Bride Quartet, Books 1 & 2

Books: Vision in White, Bed of Roses
Author: Nora Roberts
Publisher: Berkley, Penguin
Released: April 28, 2009, October 27, 2009
Genre: Romance
Author's Website: http://www.noraroberts.com/

These are the first two books about a group of four friends who created a wedding planning business, complete with a planner, florist, photographer, and baker. Vision in White is the story of Mac, the photographer, and Carter, the shy and clumsy teacher she falls for. Bed of Roses is the story of Emma, the florist, and Jack, her longtime friend whom she's always loved and who has been interested in her for a long time.

I love Nora Roberts quartets, because you really get to know each of the characters as you follow them along each one's journey to love. I actually read Savor the Moment, the third book, first, so I was thrown into their world in the middle of their stories, but that's another good thing about Nora Roberts quartets - she gives enough information in each one to make it great as a stand-alone book as well as part of a series. But spending so much time with all the characters ovr the course of four books really makes you know them very well. Which is why I'm really looking forward to reading Happy Ever After, Parker's story. I feel like I've come to know Parker really well by seeing her on the side of the other three's love stories, and I've seen the tiny buds of the beginnings of her relationship with Mal, so I'm eager to see how that plays out.

The tone of these stories has a similar quality marking it as its own quartet, but at the same time, each character's book reflects the heroine's personality in the tone of the writing. I love how that works. There's romance, always - of course - but to varying degrees based on what the heroin thinks of romance. In Emma's story, the romance is extremely strong, because she's the one with romantic ideas, dreaming of perfect love and dancing in the garden under the moonlight since she was a little kid. I can't wait to see what organized, no-nonsense Parker's book will sound like!