During my MFA, I learned to write family dramas and character-driven fiction, but I wanted more comfort, joy, and… romance! I knew the swoony and funny aspects of rom-coms could lift heavier emotional subjects like grief and loss, allowing readers to explore these resonant aspects of life safely, with a guaranteed Happily Ever After. All the books on this list explore a full emotional range of the human experience through extraordinary, utterly magical love stories about otherwise ordinary, flawed people. I hope they make you laugh, swoon, maybe shed a few cathartic tears, and come out the other side feeling better than when you turned the first page.
City girl Calla reunites with the Alaskan bush pilot father she’s never really known following his cancer diagnosis. I love this classic fish-out-of-water story, set in rural Alaska, where Calla falls for the rugged, remote landscape and a gruff, bearded yeti “sky cowboy” named Jonah who flies with her dad.
This book had me kicking my feet, laughing, and then fully sobbing. While it is one of my favorite enemies-to-lovers romances, with incredible banter and sexual tension, the realistic last-chance repair of Calla’s relationship with her father is just as compelling.
The two storylines together create the perfect blend of emotional depth, sizzling chemistry, and significant character growth. This is a deeply cathartic, feel-good romance.
City girl Calla Fletcher attempts to reconnect with her estranged father, and unwittingly finds herself torn between her desire to return to the bustle of Toronto and a budding relationship with a rugged Alaskan pilot in this masterful new romance from acclaimed author K.A. Tucker.
Calla Fletcher was two when her mother took her and fled the Alaskan wild, unable to handle the isolation of the extreme, rural lifestyle, leaving behind Calla's father, Wren Fletcher, in the process. Calla never looked back, and at twenty-six, a busy life in Toronto is all she knows. But when her father reaches out…
This enemies-to-lovers story about a romance writer and a literary fiction writer who strike a bet to write their next book in each other’s genre blew me away with its hilarious dialogue and realistic emotional stakes.
January struggles to write another Happily Ever After upon learning her recently deceased father had a secret life with another woman. She goes to deal with his beach house, only to find that her college writing rival is her neighbor for the summer.
As part of Gus and January’s renewed rivalry, they go on a series of dates to teach each other about their genre, and they develop mutual professional respect that bleeds into attraction.
One highlight is when they write flirty notes and hold them up through their neighboring windows. This is a true rom-com, so hilarious and sexy, but it commits to realism and reaches for heavy, heart-wrenching emotional stakes and the theme that true love can be messy and imperfect.
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION AND BOOK LOVERS!
A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring…
The Pact is a contemporary fiction novel about Australian sisters, Samantha and Annie, who are doubles tennis champions. This story amplifies the usual sibling issues and explores their professional partnership and personal relationships – similarities, differences, motivation, competition, abandonment, and grief – and how they each respond to the stress…
What’s better than a figure skating pair romance? One where the newly formed team are enemies! Jasmine has never reached the same elite level as Ivan, but now that she’s temporarily paired with him for one season, she’s determined to make the most of it, even if they spend their ice time bickering.
Jasmine has a supportive, close-knit family, but she’s not getting younger, and her divorced father pressures her to finally give up her skating aspirations and go to college. Jasmine is scrappy, snarky, and impossible not to root for. This slow-burn romance builds organically as Ivan’s arrogance quietly shifts to admiration for and loyalty to his new partner.
This book also has one of the swooniest micro trope moments: Ivan’s hidden feelings come out in an achingly sweet slip as he cares for Jasmine and calls her “baby.”
If someone were to ask Jasmine Santos to describe the last few years of her life with a single word, it would definitely be a four-letter one.After seventeen years—and countless broken bones and broken promises—she knows her window to compete in figure skating is coming to a close.But when the offer of a lifetime comes in from an arrogant idiot she’s spent the last decade dreaming about pushing in the way of a moving bus, Jasmine might have to reconsider everything.Including Ivan Lukov.
Noelle is grieving the recent loss of her grandmother and finds herself recreating a honeymoon trip her grandmother once planned with a former love, Paul. It’s the trip of a lifetime… except along for the ride is Paul’s grandson, Theo, who happens to be Noelle’s former high school rival.
Over the course of the trip, Noelle achieves real emotional healing, both in working through her grief and in finding herself again. She also comes to see that the guy she thought was always competing with her just might have been driving her to be better and vice versa.
Noelle and Theo’s romance is so tender and sexy, with snappy dialogue, intense chemistry, and heart-rending emotional moments. I laughed and cried and loved every page.
Country music diva Hayley Swift has fallen off the charts and into a funk. Desperate to regain her place in the limelight, she agrees to a low-budget tour of Southern venues, starting with her 35th high school reunion.
There, in an unexpected but fortuitous reconnection, The Girls Next Door —who…
I adored this small-town romance about a former Michelin star chef looking for a second chance and the local sweetheart who can’t help but rescue hurt and neglected animals and is determined to beat her ex-boyfriend in this year’s pairs canoe race.
The staple silliness and absurdity of a small-town rom-com lift the emotional heaviness of both principal characters’ personal circumstances. Fisher is grieving the loss of his sister and his career while also suddenly responsible for his teenage niece, and her three brothers raised Sage after their parents died young.
Their romantic connection is mature and emotional but also playful and sweet. DeWitt’s expert use of comedy to cut against emotion is especially lovely in this book. I laughed and cried, often at the same time.
Sage Byrd has lived in the coastal town of Spunes, Oregon (not to be confused with Forks, Washington) her entire life. She's learned to love her small world, with the misfit animals on her hobby farm, and her friendships with the town’s inhabitants. But when her 5-year relationship ends and her ex, town-golden-boy Ian, suddenly gets engaged, Sage needs a win―something that will convince everyone to stop pitying her all the time, and to put Ian in his place. The Festival of Spunes, the town’s annual summer competition, would be the perfect opportunity. She just needs…
After a years-long clean break from her small Texas hometown and everyone in it, Hazel Elliot must return for her semi-estranged father’s wedding. To make matters worse, she winds up road-tripping with Ash Campbell, her ex-boyfriend’s annoying best friend who keeps stealing the best chair in her favorite coffee shop—and has secretly pined for her all along.
Hazel’s condition for driving him: If anything changes between them, she gets the coffee shop. The frenemies endure bad music, inclement weather, and B&Bs with only one bed—and that’s just the drive across Texas. When they finally arrive, Hazel must face the fact that, in a small town, there’s nowhere to run. Maybe, for the first time, she’s found a reason to stay.
This memoir chronicles the lives of three generations of women with a passion for reading, writing, and travel. The story begins in 1992 in an unfinished attic in Brooklyn as the author reads a notebook written by her grandmother nearly 100 years earlier. This sets her on a 30-year search…
Head West in 1865 with two life-long friends looking for adventure and who want to see the wilderness before it disappears. One is a wanderer; the other seeks a home he lost. The people they meet on their journey reflect the diverse events of this time period–settlers, adventure seekers, scientific…
