1. Red White and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Pan Macmillan ($26.99)
Royally implausible romcom
Forget this year’s bland and oh-so-earnest film adaptation; Casey McQuiston’s Red, White and Royal Blue is gloriously undiplomatic. Alex is the son of the US president; Henry is second in line to the British throne. They’re two of the most scrutinised young men in the world and they despise each other … obsessively.
This is a classic “enemy-to-lover” romcom, with a geopolitical twist. Bonkers concept, fabulous banter and a big-hearted message about living your own life. Imagine if Prince Harry was queer (and not insufferable). – Beejay Silcox
2. Persuasion by Jane Austen
Penguin ($14.99)
Gossipy, score-settling romance
Persuasion follows Anne Elliot, who, at the ripe old age of 27(!) is considered well past the “bloom” of youth. Her life is haunted by an engagement she broke off seven years earlier to naval officer Frederick Wentworth, who was deemed too poor to marry her.
After the war, Wentworth returns a wealthy naval captain and Anne is forced to reckon with the societal codes and gossip that pushed her to give him up. Written in Austen’s final years, Persuasion has a wry, cynical edge, calling into question the expectations on women and mocking the poisonous whisper networks that ran beneath high society. Addictive, poignant and fiendishly funny. – Shaad d’Souza
3. Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Penguin ($22.99)
Horny lit enemies
After reading about the Emily Henry takeover, I went to my local bookstore counter – and, before I’d even got the full name, a seller was running through the aisles with this book.
Nora is a high-flying, no-nonsense literary agent in NY who goes on a much-needed holiday to the small town where her cheesiest romance romp is set. Charlie is a sneering editor who passed on the book and became her professional enemy. The two begin trading barb-filled emails that become exquisitely steamy, as they’re repeatedly flung together by twists of fate. This book is as funny as it is hot (it’s very hot!) and – as an added bonus for the nerds – it’s meta-commentary too. – Steph Harmon
4. Again the Magic by Lisa Kleypas
Hachette ($4.99 ebook)
Better than Bridgerton
There’s an argument that any Kleypas journey should start with Dreaming of You, but I much prefer this entry point, as book zero in The Wallflowers series. Lady Aline Marsden fell in love with her childhood friend, John McKenna, who works at the family’s estate. They are discovered and torn apart and years later he returns to seek revenge.
Kleypas is one of the best writers in the romance game and this is the perfect entry into the genre. – Calla Wahlquist
5. Polo by Jilly Cooper
Penguin ($35)
Classic racy romp
In a world of bronzed stallions, double entendres and wildly spoilt young people, the real match in this Rutshire Chronicles classic is ponies versus sex. Thirty-two years on, it’s timely to dip into Rupert Campbell-Black’s racy past – he’s back in Jilly Cooper’s new novel, Tackle!.
Granted, some of Polo’s social mores have gone the way of the fax machine but it sets a standard for countryside cavorting. And I, for one, have never looked at white jeans in the same way since first reading this, agog, aged 14. – Daisy Dumas
6. This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Hachette ($22.99)
Romantic, time-bending adventure
I challenge you to read this book and resist immediately picking it back up for a second go. This epistolary tale traverses time and space but the battle between warring factions takes a backseat to blossoming romance.
What begins as a taunting correspondence between two rival agents soon grows into exquisite love letters, containing some of the most beautiful writing I have ever read – the kind that you need to re-read, slowly, just to savour. This book will make you believe in love like nothing else. – Emily Wind
7. Sweet Sorrow by David Nicholls
Hachette ($22.99)
Summer of love
Everyone goes for One Day when picking a David Nicholls book but I really loved his 2019 novel Sweet Sorrow. It’s the funnier of the two, about a summer of young love – the “brief interlude between anticipation and despair” – in 1990s England. Charlie, an aimless teenager drifting through the months after finishing school, falls for the enchanting Fran, who attends the posher school up the road. Charlie is roped into performing in an amateur production of Romeo and Juliet: Fran is Juliet, while Charlie reluctantly takes on Benvolio.
It’s equally about falling in love with a person as it is about falling in love with art. Lovely. – Sian Cain
8. Everything’s Fine by Cecilia Rabess
Pan Macmillan ($34.99)
Dating across the divide
This was my surprise of the year: a romcom partly set in an investment bank that I actually loved. Jess and Josh meet at an Ivy League college: he has “newsreader hair” and gives off Young Republican vibes; she’s bolshie and opinionated, and usually the only Black woman in her class. They clash over everything – but when they both end up working at Goldman Sachs, they tentatively become friends, then something more.
