get more and more real, Sophie and West must work to leave the past behind and look towards the future.
In a Waters romance, friend groups are supportive and families are, for the most part, loving. (Parents even make sex jokes about their children’s love lives!) Regency novels are a very popular subgenre, especially after the success of “Bridgerton,” but Waters’ work is still exciting, fun and fresh. She twists the norms of the time to suit her own purposes and creates characters that feel shockingly contemporary. Sophie and West are some of her most endearing leads; you’d be hard pressed to find two people more worthy of love. The responsibility they believe they owe to their families and to each other constantly tugs them in different directions. Both are so deeply invested in being a noble martyr that, at a certain point, you just want to force them to sit down and talk instead of continuing to assume what’s best for each other. But isn’t that part of the fun and frustration (funstration? frun?) of reading romance? Watching two people dance around each other and feeling the tension build until they tear each other’s clothes off and bang until their problems are solved? Destiny is waiting for these two, if they can just get out of their own way.
To Woo and to Wed is a perfect ending to the Regency Vows series, solidifying its status as one of the most entertaining historical romance series on shelves today.
