Martha Waters Books in Order: The Regency Vows Reading Guide

The Regency Vows books are technically standalones — each has its own couple and its own happily ever after. But this series works like a sitcom ensemble: everyone attends everyone else's disasters, earlier couples heckle from the sidelines of later books, and the group's friendships deepen across all five volumes. Read out of order and you'll survive; read in order and it becomes one long, glorious house party. The publication order is the reading order:

The Regency Vows series in order

1. To Have and to Hoax (2020) — Violet and James, Lord Audley, married for love, haven't properly spoken in four years. When Violet hears James has been injured, she rushes to him — and finds him perfectly fine. So she fakes a deathly illness of her own, and the two escalate into the pettiest, most romantic prank war the ton has ever hosted. Married-couple second-chance romance at its most chaotic.
2. To Love and to Loathe (2021) — Diana, the widowed Lady Templeton, and the Marquess of Willingham have been trading barbs for years, and there's a wager about his marriage prospects on the table. Their solution — a discreet, strictly-no-feelings arrangement during a country house party — goes exactly as well as those arrangements always do. The series' fan favourite for enemies-to-lovers devotees.
3. To Marry and to Meddle (2022) — Proper, overlooked Emily Turner and scandal-prone Lord Julian Belfry, a lord who owns a theatre, strike a marriage of convenience: she gets security, he gets respectability. Feelings, naturally, refuse to honour the contract.
4. To Swoon and to Spar (2023) — Viscount Penvale finally buys back his beloved Cornwall estate — on the condition he marries the previous owner's niece, Jane. His new bride would like the house to herself, and if a few conveniently timed "hauntings" will scare her husband back to London, so be it. Marriage of convenience meets gothic comedy.
5. To Woo and to Wed (2024) — the finale fans waited five books for: Sophie and Lord West, the couple whose almost-romance has haunted the whole series, get their long-delayed second chance. A fake betrothal gives them the excuse; a decade of longing does the rest.

Trope-spotters, take note: the series quietly works its way through the classics — married-couple second chance, enemies-to-lovers, marriage of convenience (twice, in very different keys), and a fake betrothal to finish. Waters is clearly having fun with the checklist, and part of the joy of reading in order is watching the friend group react as each new couple falls for the exact trope they swore they were above.

Where to start with Martha Waters

Start at the beginning. This is one series where the standard advice is also the right advice: To Have and to Hoax introduces the entire friend group, and every later book assumes you were at the party. That said, if you are an enemies-to-lovers reader first and foremost, To Love and to Loathe is the strongest single entry and works fine on its own — you can circle back to Violet and James afterwards. The one book you genuinely should not read early is To Woo and to Wed: Sophie and West's history is threaded through the previous four books, and the payoff is a hundred times sweeter if you have watched them not-quite-happen for the whole series.

Tone check for new readers: Waters writes rom-coms in period dress. The stakes are emotional rather than life-and-death, the banter is relentless, and the couples' friends are as important as the couples themselves. If you love Bridgerton's lightness but wish it were funnier on purpose, this is your next series.