Every New Beginning Comes From Some Other Beginning's End.

Linked books. Man, I love them! To me, there's nothing greater than when you close the book with a happy sigh and sink into your covers and dream about the next book, where you know you'll get a glimpse of these happily ever afters once more. I'm not even talking series, so much as books where people from other books just sort of "pop up".

Sabrina Jeffries is a favorite of mine when it comes to linking her books. While they are grouped together on her webpage as being a part of a series, they are all very independent books themselves. As a matter of fact, I've ready every single one of her books, save two (one of which I'm in the middle of, and the other which I'll be reading once I'm done with the first), and not once did I have a problem following the plot line because of something I'd "missed" with one of her other books.

Even more interesting is when the H/h of one book becomes a minor plot in one of the others. One in particular that I remember (because I just read them a few weeks ago) are A Dangerous Love, and After The Abduction. In ADL we meet Griff and Rosalind who, true to my trashy romance tastes, absolutely loathe each other from the onset. Griff is masquerading as a man of affairs, and Rosalind is one of several spinster sisters who is going to be forced to marry Griff's "boss". Of course, Griff really is the man who will marry one of the girls and he's fallen quite madly for Rosalind - who wants nothing more than to become an actress. They fight, they love, they fight some more, and eventually they fall into their happily ever after.

Or so we think.

In ATA, we find Griff and Rosalind a few years after their vows, not nearly as happy as we had once thought. Sure they still love each other, deeply and passionately and that's why they are so miserable. You see...Rosalind has been having quite the hard time when it comes to giving Griff his heir. While the story itself revolves around Juliet, Rosalind's younger sister, I can't help but admit I was quite worried for Griff and Rosalind as well. I was just as eager to see their problem resolved as I was the main couple.

When an author starts writing a book, do you think they are already planning ahead to who will be paired with whom in the other books? Do you think that the secondary characters take a life of their own after the fact and merely demand their own stories? Perhaps it's even a bit of the two.

I think when Sabrina began writing her Swanlea Spinster Series, she probably did plan for each of the girls to have their own books. But what about her Heiresses Series? Do you think Cousin Michael and Mrs. Harris were always meant to have their own book?