There’s no place like home. Which might be the problem with Dr. Will Sterling. While reading Kate Clayborn’s Love at First, you get the sense that he’s never actually had anything that fits that title. As a child, he had a house that he lived in with parents who were obsessed with each other and largely indifferent to him. As an adult, he has an apartment that he barely sees in between long hospital shifts. There’s no one he’d consider family. There’s barely anyone he’d consider a friend. He works overtime in the hospital’s emergency room until his co-workers basically kick him out, not realizing that he doesn’t actually have anywhere better to go. And then, suddenly, he has a new . . . well, let’s call it a residence. An inherited apartment from his recently deceased estranged uncle that he’s very, very eager to get rid of but can’t, thanks to the terms of the uncle’s will. And with the apartment comes an added, unspoken inheritance in the form of the colorful neighbors that fill out the small, six-unit apartment building.

Eleanora Clarke—better known as Nora—might be the youngest resident (by far) in the crotchety, close-knit community, but she’s also its fiercest and most determined protector. Her own isolated childhood led her to treasure the place and the memories it holds of her beloved grandmother. When Will shows up with his smile and his charm and his decision to—horror of horrors!—renovate his inheritance and turn it into a short-term rental, she springs into action to combat him. The conflict is immediate, but if you’re expecting typical rom-com over-the-top exploits, then you’d be wrong. Sure, Nora pulls a couple of fast ones to try to get around Will, but then something far sweeter than hijinks ensues.

There’s a lovely, expansive hopefulness to Clayborn’s romance. Pretty much none of its characters have the life they’d imagined for themselves or the one they would have chosen. Everyone, not just the main couple, has experienced their share of grief, from the 80-year-old Lothario on the third floor (he’s very into dating apps) to Will’s direct supervisor at the hospital, a man who might be the most awkwardly endearing boss you hope to never have since Michael Scott from “The Office." But as all of them come together in a variety of ways—involving poetry, lost kittens, towel rods and really good marinara sauce—a sense of beautiful optimism shines through Clayborn’s prose. Love at First will not only make you believe that you can recover from the pain in your past but that you can, if and when you choose, break away from your past entirely and build a new future, surrounded by love and support. Rather than narrowly focus on its main couple, Love at First overflows with a sense of connection and community. While watching Will and Nora fall deeply, endearingly in love, you’ll also fall in love with the world they live in, the community they build and the future they have to look forward to together.

In Christina Britton’s solidly crafted Regency romance, Someday My Duke Will Come, a fake engagement and close quarters spur friends to become the lovers they were meant to be. Quincy and Clara are two of a kind. Both are aristocratic underdogs: despite being the children of dukes, they grew up on the periphery of the noble circles to which they belong. And both harbor dark secrets and not quite fully healed childhood wounds that they think make them less than ideal partners. Plus, for different reasons, they’re both desperate to avoid the matchmaking machinations of nosy relatives.

Quincy is the brand new Duke of Reigate. As a boy, he revered and loved his father and was loved and adored in turn. But his mother always seemed to despise him, and he never understood why he felt so at odds with almost everyone in his family. At 14, with his father gone, he ran off to prevent his mother from consigning him to the Royal Navy. Having grown up as fourth in line to the dukedom, Quincy never thought he’d inherit. When he returns home for the first time in 14 years, he learns to never say never. Due to a series of unfortunate events, he’s the new Duke of Reigate and there’s no money left in the estate.

Lady Clara’s family is far warmer, but she’s a spinster and feels pressured by her Aunt Olivia to finally make a match lest she be permanently left on the shelf (unbeknownst to Aunt Olivia, this is Clara’s preferred life plan). Clara was just 9 years old when her mother died, and she all but traded her childhood to make sure her siblings, a younger brother and sister, felt secure. From then on, she watched them play and stood on the sidelines, more caretaker than sister to them both. Later, at 16, she went through a short rebellious period that ended in tragedy, plunging her into despair and making her believe that her past disqualified her from marrying the type of man that would otherwise be her match.