Opposites may attract – but Rabess is interested in whether we can actually love people who are completely different to us. It’s meaty, it’s funny, it’s a bit sexy. What more could you want? – SC
9. Writers & Lovers by Lily King
Pan Macmillan ($19.99)
Observational, absorbing, heartwarming
Like Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, Writers & Lovers is one of those books that is sold short as “chicklit” but proves to be astute, wise and wonderfully written. It follows 31-year-old Casey, trying to pay off her debt and finish her novel while working as a waitress, dating and dealing with the grief of her mother’s death. So far, so “millennial woman living under capitalism” – but King breathes rare life into her characters and represents real life fairly and fully as gruelling, absurd and funny by turns. (I’ve never read such an accurate depiction of a mid-work panic attack.)
The ending might seem like wish fulfilment but, by then, you care so much for Casey that you’re just happy for her. – Elle Hunt
10. The Duke Who Didn’t by Courtney Milan
Independent ($12.79)
Lust, deception, condiments
There are plenty of reasons to love this gleeful, counter-historical novel but chief among them is a literally saucy subplot about a stolen recipe and a quest for revenge.
Swindled out of a fortune, Chloe Fong’s father is channelling his rage into his cooking. As he perfects a new concoction, Chloe’s childhood sweetheart – “Posh Jim” – has returned from a mysterious absence. Chloe is not going to be fooled by his feckless, roguish charms. Definitely not. Pass the hot sauce. – BS
11. Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola
Hachette ($15.19)
Global love stories
When asked to recommend a romantic book, I often hand over The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller – but Babalola’s excellent collection of stories, retelling romantic myths and historical love stories from around the world, is far less known and under-appreciated.
Like Miller, she is putting her own spin on great romances but, where Miller was focused on Achilles and Patroclus, Babalola’s collection is mostly African and Middle Eastern stories, including ancient Egypt’s Nefertiti and the story of Siya and Maadi, a legend of the Soninke people. A great book to dip into. – SC
12. The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics by Olivia Waite
HarperCollins ($8.99)
Brainy ladies unite
A gentle queer romance blossoms within this 19th-century tale of gentlemen scientists and academic gatekeeping. Lucy Muchelney has a magnificent mind. Her father’s grand professorial reputation rests on her work. When he dies, Lucy is left without a fortune or proof of her intellectual might.
Enter the aloof and beautiful Countess of Moth. The countess has clout and a translation project that’s perfect for Lucy. The straight-backed men of the Polite Science Society will not be pleased. But readers will. – BS
13. Venetia by Georgette Heyer
Penguin ($22.99)
Deranged bucolic flirting
Jane Austen if she was less repressed. Bridgerton if it were less self-conscious. Other fun historical romances if they were less worried about being problematic.
This book is perfect: lush, frothy, witty, easy. Everything you want when you put on a BBC drama, minus the existential hand-wringing and boring side stories. No industrial standoffs at the mill here. Very little character development to speak of. Just fortuitous riding accidents, flagrant banter and implausible good looks. The heroine’s bad-boy crush is named Jasper Damerel. I don’t know what else you need to know. – Imogen Dewey
14. Luster by Raven Leilani
Pan Macmillan ($21.99)
This hyped 2020 debut was so praised for its acerbic, clever writing and complex themes that it was easy to overlook how intensely engrossing it is: I read it, riveted, in a single day.
It centres around Edie, a Black 23-year-old publishing assistant who becomes involved with a white man 26 years her senior and is recruited to spice up his open marriage. Edie may be your typical hot-mess millennial protagonist, but this book offers a lot more to chew on without sacrificing a moreish read: about race, desire and particularly power, which shifts between these characters in tiny, thrilling ways. – SH
15. Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin
Penguin ($22.99)
Friendship, love, labour
This is on our romance list but it’s really about friendship. And work. I can’t tell you any more about the plot, because if I did you will possibly never read it. What you can know is that on a trip to Vietnam this year my girlfriend threatened to throw it into Ha Long Bay. She questioned if we were in a polycule with an inanimate object and told me she had a newfound affinity with Diana, knowing the weight of crowded relationships.
Pick it up – you won’t be able to put it down. – Cait Kelly
