If You Liked Bridgerton, Read These Historical Romance Books Next (2026)

Eloisa James wrote an entire series of fairy tale retellings set in Georgian and Regency England, and this Cinderella is the one to start with. Kate Daltry has spent years managing her stepmother’s household while her spoiled stepsister prepares for a life she has not earned, and she ends up impersonating that stepsister at a house party in order to charm a prince. Gabriel is that prince, penniless, running a castle full of chaotic relatives and stray animals, and required to marry an heiress.

It is frothier than the Quinn and considerably funnier, with a subplot involving small dogs that I will not spoil. What makes it work as a Cinderella is that Kate is the one holding everything together and being punished for it, and Gabriel is the first person in years who looks at her and sees a whole person rather than a useful pair of hands. Deeply charming, properly steamy, and a very easy weekend read.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Cinderella retelling, fairy tale retelling, mistaken identity, marriage of convenience, funny

The Bedwyn siblings are the aristocratic family series I recommend most often to people who have finished the Bridgertons, because Balogh writes with a quieter, more emotionally serious register while keeping the sprawling family structure intact. There are six Bedwyns, presided over by Wulfric, the Duke of Bewcastle, who is the coldest, most terrifying man in England and whose eventual book is one of the great payoffs in the genre.

Slightly Married starts with Aidan, a career soldier who promised a dying comrade that he would protect the man’s sister, and who discovers that protection means marriage. Eve is a warm, chaotic woman running a house full of strays and dependents, and Aidan has no idea what to do with any of it. The marriage is supposed to be in name only. It is not. Balogh is less funny than Quinn and considerably more devastating, and the Bedwyns as a group are worth every one of the six books.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Marriage of convenience, sibling series, wounded soldier, marriage in name only, slow burn

The Hathaways are the family series for anyone who loved that the Bridgertons are enormous, odd and constantly in each other’s business. Five siblings inherit a title and an estate entirely by accident, having been raised firmly middle class, and are dropped into a world whose rules they neither know nor especially respect. There is a brother who has stopped speaking, a sister who keeps rescuing animals, a crumbling house and no money at all.

Amelia is the eldest and has been holding all of it together alone, which is why Cam Rohan, a half-Romani man running a gaming club and equally uninterested in society’s approval, is such a shock to her system. He is the first person who looks at her and asks who is taking care of you. The class and race tensions here are real rather than decorative, and the family chaos is genuinely delightful. Five books, all worth reading.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Found family, class difference, protective MMC, opposites attract, forbidden love

The Wild Wynchesters are a found family rather than a blood one, six orphans adopted by an eccentric baron and raised into a sort of Regency Ocean’s Eleven, and I adore them. Each sibling has a specialism, they take on cases nobody else will, and the first book involves stealing a painting that rightfully belongs to their community. Chloe Wynchester is the one nobody ever notices, which makes her extremely good at her job, and the painting happens to be in a carriage belonging to the Duke of Faircliffe.

She ends up accidentally abducting him. It goes about as well as you would expect. What makes this series such a good Bridgerton readalike is that the family dynamic is baked into every plot rather than bolted on, and the tone is light, warm and very funny without being weightless. There are now six books, so you have plenty of runway.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Found family, heist, opposites attract, forced proximity, funny

If Bridgerton’s rake redemption arc is your thing, this is the gold standard and readers have been handing it to newcomers for twenty years. Evie Jenner is a stammering, painfully shy wallflower who does something completely unhinged: she proposes marriage to Sebastian, Lord St Vincent, the most notorious libertine in London, purely to escape relatives who are trying to steal her inheritance. He accepts. They elope to Scotland. And then she calmly informs him that the marriage will not continue in any meaningful sense unless he stops sleeping with other women.

Watching Sebastian, who has never in his life worked for anything, decide that this quiet woman is worth completely rebuilding himself for is one of the most satisfying arcs in the genre. Evie is not loud, but she is immovable, and Kleypas understands that a shy heroine can still hold every card at the table. The Wallflowers series is best read in order, but this is the book everyone means when they recommend it.

Spice Level: Spicy | Tropes: Marriage of convenience, rake redemption, wallflower, forced proximity, slow burn

Tessa Dare writes the funniest historical romance going and this one had me laughing out loud on public transport, which is never dignified. Emma Gladstone is a seamstress who marches into the Duke of Ashbury’s house to demand payment for a wedding gown he never actually used. Ash, scarred in the Napoleonic Wars and convinced he is now monstrous, looks at this woman standing in his ex-fiancée’s dress and proposes a deal: marry him, produce an heir, and then they need never see each other again.

Obviously that plan survives approximately four chapters. Ash is all growling self-loathing and Emma flatly refuses to treat him as either fragile or frightening, and their negotiations over the terms of the marriage are some of the best banter I have read anywhere. It is funny, deeply horny, and surprisingly tender about scars and shame. If the Simon and Daphne arrangement is what you are chasing, this is the closest match on the list.

