The Wallflowers Series in Order: Four Friends, Four Seasons

The four books are named for four seasons, and they run in that sequence for a reason: each novel is one campaign in a shared operation, and the friends who were foot soldiers in the last book are the strategists in the next. Annabelle, Lillian, Evie and Daisy are all on the page in all four. So are their husbands, once acquired. By book four you are essentially reading about a small, chaotic, extremely fond family.

The quartet, in order

There is a fifth volume, A Wallflower Christmas, which reunites everyone and pairs off Lillian and Daisy's brother Rafe. It is short, warm, and entirely optional — a curtain call rather than a chapter.

The Kleypas books that touch this one

Kleypas writes an interconnected universe rather than sealed series, and two neighbours matter here. Looking backwards, Dreaming of You — from her earlier Gamblers books — introduces Derek Craven and the world of London gaming hells that Evie's father belongs to; Craven turns up in Devil in Winter, and readers who have met him already get an extra layer. Looking forwards, the Ravenels series follows Sebastian and Evie's grown children a generation later, which means the wallflowers themselves appear as middle-aged, still-devoted parents. Watching Sebastian as a father is, for many readers, the single greatest payoff in Kleypas's catalogue.

Should you start with Devil in Winter?

People do. It is the most recommended historical romance of the past two decades and it functions on its own. But the reason it detonates is that you have spent two books watching Sebastian be genuinely, unrepentantly awful — and then you watch Evie, who cannot get a sentence out without stumbling, look at him and decide she is not afraid. Skipping the setup does not break the book. It just cashes in the interest early.