When an upcoming family wedding throws Lady Clara and the new Duke together, they both find themselves in need of a fake partner, and renew a warm friendship formed in Britton’s first Isle of Synne novel, A Good Duke Is Hard to Find. Quincy is warding off his mother’s ill-tempered demands that he marry to refill the coffers. As determined and disapproving as Lady Catherine de Bourgh scheming over Fitzwilliam Darcy’s future in Pride and Prejudice, the Duchess of Reigate has an intended wife picked out for the prodigal son she barely acknowledges—and it is not Lady Clara, his own desires be damned. The rather two-dimensional duchess is pushy and vicious, and her purpose is solely to act as the villain that propels the action forward, but it mostly works. When she ambushes Quincy with the match she’s chosen for him, Clara steps in as his fake fiancée, a claim that also conveniently wards off her aunt’s more generous but annoying matchmaking entreaties. More importantly, it throws them in close proximity even though they’d both sort of like to avoid the attraction they feel but haven’t acknowledged.

In addition to the fake engagement, the events of Someday My Duke Will Come revolve around Quincy’s bankrupt dukedom that needs saving and family secrets that need unraveling. Over the course of their arrangement, Clara and Quincy learn that the things they survived make them perfect partners for each other. This is a solid if not wholly original Regency romance between two likable underdogs who both deserve a happy ending.

One of romance’s brightest stars, Rebekah Weatherspoon is known for her sweet and steamy stories. With If the Boot Fits, the second in the Cowboys of California series, she  burnishes that reputation further, delivering a thoroughly modern Cinderella story about an aspiring screenwriter hesitantly falling for a sexy, celebrity, cinnamon-roll-sweet hero with swagger.

Weatherspoon deftly translates the classic rags to riches fairy tale's core elements into a 21st-century context. As an overworked and underappreciated assistant, Amanda McQueen is the perfect contemporary equivalent of a put-upon poor relation—an invisible underling with proximity to the glitter and glam of Hollywood, but no meaningful access. Cinderella’s stepsisters and wicked stepmother have merged into a single figure, the pampered and punitive starlet Dru Anastasia, who uses Amanda as an emotional sounding board but provides little pay and no respect in return. Sam Pleasant, a former cowboy and scion of a venerable Black Hollywood family, makes an excellent 21st-century prince, and the Vanity Fair Oscar party easily stands in for a royal ball.

While it’s great fun to see this fantasy transformed, the relationship between Amanda and Sam is the beating heart of the story, and the way their connection develops is brand new. After all, Cinderella and Prince Charming didn’t hook up after the ball. Also new is Amanda’s irreverence and incredulity the morning after, when she wakes up in a hotel room and can’t help but think, “The night before must have been a dream.” Her mind boggles as she contemplates the series of events that led from the Vanity Fair Oscar party to an A-list after-party, and, eventually, to Sam’s bed. Her conclusion: “There was no way. . . . There was absolutely no freaking way she’d run into Samuel Pleasant at both events, and surely you’d be joking if you told her that sometime in the night she and Sam had completely hit it off.”

This is Amanda’s voice throughout— lively, skeptical and incredibly relatable. Thinking this can’t happen or it’s just one night is incredibly freeing, and Amanda could use some freedom from her grind. One moment, she and Sam are having fun, with no names exchanged and no expectations. The next, he’s asking for her name in the middle of her “enthusiastic rendition of the cha-cha slide.” But she’s still skeptical, so she plays it cool and keeps it moving. “Sorry, I can’t hear you. I’m dancing,” is Amanda’s reply, and she assumes that’s that.

It’s a joy to read those initial scenes and watch Sam and Amanda's warring instincts battle it out. Weatherspoon creates vivid, specific characters and gives them wonderful interior lives and excellent banter. Their romance begins with that one-night stand, and the initial spark grows through a shared sense of fun, common values and tastes. Sam recognizes something in Amanda, and he invites her into his home and his inner circle without hesitation.

