What Is The Plot Of Lisa Kleypas Latest Book?

Lisa Kleypas’s most recent book came out in July 2024—it's 'A Love by Design', the third one in her 'The Resilient Ladies of Lovett Street' series. I pre-ordered it the second I could and it showed up on my Kindle right on July 23rd. It's funny, because I remember thinking the gap between this and the last book felt a bit longer, but maybe that’s just the impatience talking. I’ve seen some chatter online that her output has slowed a tad compared to a decade ago, which makes sense. She’s been at this for so long, and the quality really hasn’t dipped for me. 'A Love by Design' has that classic Kleypas blend of emotional intimacy and social tension, even though it's set in a later Victorian period than her Wallflowers. It still hits the spot.

That latest one was 'Chasing Cassandra', right? I know some people thought the recent books with the Ravenels had a slightly different feel, maybe a touch more domestic focus alongside the usual romance. But I'd still firmly slot it into historical romance. The setting's Victorian London, the problems are of that era, and the central drive is that relationship. It's not a mystery with a side of love, or a war story with romantic elements—the engine is entirely the couple getting together. I will say, compared to some of her older Wallflowers books, the last few Ravenel installments have dealt a bit more with things like business ventures and industrial changes of the period. But the heart of it, the dialogue, the tension, it's all crafted for romance readers. It never loses that core.

Man, that's funny timing because I just went through this whole rigmarole last week trying to get a physical copy for a friend's birthday. Her publisher is Avon, so your big-box retailers like Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million should have it on the shelf in romance. I found it at my local B&N without any trouble. That said, if you're an online shopper, Amazon is the obvious, if not exactly indie-friendly, choice for fast delivery. For the ebook or audiobook, I'd check Kobo or Libby through your library first—sometimes the library wait is shorter than you'd think. I remember her last release had a nice special edition through a book box, but I haven't seen anything like that for this one yet.

Wow — diving into Lisa Kleypas’s publishing timeline is one of my favorite rabbit holes; I love tracing how her voice shifts from category romance to lush historicals and then into contemporary family sagas. I usually think of her bibliography in chunks by era: the early category romances in the late 1980s and 1990s (her shorter, line romances where she honed her craft), then the breakthrough historicals of the 1990s and early 2000s that include fan-favorites like 'Dreaming of You'. After that came the beloved historical series that many readers follow in publication order: the Hathaway books (starting with 'Mine Till Midnight'), the Wallflowers quartet (including 'It Happened One Autumn' and the outrageously popular 'Devil in Winter'), and then the Ravenels which picked up threads from earlier families (beginning with titles such as 'Cold-Hearted Rake'). In parallel she wrote contemporary romances and later the warm, modern family set 'Friday Harbor' books and novellas. If you want to read strictly by publication date, I like to follow the release chronology: early single-title category books → 'Dreaming of You' era → Hathaway novels → Wallflowers → Ravenels → contemporary novels and the Friday Harbor series → most recent standalones and novellas. That order really shows her growth as a writer and how characters, families, and settings reappear and evolve. For a full, itemized listing by year I usually cross-check the author’s official bibliography or a comprehensive bibliography site so I don’t miss novellas or reprints, but following those era blocks will get you the narrative progression in the way I enjoyed it — feels like watching an extended family saga unfold. Happy reading — the emotional highs in those historicals never fail to snag me.