vintageromancereader

Historical romance is my first love when it comes to fiction. I've read it for most of my life. My gateway in to the subgenre was Julia Quinn's now-famous Bridgerton series; from there, I went on to read her entire backlist and other Avon authors, before expanding out into the wider world of mass market paperbacks and romance imprints. I slowly expanded into other subgenres as well, as I found more and more auto-read (and auto-buy!) authors.

Over the last five to ten years, modern historical romance has started moving in directions I don't particularly care for (namely, leaving out the actual "history" aspect), so, aside from a clutch of favorite, trusted authors, I've started looking back in time for my "new" reads.

In 2018, I started treating myself to a monthly haul of new goodies from Harlequin. Because modern Harlequin books only have one print run, and because I am an old-school completionist collector, I started looking for my favorite authors' backlists in print on the secondhand market. Quite a few of these authors wrote for other imprints, and I quickly rediscovered traditional Regency romances. Bumping into these again made me realize how much I missed reading this subgenre, which has all but died out in the 21st century. 🙁

One of my favorite hobbies is scouring secondhand stores and library sales for old series titles and discontinued imprints, like the Zebra Gothic line. I've found some true vintage gems as well, novels from the 1940s or even earlier. I've amassed over 100 vintage romance titles over the last couple of years, and I wanted to share these lovelies with the world.

I read a wide variety of books these days, and am active on Goodreads, but I wanted to collect my vintage romance reviews to showcase separately. I also need some incentive to jump back into romance after the 2020 pandemic turned my world completely upside down and wrecked all of my reading plans. Curating this blog has definitely reignited that spark for me! 😍

A few notes on my reviewing habits:
[+] I have no set reading schedule, and tend to follow my reading muse wherever it takes me, so updates may be sporadic.
[+] I am a huge supporter of libraries and digital books, so I don't own all of the books I've read and reviewed. I see no distinction between books I've borrowed and books I own when it comes to reviewing.
[+] The covers in the posts are the original covers of the books unless otherwise noted, usually with [year reprint].
[+] I don't have a set reviewing style, so you will find everything from venting to pro/con lists to traditional summaries-and-thoughts rambles.
[+] I rate on the 5-star system. Reviews without a star grade are DNFs (did not finish).
[+] I don't mark for spoilers here.

If you are interested in seeing all of my thoughts on reading, I am on Goodreads here.

Think you'd love a book I didn't? I put my non-keepers on Paperback Swap. You can browse my bookshelf here.

Want to sneak a peek at my ridiculous Mount TBR? Take a gander at my LibraryThing.

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