It should be obvious that they belong together, and yet, despite the chemistry and all their commonalities, according to the conventions of Hollywood, romantic fiction and fairy tales, Sam and Amanda qualify as an “unlikely couple,” defying major societal norms. Sam comes from a wealthy family and has just won an Academy Award, whereas Amanda is “a D-list actress’s lowly assistant” who is struggling to find her footing in the entertainment industry and to just make her rent each month. And even though they’re both African American, Amanda is a beautiful, dark-skinned, plus-size Black woman. In a culture that still holds fast to narrow definitions of what constitutes beauty, this reduces her status and eligibility. To be clear, Amanda has confidence in her talent and her looks. She’s also very aware, however, and sometimes overtly reminded, that successful Black women in Hollywood don’t often look like her. The contrast to her boss, Dru, a thin, light-skinned biracial woman, is especially prominent.

It’s not often that distinctions like this are directly challenged on the page in traditionally published romance, and Weatherspoon handles it all with grace, allowing discomfiting truths and subtle social critique to emerge organically from the events of the story. Conflicts around class, color and size are just part of this romance, however. It’s really about character and family. Though If the Boot Fits places Amanda in a professional context in which she cannot fully escape toxic standards, much of the central relationship develops on Sam’s ranch, a hundred miles away from the image-obsessed center of the storm. As a result, their love story never feels didactic and the romance never gets weighed down. There’s warmth and lightness throughout this very contemporary, yet ultimately classically romantic retelling—Amanda thrives on the support from her own friends and family, and Sam’s family may be Black Hollywood royalty, but they're also grounded, kind human beings, who embrace her and remind her of home. Readers who want romance to explore some of the real issues that women like Amanda face and see her beautifully celebrated and cherished will absolutely adore this book.

A series of unfortunate events lead to a meet-disaster in Julia London’s affecting and ebullient romantic comedy You Lucky Dog. Austinites Carly and Max have very little in common apart from very good taste in basset hounds and bad luck with dog walkers. Carly is a newly independent (and recently unemployed) public relations consultant catering to clients in the fashion and art world. Max is a socially awkward neuroscientist fixated on achieving tenure at the University of Texas.

With such disparate lives, the stars must align just right for these two to get together. When dog-walker/drug dealer/agent of chaos Brant gets caught up in a police sting operation, he enlists a friend to return his canine charges to their rightful homes. This friend, however, has trouble differentiating between Max’s perennially perky Hazel and Carly’s chronically depressed Baxter, and returns each dog to the wrong human. Even worse, with Brant out of the picture, Max has no one to dogsit while he takes his brother to a long-promised weekend in Chicago.

After bonding with Hazel, Carly is more than qualified to pinch hit in an emergency, and by the time Max returns, Hazel and Baxter are bonded, and Baxter’s outlook has improved. From there, it’s only natural that the four keep in touch. Chaperoned doggy dates allow humans and hounds to bond, and attraction evolves into romance. And yet, the course of true love never did run smooth. Otherwise, You Lucky Dog wouldn’t be the entertaining comedy of errors it is. Conflicting career paths and curious coincidences create roadblocks for Max and Carly without ever veering into angst.

London’s loose and limber comedic writing amplifies Max and Carly’s appeal, filling each voice with a unique perspective and personality. Max is a caring man who “was worried about his Very Good dog, a fourteen on a scale of ten on any damn day. He hoped whoever had ended up with her was taking good care of her.” As a scientist, he thinks about attraction in biological terms: “he felt a bit of a flutter in his chest, a telltale sign that the hormone norepinephrine was coming together with the rest of him to brighten his day.” Carly’s free-associative brain, meanwhile, overflows with pop culture references. She lives in a carriage house previously “occupied by a coven of witches or hippies or maybe even Matthew McConaughey—it depends on who you talk to.” The beauty is that the differences don’t just contrast; they complement, making Max and Carly’s love story a delight.

