Erica Ridley

Erica Ridley (she/her) is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of historical romance novels. When not reading or writing romances, you can find her riding camels in Africa, zip-lining through rain forests in Costa Rica, or getting hopelessly lost in the middle of Budapest.
The Perks of Loving a Wallflower is a charming Regency romp in which a proper Society miss recruits a very improper lady investigator in a quest for vengeance, only to find love instead.
As a master of disguise, Thomasina Wynchester can be a polite young lady—or a bawdy old man. She’ll do whatever it takes to solve the cases her family takes on. But when Tommy’s beautiful new client turns out to be the highborn lady she’s secretly smitten with, more than her mission is at stake.
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I live in Costa Rica, near a lake high in the rain forest. Normally, my view from home is of the Tenorio volcano. (Not pictured: the hundreds of parrots that flock to the palm trees just outside my window every afternoon, or the howler monkeys that come to visit!).

After eighteen months of quarantine, even the beautiful rain forest started to give me cabin fever. So for a few weeks while writing The Perks of Loving a Wallflower, we stayed in a studio 5km across town, closer to the lake, for a gorgeous change in view:

I fell in love with Tommy and Philippa both while writing The Duke Heist. Often, the love interest who doesn’t get picked is painted as a terrible choice (if not a terrible person.) In this case, Philippa is absolutely awesome. She’s just wrong for the duke—and doesn’t want him, either. She doesn’t like men, and thinks that means a future of finding comfort in only in books, which she adores.Enter Tommy, a master of disguise with scene-stealing moments in the previous book. She’s had an unrequited crush on Philippa since the first moment she saw her (in The Governess Gambit). She’s dashing and bold and fearless…except when it comes to matters of the heart. When she finally introduces herself—disguised as a baron—Philippa is only interested as a friend. But when Tommy reveals her true self, they embark on a fake courtship that turns very real!

This is very much a story of finding the person who’s right for you, who values and respects and appreciates you for exactly who you are. No sacrifices, no changes, no compromises. You being you, is precisely what makes you so perfect. But the road to figuring out who that is can be tricky. Not to mention the perils of being brave enough to share your unapologetically true self with the one person whose good opinion matters more than any other…

I hope readers love Tommy and Philippa as much as I do!

Romantic. Feminist. Romp.

I love hanging out in a hammock to read! The combination of a cool breeze and the warm sun is so relaxing. Right now, it’s the rainy season, so I haven’t been able to indulge as much, but on sunny days, this is one of the nooks where I like to get away and read:

Oof, my To Be Read pile is so huge! Up next, I have books by Rachel Grant, Evie Dunmore, Cat Sebastian, Talia Hibbert, and Karelia Stetz-Waters. Those have been on hold (despite my many hungry glances) because when I’m writing a romance, I typically read outside the genre. I recently enjoyed Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado, The Only Good Indians by Stephen Graham-Jones, and Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia. It seems there’s never enough time for all the great books!