The Belles of London in Order

Matthews writes Victorian rather than Regency, and the difference shows in the detail: crinolines, photography, railway timetables, the beginnings of a press. Her research is unusually specific and it is always doing work in the plot rather than sitting on the surface.

The Belles of London in order

1. The Siren of Sussex (2022) — Evelyn Maltravers, who needs a riding habit spectacular enough to get her noticed, and Ahmad Malik, the tailor who can make it. A romance about craft, ambition and a mixed-race hero in a trade that will not credit him.
2. The Belle of Belgrave Square (2022) — Julia Wychwood, whose parents treat her as a permanent invalid, escaping into a marriage with a man the ton calls a brute. A gothic-flavoured book and the strongest of the four.
3. The Lily of Ludgate Hill (2024) — Anne Deveril, in mourning dress and determined to stay in it, and Felix Hartford, who has been in love with her for years and expresses it entirely through provocation.
4. The Muse of Maiden Lane (2024) — Stella Hobhouse, whose prematurely silver hair makes her conspicuous in a society that punishes conspicuousness, and a painter who wants to make her his subject.

Four books; the friendships carry across all of them and the quartet is self-contained. Note the publication gap — nothing appeared in 2023, then books three and four both landed in 2024.

Does the order matter?

Moderately. The four women are close friends who appear throughout each other's books, and the group's circumstances change as they marry off — by book four the morning rides have a different composition and a different mood.

No plot depends on it, so a reader who starts with The Belle of Belgrave Square because it is the one everyone recommends will be fine. What is lost is the sense of a group shrinking, which is quietly the emotional throughline of the quartet.

What Matthews does differently

Two things. The first is heat level: these are notably restrained books by current standards, closer to the classic Victorian novel than to modern historical romance, and readers looking for spice consistently report finding less than they expected. That is a feature for a large part of her readership.

The second is that her heroines have specific, documented constraints rather than generic ones. A woman managed by hypochondriac parents, a woman whose hair marks her out, a woman in mourning she is using as armour — each book is built on a real Victorian social mechanism and takes it apart.

Where to go next

Matthews's earlier Parish Orphans of Devon quartet is the obvious next step and, for many readers, the better one. For the same period in New York rather than London, try Joanna Shupe's Uptown Girls. Her full bibliography is in the Mimi Matthews reading order.