High drama isn’t just soap opera star Jasmine Lin Rodriguez’s day job, it’s also her life in Alexis Daria’s You Had Me at Hola. After getting her broken heart splashed over all the tabloid covers, she’s restrategized and plans to lead a man-free, drama-free, scandal-free life while tackling the juicy title character role in a high-profile telenovela adaptation. As down as she’s been, surely there’s nowhere to go but up—or so she thinks, until her first bold step forward into her new leading lady life ends on . . . well, not exactly a sour note but certainly a coffee-splattered one. For Jasmine, this first meeting with her co-star, the gorgeous and aloof Ashton Suárez, is not exactly ideal. But for the reader at the start of this smart and engaging madcap romance, it’s certainly a lot of fun!

Considering the usual telenovela twists, the story is actually surprisingly down-to-earth. (There is an evil twin, but alas, it’s just a plot thread on the show.) A few situations are dialed up for laughs, such as the infamous coffee incident during the meet-cute, but for the most part, Jasmine and Ashton face realistic challenges as they deal with their careers, their personal relationships and their blossoming feelings for each other. Jasmine, who is adored but rarely understood by her loving, intrusive family, has the habit of falling too hard and too fast for anyone who makes her feel wanted. Ashton, grappling with a long-held secret, has the opposite problem as he hesitates to let anyone close. Both struggle to balance the success they crave versus the lack of privacy that comes as its price. And while they do have a steamy affair, it includes its share of roadblocks as they work to figure out at each stage how intimate and exposed, in every way, they’re willing to be. Their love story is dramatic but it’s also sweet and complex, as layered and grounded as the characters themselves.

Daria fills the story with palpable warmth and affection, not just for her hero and heroine but for the dual worlds they inhabit: the film industry and the Latin American community. If you enjoy behind the scenes peeks, the story includes plenty of fun details about the nuts and bolts of a working set. (A key character is the set’s intimacy coordinator—a newer role on film sets but one that is, thankfully, becoming increasingly common.) And if you appreciate a media landscape that embraces diversity, you’ll love the chance to explore how Jasmine and Ashton carry their heritage with them, determinedly carving out opportunities not just for themselves but for all the gifted, undervalued Latinx performers searching for a place.

Elle Wright kicks off her new Pure Talent series with a bang in The Way You Tempt Me. This friends-to-lovers contemporary romance is sexy, addictive and deliciously dramatic.

Xavier Starks is the heir apparent for the new sports division of his family’s talent agency, Pure Talent. As a former child star, Xavier is no stranger to life in the limelight. In fact, the reformed playboy seems perfectly suited to deal with athletes who, collectively, are a dramatic bunch. But right as Xavier is about to propose to his Hollywood starlet girlfriend, she dumps him. And while heartbreak is no more severe for famous people, the situation is amplified because the world is watching, and the internet is forever.

Also watching is his father, Jax, and his childhood friend Zara Reid, a high-powered sports agent. When Zara returns to Atlanta after her own professional disappointment, Jax is delighted to bring her on board at Pure Talent. Zara never imagined she’d be competing with (and outplaying) Xavier for the same position, and the stakes have never been higher. Because sometimes when you’re not paying attention, you miss the good things that are right in front of you. Late nights, stressful deadlines and a lifetime of camaraderie come to a head as the two try to win the job . . . and maybe each other.

Workplace romances, both in the real world and in fiction, have the potential to cause maximum damage to those involved in a relationship. Aside from the perennial question of consent, Wright explores a quagmire of supervisors and subordinates, breaking up and remaining professional, and nepotism. But as The Way You Tempt Me realistically acknowledges, when you work 24/7 at a high-pressure career, where else will you find a partner?

Wright has crafted a compelling world of strong, complex characters. Our fearless Zara is no pushover in a man’s world. And on the flipside, Xavier is not steeped in the toxic masculinity that could so easily define his character in the competitive arena of athletes and sports agents. This is a fantastic start to a new series by one of romance’s rising stars.

