Where to start with Marisa de los Santos – Modern Mrs Darcy
If I made a list of my very favorite things to find in a book—food, fashion, film and family; books and poetry; omnicompetent women holding the ones they love beautifully and gracefully together—there are very few authors that always oblige. I’m always chasing after books that hit in the timeless-meets-timely patch. Marisa de los Santos’s novels have long since hit for me in just the right sense.
She writes books that feel completely contemporary but old-fashioned in the best possible way. Big Stuff happens in some of these books, from health scares and mental health crises to accidents and affairs, but they always leave me feeling hopeful and inspired to be a better friend, wife, community member. If you’re a fan of Elizabeth Berg’s sensory-laden novels and Annabel Monaghan’s plucky characters, you might love Marisa de los Santos.
I find myself often thinking of the characters around a protagonist in the novels I read—the mother, the neighbor, the best friend—thinking they have these whole other stories and lives and how I’d like to read their perspective of these same events. Marisa de los Santos gives us exactly that in her loose Love Walked In series, which will satisfy many readers who love to dive into a chain of novels. Yet these books are so special because they can all stand alone (in fact, I read them out of order as you’ll see from my list below.) Each character could just be considered a cameo in the others’ stories, but if you read the whole series, you get to know and love these characters as friends.
Anne introduced me to de los Santos in 2018 when she selected one of her novels for the Modern Mrs Darcy Book Club. I picked up backlist Belong to Me while I waited on the library holds list for I’ll Be Your Blue Sky and immediately thought of Anne’s concept of “sweet spot” authors: that perfect combination between light and literary, between character development and plot development. Count de los Santos among my sweet spot authors. Even better, she writes across some of my favorite genres.
If you haven’t encountered her novels yet, or if they’ve been languishing on your own TBR list far too long, let me introduce you to a few of my favorites in her wide body of work. I am especially excited that de los Santos has a new novel, The Trusted, coming out November 17, 2026. If it were any other author, I’d be nervous about the jump into suspense, but I’ve trusted her through poetry, middle grade, and contemporary fiction, so I have no doubt I’m in good hands.
Publication Order:
From the Bones Out (1999)
Love Walked In (2005)
Belong to Me (2008)
Falling Together (2011)
Saving Lucas Biggs (2014)
The Precious One (2015)
Connect the Stars (2015)
I’ll Be Your Blue Sky (2018)
I’d Give Anything (2020)
Watch Us Shine (2023)
The Trusted (2026)
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When Anne selected this new-at-the-time release for our official August 2018 MMD Book Club selection, I was hooked on de los Santos’s gorgeous writing even though she often explores hard topics, like the domestic violence flashbacks that character Edith experiences. We meet Edith when she finds Clare on the beach on the eve of her wedding. Even though they’re practically strangers, Edith gives Clare some timely advice, and then later leaves Clare something life-changing in her will, which sets the story in motion. More info →
One of two middle grade novels that de los Santos wrote with her husband David Teague. This is my favorite of the two, though Saving Lucas Biggs is also wonderful. Thirteen-year old Audrey can tell when people are lying—her friends at school, but also, awkwardly, people like grandmothers. This makes relationships tricky, so she pulls away from others until she meets Aaron at wilderness camp. Aaron has quirks of his own. Perhaps predictably for two outsiders, Audrey and Aaron become friends between hikes and trust exercises. When a fellow camper goes missing, they band together with their other winningly precocious (but not annoying) campmates. The poetry tucked in adds warmth and richness, making this a standout in the middle grade genre and in Marisa de los Santos’s oeuvre. More info →
How Marisa de los Santos manages to write stories that are both devastating and hopeful, I can’t fully know, but I think it has to do with the fact that she brings us characters that are flawed but lovable. In other words: human. In this standalone novel from 2020, Ginny’s picture-perfect life falls apart with a downward spiral of events set in motion by her husband who reacts badly to one relatively minor scandal and makes an even worse decision that blows up their entire lives. I felt like I was inwardly screaming “noooo!” the whole time while reading, but I couldn’t look away. As Ginny picks up the pieces, she confronts another disruptive event from her younger days. While you’ll likely adore Ginny and her daughter Avery, their friends stand out, as well as the found family characters that de los Santos writes so well. More info →
This 2023 release is the latest installment in the Love Walked In series. We follow the story of Cornelia’s mom Ellie as a college student falling in love, dealing with her own difficult upbringing, and navigating her attempts to reconcile with her sister after Martha is pulled into a utopian community for artists. Cornelia discovers her mother’s past after a freak accident lands Ellie in the hospital. I found this one harder to read, as I’ve come to care for these characters so much. Their journey through the turbulence of hospital rooms, the tragic loss of a child, and abuse at the hands of a cult was all so hard to read, but de los Santos handles it deftly. Still, I wouldn’t make this your entrée into the Brown family. More info →
de los Santos started her career writing poetry with this first published work in 1999. (Her colleagues still ask her when she’ll return to the genre.) When I decided to become a de los Santos completist, I tracked down a copy of this slim volume of contemporary poems. If you’re looking closely, you can see themes emerge in her broader work here: family history, knowing oneself, celebrations, love of place, and tea. Standouts in the collection for me are “October: One Year Later,” “Embodiment,” and “Heaven.” But what I love most of all is noticing how her poetic voice comes out even when writing prose, and her frequent allusions to poems. More info →
I could not put down this 2015 standalone title. I absolutely needed to know that half sisters Taisy and Willow, who are daughters of the enigmatic but selfish wealthy professor and writer Wilson Cleary, were going to be ok. I can’t remember a time when I cared more about two characters. I listened to this on audio, as narrated by Arielle DeLisle and Abby Craden, and I spent way way longer than was necessary in the backyard weeding one Saturday afternoon because this was so well done in that format. More info →
Martin, Clare, Viviana, and Teo all walk into Cornelia’s life in this 2005 novel, and so begins the series that starts with this book and follows these characters over the years and their lives, individually and intersecting. Cornelia would be entirely at home in Nancy Meyer’s world. A charming man walks into her coffee shop and after their meet-cute, they proceed to have conversations about The Philadelphia Story and Casablanca over croissants and hot chocolate. But their love story isn’t the only one. Love can be complicated, and it’s not all croissants and chocolate for Cornelia. While this is the first in the series, I didn’t read it first. You can read the books in most any order; they all stand alone just fine. More info →
What’s your favorite Marisa de los Santos novel? Please share in the comments.
Ginger Horton is our Book Club Community Manager here at MMD. Her go-to genres are literary fiction and classics. You can find Ginger on Instagram at @gthorton or the MMD Book Club account @MMDBookClub.
