Typically, a set of siblings or a group of friends all find love in sequence, and each get their promised happily ever after. The thing is, romance series generally don’t have the strongest concepts. You really kind of have to start at the beginning with that one, but trust me when I say the payoff is extremely worth it.)

(*The Bareknuckle Bastards trilogy is an exception. That’s certainly true for MacLean’s books as well, but if you’ve never read her before, I urge you to begin at the beginning of a series (if not at the beginning of her entire oeuvre), not because it’s necessary* but because it’s so satisfying. In general it is accepted that one can read most novels in a romance series out of order without losing too much, as the central romance will always have a complete arc within a single novel. In other words, Sarah MacLean offers tasty little tidbits for her dedicated readers, and while I caught some of them the first time I read her books, I also missed a lot of them, in large part because I read her books entirely out of order. For instance, jilted fiances from one book show up several books later as heroines, and the club established by the heroine of one book is frequented by characters from previous (and future) novels.

I also plan to write up a short blog post occasionally along the way.įirst, although you absolutely do not need to read her previous books to understand Bombshell, all of MacLean’s books take place in the same “universe,” as it were, with character cameos and easter eggs crossing through each of her four (soon to be five) series. To help me mark my progress as I read through her whole booklist, I created the above ( Sarah MacLean-approved) tracker for my bullet journal, because that’s just the kind of person I am. In anticipation of Sarah MacLean’s upcoming novel, Bombshell-the first in the Hell’s Belles series-I have decided to embark on a Summer of Sarah MacLean, in which I will be re-reading all of her novels leading up to Bombshell’s release on August 24 (which you can, and should, pre-order now).

Sarah maclean hell's belles series