If I had to sum up Kerry Winfrey’s new contemporary romance Not Like the Movies in one word, it would be charming.

Chloe Sanderson is an optimistic, klutzy, hopeful ball of positivity, and reading from her perspective is the perfect nightcap to a long, arduous day. The caregiver for her father, who has early-onset Alzheimer’s disease, romantic comedy movies are Chloe’s escape. But her best friend has just written a rom-com that’s inspired by her. On the surface, this seems fun and flattering, but in reality, it sets an untenable expectation for a happily ever after, because the guy in the movie who gets the girl based on Chloe is an obvious fictionalization of Nick Velez, Chloe’s boss at the coffee shop where they work—and in real life, they’re just colleagues who wonder “what if,” but never follow through. The stress of seeing their on-screen HEA is seriously anxiety inducing.

Nick is a quiet introvert who’s sweet and kind, and he’s thoroughly supportive of Chloe. He’s much more serious than Chloe, and less carefree, but fortunately, opposites attract. Unfortunately, Chloe’s life is maxed out with responsibilities and he repeatedly gets swept up in her chaos. When she says life is too risky to take a chance on a relationship, he sticks around and reminds her of why it’s so important to leave her comfort zone.

They say it’s bad to meet your celebrity crush, because the reality never lives up to the fantasy. Chloe and Nick are forced to face their own fantasy in film form, and it’s a scary prospect. But Winfrey has built in all of the charming things that make rom-coms addictive: richly developed characters, a deep pool of supportive friends, awkward situations, goofy reactions, missed opportunities, big misunderstandings and grand gestures. This romance is slow building, but the journey is a delight.

Talia Hibbert is quickly becoming a contemporary romance powerhouse. Her return to the adventures of the Brown siblings with Take A Hint, Dani Brown is an easy contender for best book of the year.

Zafir Ansari and Dani Brown couldn’t be more different. Zaf is a former rugby player turned security guard whose weakness is reading romance and who has a passion for destigmatizing mental illness. Dani is more tightly wound—a Ph.D. student who can barely stop working long enough to eat a decent meal. She certainly doesn’t have time for romance. Friends with benefits? Surely, but nothing that requires careful cultivation and patience navigating emotional bombshells.

After a fire drill goes haywire, Zaf’s gallant rescuing of Dani becomes a viral sensation and both realize they can use the situation to their mutual benefit. Dani can get her friends with benefits scenario with hunky Zaf, and Zaf can get closer to his crush, Dani, while using the exposure to help his sports nonprofit for children, Tackle It. What seems like a win-win scenario quickly becomes messier; in romance, fake dating rarely stays fake for long.

Hibbert knows how to deepen and complicate her characters, meticulously peeling back layer upon layer as the story goes on. Zaf’s past includes a devastating personal tragedy that changed his life and set him on a course to advocate for athletes experiencing mental health issues. Dani’s more than just a flighty commitmentphobe; her passionate studiousness comes from fear, because she’s never known love and career to exist harmoniously.

What makes Take a Hint, Dani Brown a superlative example of the romance genre as a whole, and not just a gem in the contemporary category, is that Hibbert gets to the essence of what a happily-ever-after means. It’s not about love as the antidote to a couple’s problems, but love becoming a foundation on which the couple understand one another better and a soft place to land when times are tough. While they’re quick to tumble into bed, Dani and Zeb are both guarded, but through lovely, stick-to-your-ribs home cooking on Zaf’s part and Dani’s ability to make those around her feel like they can achieve anything, they fall in love little by little. It’s not a romance of grand gestures, but a slow burn made up of small, simple moments.

Fans who loved the first book in the Brown Sisters series, Get a Life, Chloe Brown, may feel that it’s a tough act to follow. Fear not. Take a Hint, Dani Brown possesses the same amount of charm, grit and, certainly, sex appeal as its predecessor. Zaf is the emotionally competent, buff hero of our dreams. Dani is the heroine we all aspire to be: confident, feminist, sex-positive and driven. Read this romance immediately, and then read it again.