What to read after “The Wallflower Wager” by Tessa Dare: a list matched by tropes, mood and atmosphere. Under each book you will see what it has in common.
Lady Felicity Faircloth was once the toast of London; now gossips have left her a spinster wallflower. A chance encounter with Devil, a powerful Covent Garden criminal, leads to a bargain: he will help her catch a duke if she helps him settle an old score. Neither expects the attraction that follows.
Daisy Bowman must find a husband this season or her father will send her to America. The suitor he has chosen is Matthew Swift, a cool businessman she has disliked for years, and as the two are thrown together in London, their old quarrel turns into something else.
Penelope Featherington has watched Colin Bridgerton from the edge of every ballroom for years, certain he will never see her as more than his sister's friend. When Colin returns to London, their long acquaintance begins to change, and the secret behind the ton's anonymous gossip sheet threatens to upend them both.
At ten, Miranda Cheever was told she had no great beauty to look forward to. At twenty, she is still quietly in love with Nigel Bevelstoke, the viscount who once comforted her and who now believes he is done with love. Her diary records a patient hope that he might finally see her as a woman.
Prudence Merridew flees her abusive grandfather and brings her four sisters to London, hoping a good match will free them all. A chance meeting with Gideon, Lord Carradice, a charming rake, leads to a pretend engagement. Gideon falls for her at once, but Prudence is secretly promised to another man.
Shy Evie Jenner needs a husband to escape her greedy relatives and secure her inheritance. She proposes a marriage of convenience to Sebastian, Lord St. Vincent, a penniless rake with a scandalous reputation. They flee to Gretna Green, and the practical arrangement slowly turns into something neither of them expected.
Governess Honoria Anstruther-Wetherby finds a dying man and spends the night in a cottage with the stranger who helps her. He is Sylvester Cynster, Duke of St. Ives, known as Devil, and the compromising situation forces an engagement. Honoria resists marriage while Devil courts her and hunts the killer.
Alexander Moncrieffe, Duke of Falconbridge, finds his fiancée with another man and plans a cold revenge: seduce and abandon his rival's sister, Genevieve Eversea. At a country house party, the intelligent and overlooked Genevieve proves far more than he bargained for, and his scheme gives way to genuine feeling.
Valentine Layton, Duke of Malvern, bungles his proposal and his bride-to-be flees into the night. Her twin brother Bonny insists Valentine chase her to Dover, so the two set off together. On the road, Valentine begins to question everything he assumed about love, especially once an inn leaves them sharing a single bed.
Reginald Davenport, a notorious gambler and heavy drinker, has spent years waiting to inherit an earldom, only to see the title go to another man. He is offered Strickland, the Dorset estate where he grew up, and there finds Alys Weston running the property as its steward - a woman who has let the absentee owner assume she is a man in order to keep the post. As Reggie confronts his addiction, their working partnership deepens into friendship and then love.
Viola Astley is so painfully shy that her first London season feels like a trial. She dreams of a quiet vicar, but a compromising moment with the reclusive Duke of Wynter leaves her engaged to a man she barely knows. As Viola finds her voice, she discovers the duke is not the cold stranger society believes.
Scarred and bitter, the Duke of Ashbury needs an heir, so he offers a plain marriage of convenience to Emma Gladstone, a vicar's daughter turned seamstress. She accepts on her own conditions. Inside his forbidding house, two wary strangers slowly discover warmth, trust and unexpected love.
Lady Calpurnia Hartwell has spent her life being proper and unremarkable. She draws up a list of scandalous things she longs to try and asks Gabriel St. John, the notorious Marquess of Ralston, to help her. As he escorts her through each escapade, an old acquaintance deepens into love.
Minerva Highwood, a bluestocking, needs to reach Scotland to present her geological discovery. The rake Lord Payne agrees to escort her, and they pose as eloping lovers to travel unnoticed. Four hundred miles of mishaps in a cramped carriage, and each night there is only one bed, turn their bickering into something neither expected.
A stroke leaves the powerful Duke of Jerveaux unable to speak, and his family shuts him away in a grim asylum. Maddy Timms, a young Quaker nurse, is the only one who sees the man inside. Her care revives him, but their growing bond offends both his world and her strict community.
Maybell inherits her great-aunt's crumbling house in the Smoky Mountains, only to learn the grouchy groundskeeper Wesley is a co-inheritor with very different plans. Forced to renovate together, the dreamer and the shy, scowling loner slowly find in each other the safety they have always wanted.
After losing his sight in the Napoleonic Wars, Vincent Hunt, a wealthy viscount, wants a wife who will not pity him. Sophia Fry, a poor relation with no prospects, needs a way out of her aunt and uncle's household. Their practical marriage begins as a quiet arrangement, then slowly becomes a partnership neither expected.
Colonel Aidan Bedwyn promises a dying soldier that he will protect the man's sister. To honour that vow he marries Eve Morris in name only, keeping her home safe. What begins as a cold bargain between two strangers slowly softens into affection and love.
Melisande Fleming has loved Lord Vale from a distance for years. When he is jilted at the altar, she offers to marry him, expecting a practical union and nothing more. Vale accepts, but his guarded bride proves more complicated than he imagined, and the secrets they both keep threaten the marriage.
Clara leaves her buttoned-up East Coast life to move across the country to the man of her dreams, only to find he has sublet her room to someone else. Sharing the apartment with easygoing Josh, whose job would scandalise her family, forces an uneasy friendship that slowly becomes more.
Lady Theodora Saxby weds her childhood friend James, Duke of Ashbrook, in a marriage meant to save their families. When his secret betrayal comes to light he flees abroad, and years later returns a changed man, forcing them to decide what their convenient marriage is really worth.
Romance writer January and literary novelist Gus become summer neighbours in a lakeside town, both blocked and both skeptical of each other's genre. They make a bet to write in the other's style and slowly trade barbs for late-night talks, discovering the grief and hope behind their different worldviews.
Jessica Trent comes to Paris to drag her foolish brother away from Sebastian Ballister, the Marquess of Dain, a notorious rake. Their battle of wills ends in a scandal, a duel and a marriage neither wanted, and two proud, guarded people slowly learn to trust each other.
Cold, driven Alex promised to watch over his best friend's sister while Josh is away. Ava is warm and open, everything he avoids, and the more time the neighbours spend together the harder their growing attraction is to deny, even as Alex's buried past threatens them both.
Start with “Wicked and the Wallflower”, “Scandal in Spring”, “Romancing Mister Bridgerton”: they are the closest to “The Wallflower Wager” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “The Wallflower Wager” these are Wallflower Heroine, Grumpy Sunshine, Forced Proximity), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Wicked and the Wallflower”, “Scandal in Spring”, “Romancing Mister Bridgerton”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
