Our lives are made of the stories we tell. And whether characters are returning to their small hometown and a long-lost love, or swapping book recommendations and illegal kisses in a bookstore in New York in 1968, the romances that moved me this year stood out for their refusal to settle for life’s first draft.
After Hours at Dooryard Books
by Cat Sebastian
In 1968, it’s nothing new for Patrick, the manager of Dooryard Books, to help drifters in need of food and shelter.
But there’s something different about Nathaniel: He may have wrecked his life, but perhaps not in the usual ways. He plays the violin, speaks like a banker and knows an astonishing amount about caring for an infant. We join the two as they build an ordinary life together while reminding us that the queer bookstore has been as much a site of joy and liberation as the queer bar or the protest march.
All historical novels secretly speak to the present. Patrick and Nathaniel are swimming in the chaos of mass demonstrations, an ever-devouring war, political violence and the intimate devastation of grief. And whenever the larger conflicts meet the smaller ones, Sebastian knocks you back with phrases like “they both see the good in the world dissolving like sugar in tea.”
AFTER HOURS AT DOORYARD BOOKS cracked my heart like an egg at least once a chapter: achingly sad, bright as acid and utterly, utterly perfect.
The Isle in the Silver Sea
by Tasha Suri
How appropriate that a romance about endlessly reincarnated lovers makes you feel as though you live several glorious lifetimes while reading it — anyone with an eye for myth, folklore and Arthuriana will be over the moon about Suri’s THE ISLE IN THE SILVER SEA. Vina and Simran are the Knight and the Witch, doomed to fall in love and die together and sustain the life of a fluid, fictional vision of Britain, where stories literally create the landscape and an all-powerful monarch rules everything.
But just as their tale is about to begin, Simran and Vina find signs that their destiny might be more mutable, and the queen less powerful, than everyone believes. Through fairy-haunted woods and magical archives, with a mysterious assassin in pursuit, Simran and Vina challenge the truth of every official story and fight for a better ending than they’ve ever had before.
August Lane
by Regina Black
Black’s country-themed romance about a one-hit wonder and the childhood sweetheart whose song he stole is sharp as a knife and sweeping as a tornado. August is simmering with hurt and betrayal, and her step-by-step pace toward forgiveness and second-chance love has all the vertigo of a good roller coaster. The drama is off the charts in AUGUST LANE — traumatic back stories, neglectful parents, small-town secrets — and the gorgeous prose makes for a luxurious wallow in emotional highs and lows.
Time Loops and Meet Cutes
by Jackie Lau
You have to watch out for the magical dumplings — after eating one at a night market, Noelle finds herself reliving the same day over and over. On the one hand, she never runs out of money; on the other, the cute brew pub owner she keeps running into never remembers meeting her. The dual timelines in Lau’s TIME LOOPS AND MEET CUTES are particularly exquisite: Noelle is trapped in a single 24-hour period while Cam moves forward through the calendar and seasons, leaving the reader on tenterhooks wondering how they’re ever going to make it work when all the laws of physics are against them.
Fan Service
by Rosie Danan
When a viral video shows the former teen soap star Devin going on a rampage as an apparent werewolf, the world assumes it’s a marketing stunt. But no, Devin’s as puzzled as anyone by his claws and super strength — and the only one who can help him is his ex-biggest fan. Alex used to run a famous online archive for Devin’s show; now she’s a vet tech who hates his guts after an encounter at a long-ago convention.
FAN SERVICE is the romance equivalent of those social media debates about how centaurs would wear pants (front legs or back legs?). The physical nature of lycanthropy is complicated and messy and not always the frictionless magical transition it seems. Devin’s rough, too, at first, unobservant and self-obsessed — but Danan is deservedly known for the way she makes her characters earn their redemption, and seeing Devin learn to make amends for Alex’s sake is wonderful.
Bold Moves
by Emma Barry
Scarlett is a chess grandmaster; Jaime an award-winning documentarian — but before that, they were two kids in the same small town, with the kind of chemistry that burns down cities. Now Jaime is adapting Scarlett’s memoir for a big-name streaming service, and they have the chance to break each other’s hearts all over again.
BOLD MOVES starts in black and white, as is appropriate for a chess story: Jaime is pining and lovelorn, Scarlett seems brash and vivid and altogether fearless. But as time goes on and the scenes flash back and forth in time, Barry adds layer upon layer to this foundation until she’s built something with uncommon weight, towering over the landscape.
Mercy Fletcher Meets Her Match
by Aydra Richards
With traditional publishing cooling on historicals right now, self-published authors like Richards are filling the breach. MERCY FLETCHER MEETS HER MATCH, by the author of “Exit, Pursued by a Baron” — the best grovel I have ever read — is lighter on the angst but keeps the larger-than-life characters and top-tier emotional pangs.
Mercy seems at first like a classic feisty heroine, though in her case it’s because she’s neuroatypical at a time when that was misunderstood. Her nouveau riche father has bribed the snobby, impoverished aristocrat Thomas to take Mercy to London to find a husband. We all know where that’s going to end, but it’s pure pleasure watching Thomas go from irritated disapproval to sympathy and then passion.
It Had to Be Him
by Adib Khorram
Who doesn’t love a vicarious romance vacation? In Khorram’s IT HAD TO BE HIM, Ramin, who has just been dumped by a man who called him “boring,” decides to prove the label wrong with a sex-filled solo romp in Italy. However, his plans for debauchery get utterly derailed when he runs into his former high school crush. Noah is here with his young son and ex-wife, who are about to move to Europe to support her aging grandparents, though Noah dreads the day his son lives halfway across the world.
One man has just lost everything; the other is about to. Starting a new relationship based on random chance and half-forgotten teenage pining is just the kind of terrible choice you love to see characters make.
Mr Collins in Love
by Lee Welch
We’ve seen a lot of recent retellings starring the secondary cast of “Pride and Prejudice,” but few premises have the daring “hold my beer” energy of MR COLLINS IN LOVE. Welch takes a pompous character readers love to loathe and with a few deft turns makes him someone readers would die to defend. He’s still very much the same Collins — opinions on potatoes, obedience to Lady Catherine — but he’s also a thoughtful employer, scrupulous in his duty to his parishioners and fiercely loyal to the gardener he slowly, sweetly falls for. This one is light on the spice, and full of delightful landscape and garden descriptions.
A Tropical Rebel Gets the Duke
by Adriana Herrera
A TROPICAL REBEL GETS THE DUKE — Herrera’s story of Aurora Montalban, a doctor providing necessary but illegal gynecological care in Belle Époque Paris, and the duke who supports and seduces her — is refreshing in many ways. Historical heroines usually flout convention, not the actual law, so the stakes are real and the fear breathtaking when Aurora dodges capture by the authorities. And the duke, Apollo Robles? He’s biracial, rebellious and furious at society — but absolutely devoted once he decides she’s it for him. Spicy, smoldering and enthralling.
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