The most recommended space opera romance books

It Starts With A Kiss is a cyber romance novella. JL Peridot’s prose is lyrical and beautiful. This book has steam and spaceships. What’s not to love for a romantic geek like me? 

Peridot's style fascinates me. Her voice is unique, almost like she’s casting a spell. The story may unfold on a spaceship, but she paints with words in a way that keeps the cold darkness of space anything but detached. And, come on: it’s not every author who can make a pair of coveralls sexy like Peridot does in this book!  

If you enjoy It Starts With A Kiss, I highly recommend following Peridot’s newsletter. She often writes short fiction and anthology contributions. All of her stories are beautifully told. Even when she’s writing chilling romantic horror, you’ll still be mesmerized.

I just flat out love this writer. Set in a galaxy far, far away, Jesse Mihalik has created a space opera featuring a set of daring siblings with superhuman powers who must battle to survive the cutthroat culture connected to their social status and the machinations of their power-hungry father who is always looking for advantageous alliances, regardless of the consequences to his children. I enjoy that she creates these amazing heroines who are vulnerable but fierce at the same time and they all ultimately find partners who love strong women. 

This was a book that really surprised me. A very no-nonsense macho family member recommended it to me on a holiday, and I remember raising my eyebrows reading the back cover and finding out it heavily featured an interspecies romance.

The minute I started reading, I got so wrapped up in the adrenaline and action that I actually went on to recommend it to my sci-fi-loving dad, who read it in a day and went on to borrow the rest of the series. The heroine, a power armor-wearing mercenary, is incredibly competent and badass but avoids falling into either Mary Sue or Damsel in Distress territory as the plot proceeds.

Additionally, while I kept going for the action-romance, the worldbuilding was surprisingly interesting and in-depth. Whenever I’m reluctantly charmed by something, I find it hard not to gush about it; it’s just such a fun experience as a reader to… show more.

Unrelenting action and snappy dialogue made this book an instant fav. It contains some of the best things: betrayal, revenge, a mouthy and haunted anti-hero and heroine, spaceships, and sexual tension from page one. The way this book blends all those things—and yes, this is sci-fi, not fantasy—makes a wildly entertaining start to a perfect series. I’ve never loved characters and their banter more. This perfect team both hates and loves each other and won't stop getting up no matter how many times they're knocked down. Impossibly high stakes and a plot that pits hero against heroine until their alliance becomes the key to a universe-sized revolution. What an amazing book. I devoured the whole series and can’t wait for the finale. 

This three-volume series is not actually about traveling in time. The main characters survive being torpedoed in World War I, are taken aboard the German submarine, and travel to an unknown continent in the South Atlantic where dinosaurs, missing-link humans, and other oddities survive. I mention this book here because I read it as a teenager, long before H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine, and it gave me a taste for putting modern humans into an earlier time frame—and that is the basis of at least half the time-travel stories.

With a cover like a Halloween fever dream, I expected a lot of otherworldly gothic creepiness, which this book delivered. What I didn’t expect was Gideon, an unforgettable character whose unapologetic frankness is like a shot of whisky in what could otherwise be an overwrought space opera. It’s a bit of stretch to call this historical fantasy, but I love that the world-building implies a complex backstory both for the characters and their world. Which sets up a wonderfully weird juxtaposition of ancient and modern.  Set in a feudal world, inhabited by undead necromancer lieges and their cavalier servants, I kept thinking, “Did Gideon just say that *&^$ to her master?” Yes, she did. And I was there for every word.

Pirates…in space! Maybe you weren’t expecting space pirates on this list, but they’re just as cool as sea pirates. With a mix of Star Wars and the movie Overboard vibes, this story follows a down-on-her-luck Solara as she bargains for passage to another world and another life. However, some risks are bigger than others. So are some cons. And Solara might just have to team up with the last person she wants to in order to survive. I love the “found family” trope in this one and how you learn there’s more to people than you ever thought.  

In most space opera novels, humans are the absolute best. Whether they began the government they belong to, or came to it later, they’re special in a way that makes the universe better. Melinda Snodgrass’ The High Ground is different. In her series, humans went into space, met aliens, and conquered nearly everyone they met. Now the aristocrats of the Solar League spend their time on balls and dancing, while in the dark, a new menace approaches. This is an action series, but the heart of the story is the relationship between Mercedes, eldest daughter of the Emperor, and Tracy, the common-born son of a tailor, thrust together by circumstance and torn apart by the realities of their society.  It’s a great series, full of adventure, political infighting, and humans—some of them, anyway—learning to be better people. 

I loved the adventure of two people exploring an abandoned world together, trying to solve its mystery, and facing the challenges of its landscape as a team. The sensibilities of a rural mindset in valuing the wilderness, and finding independence and courage in traversing it, are spot on. The romance is well-paced and compelling. I loved the book.

This is less a romance novel and more a high fantasy novel with romantic elements, but the romance subplot is exceedingly strong.

(I can highly recommend a mental fan-casting of either Arhys or Ilvin as Pedro Pascal, because he’d absolutely knock one of those roles out of the park if this was ever made into a miniseries).

Ista is over 40, a queen, a new grandmother, a recovered madwoman, and…wait for it…a living saint. Seeking to get away from the suffocating (yet loving) arms of her family, she goes on a pilgrimage (Road Trip!) with a group of younger people and ends up getting into multiple adventures and a more than near miss with outright war. It’s an absolute romp and one of my all-time favorites.