By Melanie

One of my favorite things about the romance community is when we all collectively discover a new-to-us author who has a pretty lengthy backlist. Last year, I asked for some historical romance recommendations on twitter – I came to historical romance pretty late in my romance reading journey and I wanted to spend this year reading new-to-me authors. Readers responded with a plethora of names for me to try (here is the original tweet if you are so inclined to make your own list) and pretty soon, I had culled it down to over 50 authors to make my way through. 

When January rolled around, I looked at my list and decided to start my 2024 histrom journey with Grace Callaway, a name that was vaguely familiar to me but one I had never read. She was recommended to me by a trusted reader friend with excellent taste (thank you Funmi!) and having checked Hoopla, I started with the Lady Charlotte’s Society of Angels series. It was a histrom series inspired by Charlie’s Angels and that sounded just bonkers enough to intrigue me. 

Here are some hallmarks of a Grace Callaway book: heroines who are on a real emotional journey, some of them fierce and outspoken, others seemingly quiet with a hidden inner strength, heroes who find themselves falling in love despite their very best efforts to avoid doing so, adventurous plots that usually involve a villain and solving some kind of a mystery and foiling a kidnapping, and a whole lotta steam. Seriously, so much steam that I’m frankly shocked that my kindle didn’t overheat and catch on fire. 

Over the course of two months, I inhaled her Lady Charlotte series and her Game of Dukes series, which ended up becoming a personal favorite. One of the most delightful aspects of Grace Callaway’s historical romance world building is that her romances feature multi-generational characters. For instance, my favorite Callaway title so far, Regarding the Duke, is the third book in the Game of Dukes series. It features Adam and Gabby Garrity, who have been married for 8 years before he gets amnesia and falls in love with his wife! (Seriously, SO good!) Their daughter Fiona Garrity, a mere child in that book, grows up to become the heroine of her own book, Fiona and the Enigmatic Earl, the third book in the Lady Charlotte’s Society of Angels series. 

I should also note, I read a few of these books out of order and it was still perfectly easy to follow along. If anything, it just made me want to go back and read other character’s books that were mentioned in the book I was currently reading.

It was a delightful way to start my historical romance journey this year and I was so excited, I couldn’t help sharing my enthusiasm on twitter. Before long, a lot of romance friends started picking up Callaway titles and soon enough, a hashtag was born: #CallawayExpress. (If you are interested, you can search the hashtag on twitter and board the train and join the fun!)

Her books are always a good time, even the ones that I didn’t particularly love. I’ll be honest, my very first Callaway, Olivia and the Masked Duke, wasn’t my favorite. It features an age gap romance and while age gap as a trope does not bother me, the fact that the hero knew the heroine as a child and kept infantilizing her as an adult, grew tiresome. However, I kept going and I’m so glad I did because the rest of the series was brilliant and fun and sexy and charming and all the things I adore in historical romances. She also includes great author’s notes at the end of her books relating her book’s plot to the actual events happening in history at that time. 

The fact that so many other readers caught on to the Callaway trend and boarded the #CallawayExpress meant there were endless conversations happening on twitter about these amazing books that we were all collectively reading. And if there’s one thing I love even more than reading great romances, it’s talking about them with other like-minded readers. 

So, if you’re not active on twitter, please know that you can still ride the #CallawayExpress. These books are great fun, romantic and sexy and adventurous and suspenseful. They’re widely available on Hoopla (which is how I listened to the vast majority of them) and I highly recommend them.