Happily ever after. These three words form the backbone of the romance genre. Because no matter how fraught the journey, in romance, the protagonists will be together by the story’s end. This is the reason so many readers return again and again to these books—in a tumultuous world, romance novels offer a guarantee.
And they’ve never felt so needed, or enjoyed such mainstream celebration, as they have over the past few years. Sales in the genre began to spike as COVID-19 shut down the world and readers sought a dose of warmth and levity in 2020; the emergence of TikTok as a platform for word-of-mouth book recommendations around the same time made romance novels both new and old go viral, shooting a handful of authors to the rarified territory of repeat no. 1 New York Times best sellers. Last year, romance book sales surged even higher, with nearly 40 million printed copies sold, according to market research company Circana. And the number of romance-specific bookstores in the U.S.—from Tropes & Trifles in Minneapolis to the Ripped Bodice in New York City and L.A.—has grown from just two in 2020 to more than 20 today.
If you don’t understand the appeal of romance novels, we’re willing to bet you’ve never read one. Reading romance can be an escape into a sweeter, softer version of our world—or it can be a risky adventure into strange new lands. Romance can be contemporary, historical, paranormal, erotic. It can tell stories of enemies combusting into lovers, of childhood sweethearts reuniting as adults, of strangers begrudgingly forced together who find themselves catching feelings, of unintentional bedmates, of bloodthirsty vampires and clandestine witches and overworked doctors and amnesic spouses learning to love one another all over again. Romance can take place in a Regency mansion, in a boardroom, on the sidelines of a football field, in a tiny town. There is a subgenre, a trope, and a plot for every reader—a story to satisfy any particular taste.
To create our list of The 50 Best Romance Novels to Read Right Now, we began in early 2024 by speaking with booksellers, editors, authors, and other industry experts who helped us understand the nuances and evolution of romance. These conversations helped shape the entries on this list (all books in the English language), which TIME editors honed by considering key factors including ingenuity, commercial success, acclaim, and impact, aiming to curate a list that celebrates the burgeoning inclusivity of the genre.
The resulting list features books that span hundreds of years, beginning with Frances Burney’s 1782 novel Cecilia—a book that influenced one of the most beloved novels of the genre—and ending with Ali Hazelwood’s 2023 STEM romance Love, Theoretically. No single writer’s work appears more than once. Spanning diverse subcategories and tropes, the books on this list showcase the thrilling, heart-warming, and often spicy narratives that represent the best of what the genre has to offer. Not only do they provide satisfying resolutions for their characters, but they also tackle big ideas around grief, identity, vulnerability, empathy, and acceptance—all the things that power our most potent relationships.
Which is why, as best-selling author Casey McQuiston argues in an essay for this project, anyone who dismisses romance as fluff or the stuff of guilty pleasure is missing the point. “If we expect a great novel to tell us about humanity, romance holds a mirror to our wants and needs,” McQuiston writes. “If we want to study works that sit within a greater literary tradition, romance has one of the richest.”
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That history is as complex as societal attitudes about gender roles and sexuality. Tracing the evolution of the romance genre means contending with popular narratives that handle sex and consent in outdated and sometimes harmful ways. Many books that are considered foundational to the modern romance novel, from authors like Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Judith McNaught, feature rape and coercion narratives—and while we can acknowledge the ground they broke in helping to establish a wide readership of the genre, we elected not to recommend those books to today’s readers.
Also not on TIME’s list: The Notebook. Nicholas Sparks’s 1996 hit may come to mind for many people when they think of romance, but—forgive us if you’ve managed to remain unspoiled for nearly 30 years—it does not end happily. Likewise, E.L. James’ 2011 erotic best seller Fifty Shades of Grey did not meet our criteria, because of its ending (though the series as a whole could have). A happily ever after, or at least a happily for now, was our first non-negotiable in selecting the titles on this list. Our second was less black and white: the love story needed to be the central focus of the plot. For that reason, popular romantasy series like Sarah J. Maas' A Court of Thorns and Roses and Rebecca Yarros' Fourth Wing do not appear on this list, as we aimed to draw a line between fantasy books with romantic elements and romance books with fantastical elements.
Despite these absences, there are many familiar names on TIME’s list, from Nora Roberts and Beverly Jenkins to Nalini Singh and Stephenie Meyer to Jasmine Guillory and Emily Henry. Whether you’re a veteran romance reader, a genre newcomer, or something in between, you’ll find something here to love.
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Special thanks to Bolu Babalola, Eliza Berman, Clair Brett, Samantha Cooney, Helen Fielding, Erin Galloway, Katie Garaby, Melissa Gill, Jasmine Guillory, Jenny Han, Bea Hodges-Koch, Cindy Hwang, Jayashree Kamblé, Kevin Kwan, Leah Koch, Wes Lukes, Belinda Luscombe, Erin McMullen, Casey McQuiston, Caitlin O'Neil, Julia Quinn, Lauren Richards, Tessa Berenson Rogers, Simmone Shah, Emma Straub, Chelsea Stringfield, Becca Title, Tia Williams, and Rebecca Yarros
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