A gentle, ghostly love story with a queer Jewish relationship at its center, Rules for Ghosting will make you laugh and make you cry, maybe even at the same time.
Lana Harper brings Thistle Grove, her beloved paranormal romance series, to a close with the richly crafted, eerie yet warm Rise and Divine.
Katie Shepard’s No One Does It Like You is a sweet but realistic second-chance romance.
Erica Ridley’s latest Wild Wynchesters romance is a wonderful and wacky opposites-attract love story between a dashing female bodyguard and a shy inventor.
The fairy world intersects with Regency London in Alexis Hall’s clever and sexy Confounding Oaths.
Tessa Bailey already releases two books a year (we loved both of 2024’s offerings), but demand for the rom-com queen’s work is so fervent that Avon has had to start printing the author’s previously self-published works to keep up! Those who fell in love with Window Shopping in 2021 will soon be able to snag an adorable new edition, and newcomers to decorator Stella’s romance with a dashing department store owner should prepare to be swept away.
Erin Sterling’s two previous witchy love stories are some of the most acclaimed of the current paranormal romance boom. Her highly anticipated third romance, The Wedding Witch, will provide a welcome bit of spooky fun amid the annual blizzard of holiday romances. Taking place during a (literal) Yuletide wedding at an isolated Welsh estate, The Wedding Witch follows Bowen Penhallow and Tamsyn Bligh, two guests who are accidentally transported back to 1958 when a spell goes wrong. That’s right: It’s a witchy, midcentury, Christmas rom-com! Bless you, Erin Sterling.
Here’s the thing about Lana Ferguson: She can take tropes and concepts that seemingly belong only in the more scandalous corners of BookTok, and somehow make them seem like the most natural thing in the world. This is the woman who made a romance between a nanny and her boss into an ode to sex positivity and emotional maturity, the genius who decided to make an omegaverse fake-dating rom-com. Ferguson turning her particular set of skills to what looks for all the world to be a Loch Ness Monster-shifter romance? The exact sort of insane perfection we’ve come to expect.
It has been three long years since one of Shelly Laurenston’s gleefully deranged, gloriously violent shifter romances graced shelves, and at long last, a new honey badger heroine awaits us. Nelle Zhao might not be as outgoing as her fellow honey badger shifters, but she’s just as chaotic and indomitable. So even though tiger shifter Keane Malone has announced that he’s going to take on a trafficking ring all by himself, Nelle’s definitely going with him, no matter what he says.
Another self-published gem about to get a wide print release for the very first time, Kennedy Ryan’s Reel is an epic love story between a rising Hollywood star and the director who casts her in her big break. Having been named to several “Best of the Year” lists during its initial release, Reel will surely win Kennedy Ryan even more fans than she already has thanks to her emotional Skyland romances.
It’s always nice to balance out holiday hijinks with a mellower, more emotional, but still seasonal love story: Enter Ashley Herring Blake. The author of the acclaimed Bright Falls series will return with her first-ever Christmas romance, which follows exes Charlotte and Brighton as they rekindle their relationship while staying at the same house and attending a bunch of adorable dating events.
Lightning in Her Hands is a gorgeous friends-to-lovers romance that builds beautifully upon author Raquel Vasquez Gilliland’s debut, Witch of Wild Things.
There is a LOT going on in Julie Murphy and Sierra Simone’s holiday rom-com series, A Christmas Notch, and all of it is great. Ready? The setting is the titular little town in Vermont, host to a cottage industry of both squeaky-clean and gloriously dirty holiday movies. The heroine is Sunny Palmer, Christmas Notch’s jack-of-all-trades who’s just sold her very first screenplay. The hero is Isaac Kelly, widower and former member of Ink, the once-popular boy band that the previous two male leads of the series also belonged to. While helping each other work through their respective creative dry spells, Sunny and Isaac find that they also work together in other ways (wink, wink).
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