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If you’re looking for your next fantastic romance novel or romance is a genre that you’d like to get to know better, you’ll want to make your way into TIME’s list of the 50 best romance novels to read right now.
Developed with the help of booksellers, editors, authors, and other industry experts, the list offers the best of the best, including all of the best tropes and stories the genre has to offer. Romance has always been popular, of course, but as TIME notes, the genre has especially exploded since 2020. Last year, sales soared to almost 40 million print copies sold and romance-focused bookstores have been popping up across the US.
Romance readers who may be holding your breath, take heart. This list ensures that the books meet the definition of romance in that every story has a Happily Ever After. It also focuses on books where the romance is front and center, meaning that a lot of the hot romantasy titles are not on the list. It’s not that they aren’t worth reading. It’s that they do not fit the classic definition of capital-R Romance.
Titles on the list include classics and contemporary titles, sports romances to just-one-bed scenarios, historical romances and more. There are both adult romances and those published for the YA audience.
Here are ten of the titles on the list:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
Crazy Rich Asians by Kevin Kwan
The Luckiest Lady in London by Sherry Thomas
Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston
Last Night at the Telegraph Club by Malinda Lo
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
Part of Your World by Abby Jimenez
The Price of Salt by Claire Morgan