Spice Level: Very Spicy | Tropes: Marriage of convenience, beauty and the beast, class difference, funny, grumpy x sunshine

This is the book historical romance readers hand over like a sacred text, and honestly they are right to. Sebastian Ballister, the Marquess of Dain, is enormous, convinced of his own ugliness, unrepentantly awful, and absolutely certain that nobody has ever wanted him for anything but his money. Then Jessica Trent walks into a Paris shop, refuses to be intimidated, and begins systematically dismantling him.

Jessica is one of the greatest heroines ever written. She is clever, mercenary in the best possible way, entirely unbothered by his theatrics, and at one point she shoots him, which I will not apologise for finding romantic. The tension is extraordinary because Dain keeps trying to be the villain of his own story and Jessica simply refuses to accept the casting. It was published in 1995 and it still reads sharper than most of what came after.

Spice Level: Spicy | Tropes: Enemies to lovers, marriage of convenience, tortured hero, beauty and the beast, banter

Sherry Thomas writes the most elegant prose in historical romance and this is a small masterpiece about two people performing versions of themselves. Louisa Cantwell needs a rich husband to support her sisters, and she has calculated her charms down to the decimal point. Felix Rivendale, the Marquess of Wrenworth, is known throughout society as The Ideal Gentleman, universally adored, and completely hollow behind the mask.

He recognises her performance immediately, because it is precisely what he does, and the recognition tips almost instantly into obsession. The proposal he makes her is one of the most quietly shocking scenes I have read in the genre. This is not a comfortable romance. It is about two manipulative people falling in love and then having to survive actually being known by each other, and the second half, where Felix comes apart entirely, is devastating.

Spice Level: Spicy | Tropes: Marriage of convenience, obsessive MMC, he falls first, sunshine facade, angst

This is the closest thing on the list to the pure sparkling comedy of a Bridgerton season opener. Kitty Talbot has twelve weeks to marry money or her family loses everything, so she arrives in London with a plan, a younger sister and absolutely no shame whatsoever about her intentions. Unfortunately her chosen target has an older brother, Lord Radcliffe, who sees straight through her within about four minutes and appoints himself the obstacle.

What makes it work is that Kitty is never softened into apologising for being mercenary. She is doing what she has to do, she is very good at it, and Radcliffe’s slow slide from disapproval into helpless admiration is delicious. It is low on spice and high on wit, very much in the Georgette Heyer tradition, and it is the book I recommend most often to people who loved the show but want something they can read on the train without visibly blushing.

Spice Level: Sweet | Tropes: Fake courtship, marriage of convenience, brother’s best friend, banter, Regency romance

Calpurnia Hartwell has spent ten years being perfectly, boringly proper, and she has had quite enough. So she writes a list of everything a lady should never do, gambling, smoking, being kissed senseless, and sets about ticking them off. For the more dangerous items she needs help, which is how she ends up at the door of Gabriel St John, Marquess of Ralston, asking a notorious rake to ruin her a little.

I adore this premise because it turns the usual dynamic inside out. Callie is the one pursuing the experience, and Ralston, who is used to being wanted for exactly one thing, keeps getting blindsided by how badly he wants to be the person she does all of it with. There is a very good rooftop scene. It is warm, funny, occasionally quite filthy, and Callie’s journey into her own confidence is the real love story underneath the romance.

Spice Level: Spicy | Tropes: Rake, wallflower, bucket list, slow burn, he falls first

Married couple romance is criminally underused and this book is my exhibit A. Violet and James fell violently in love, married within weeks, had one catastrophic argument, and have spent the four years since being coldly, exquisitely polite to each other in the same house while all of society watches and speculates. Then Violet receives news that James has been injured, races to his side, discovers he is entirely fine, and decides the only reasonable response is to fake a serious illness of her own.

What follows is an escalating campaign of petty warfare that is very funny and quietly heartbreaking, because underneath the pranks are two people who never learned how to have a difficult conversation. It is a second chance romance where the second chance happens inside the marriage, and the reconciliation genuinely earns itself. Perfect if the Kanthony bickering was your favourite thing about the entire show.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Second chance romance, married couple, forced proximity, banter, funny

This is the Eloise book, full stop. Annabelle Archer is one of the first women admitted to Oxford, funded by the suffragist movement on the condition that she recruits influential men to the cause. The most influential of all is Sebastian, Duke of Montgomery, a man so precisely controlled that his eventual emotional collapse is genuinely thrilling to witness.

Dunmore writes the Victorian suffrage movement with real research behind it, and the romance is better for the fact that these two want structurally incompatible things. He cannot marry a vicar’s daughter without destroying everything he has spent his life rebuilding. She will not be anyone’s mistress. The tension is enormous and the resolution actually costs him something, which is rarer than it should be. First in the League of Extraordinary Women series, and I would happily read forty more.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Opposites attract, forbidden love, class difference, suffragist heroine, slow burn

Bridgerton’s colour-conscious Regency owes an enormous debt to authors like Vanessa Riley, who was writing Black and mixed-race Regency heroines long before the show existed. Patience Jordan is a West Indian heiress who has been declared mad and locked away, stripped of both her son and her fortune. To get her baby back she disguises herself as a nanny in her own former household, where the boy’s new guardian is the Duke of Repington.

It is a properly plotty book, part romance and part mystery, and Patience is a heroine with real fury in her rather than decorative spirit. Busick is a wounded soldier who runs his household like a military campaign and is completely disarmed by this nanny who keeps declining to follow orders. Riley’s Regency is richly researched and populated with the people the genre has historically left out, and it feels like the world Bridgerton was gesturing towards.

Spice Level: Sweet | Tropes: Secret identity, single mother, marriage of convenience, forced proximity, Black romance

The most tense book on this list and the one I think about most often. Elle Burns is a formerly enslaved woman with an eidetic memory working as a Union spy during the American Civil War, which means posing as a mute enslaved girl inside a Confederate senator’s household. Malcolm McCall is a Pinkerton detective undercover as a Confederate officer in the same house. Neither knows about the other until they do, and after that every single interaction carries lethal risk.

Cole does not soften the setting, and the romance is more powerful for it, because their feelings are genuinely dangerous rather than merely inconvenient. Elle is brilliant and angry and never reduced to a symbol of anything. It is a very different flavour from Bridgerton’s ballrooms, but if what you love is two people forced into proximity with enormous stakes and no safe exit, this will floor you.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Spies, forced proximity, forbidden love, secret identity, Black romance

A warning before we begin: Valentine Napier, the Duke of Montgomery, is a blackmailer, a manipulator and quite possibly a genuine sociopath, and he is the hero. Bridget Crumb takes a position as his housekeeper specifically in order to steal evidence of her own parentage from his study, which means she is lying to him from the very first page.

Bridget is magnificent. She is unflappable, quietly ruthless, and the only person alive who has ever told Valentine no and made it stick. He falls for her with the delighted single-mindedness of a man who has never once wanted something he could not simply take, and watching him attempt to court someone using the only tools he possesses, all of which are terrible, is both very funny and quite dark. This is the spiciest book on the list by a comfortable margin.

Spice Level: Spicy | Tropes: Morally grey MMC, obsessive MMC, class difference, forced proximity, dark romance

If you want your historical romance gothic and genuinely bleak in places, Kerrigan Byrne is where you go. Dorian Blackwell is the Blackheart of Ben More, a scarred Victorian crime lord who blackmails Farah Leigh Mackenzie into marriage. What Farah does not know is that Dorian has known exactly who she is since they were children, and that everything he has built has been in service of getting back to her.

This one is heavy and it deserves a content warning for childhood abuse and violence, so please go in prepared. But the payoff is enormous. Dorian is one of the most tortured heroes in the genre, physically unable to bear being touched by anyone, and the way Byrne handles his slow reclaiming of intimacy is remarkable. Farah is gentle without ever being weak. If you like your Regency swapped for Scottish gothic and your heroes properly broken, start here.

Spice Level: Spicy | Tropes: Childhood friends to lovers, mistaken identity, tortured hero, forced marriage, dark romance

Viola Carroll was presumed dead at Waterloo, which gave her the chance to finally live as herself. The cost was everything else, including Justin, her closest friend, who has spent the years since drowning in grief for a person he does not know is standing in front of him. Viola returns to his life as a lady’s companion, and has to decide whether to tell him.

This is a second chance romance about being known, and Hall writes the reveal and everything after it with such extraordinary care that I had to stop reading twice to collect myself. Justin’s response is one of the most quietly perfect things in modern historical romance. There is grief in it, and real anger, and an enormous amount of joy. If you want to walk into season five already emotionally destroyed, this is your book.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Second chance romance, friends to lovers, trans heroine, hidden identity, grief

The sapphic Regency to start with if you have never read one. Lucy Muchelney is an astronomer whose work has always been published under her father’s name, and who has just watched the woman she loved marry a man. She takes a position translating a French astronomical text for Catherine St Day, a widowed countess whose late husband systematically undermined her own artistic work for years.

What I love is that the romance is built out of two women taking each other’s work seriously, which turns out to be the most intimate thing either has experienced. Catherine’s slow recovery of her confidence is handled beautifully, and the embroidery, yes, embroidery, becomes genuinely moving. It is warm, clever and full of the specific pleasure of being properly seen. First in the Feminine Pursuits series.

Spice Level: Warm | Tropes: Sapphic romance, widow, forced proximity, slow burn, opposites attract