Not every story is a love story, but many of the best ones are. The classic will-they-won't-they dynamic is the engine that drives so many novels—not only beach reads and pulp fiction, but literary novels that play with our assumptions, longings and expectations. As a result, romance as a genre has never been in better shape, nor more untiringly excavated. Here we offer a selection of the best romance books of 2022, taking in new titles from some of our favourite and most successful authors, plus edgy debuts that take more experimental or subversive approaches to the universal experience of love, lust and loss.
This list is part of our best books of 2022 series
“I checked out a copy from my public library and asked our book-buying team to bring it in. From the way that it’s been selling, I’m not the only one who enjoyed watching the romance between a baker and a paleontologist develop. I actually found myself giggling along to their banter, which felt fresh and new. It won me over immediately. Oh, and that grand gesture that Quentin did for Alisha at the end? I died…happily.” Read more...
“Do You Take this Man by Denise Williams is perfect. There, I said it. It’s such a sensitive look at two people who believe that they aren’t worthy of love because of past experiences finding that love with each other. The only issue? They can’t stand each other…at first. I rooted for these two, staying up until 4am to see them get together.” Read more...
“I loved reading about Delilah and Claire, watching their relationship develop over Delilah’s estranged stepsister’s wedding weekend. I laughed, I cried—yes, real tears—and I swooned. While this is a gorgeous queer romance, it also brings up a lot of family issues and I think that Herring did it in a great way.” Read more...
“It made me realize how I often don’t see romance novels about women in their forties, especially Black women in their forties. It also made me realize how nice it was to see two people of color fall in love too (he love interest, Michael, is Koren American) since you usually only see a person of color falling for someone who is white. Maybe it’s because they’re older, but these two knew how to communicate and had really great boundaries that they held.” Read more...
“It has all of my favorite romantic tropes: enemies to lovers, found family, a misunderstanding that threatens everything, and a tall man who has some emotional baggage that he needs to deal with promptly before he loses the only one that he’s ever loved. I finished this book and felt my heart swell. Actually, it just swelled again because I thought of the ending once more. It’s just so good.” Read more...
The Secret Lives of Church Ladies
by Deesha Philyaw
🏆 Winner of the 2021 PEN/Faulkner Award
🏆 Winner of the 2020 Story Prize
🏆 Winner of the 2020 L.A. Times Book Prize, Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction
✩ Finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction
This multi-award-winning collection of short stories features nine tales of Black Christian women as they seek to answer knotty questions of love, longing and sexuality. First released in the United States in 2020, it is finally available to readers in the United Kingdom from Pushkin Press. Television rights were also recently picked up by HBO Max.
Acts of Service
by Lillian Fishman
This ferocious debut novel follows Eve, an intelligent but alienated barista in Brooklyn, whose foray into online exhibitionism leads her to Olivia and Nathan: a beautiful couple with a discomfiting power imbalance, who ask her to join them in bed. What follows is a sexual awakening that forces Eve to confront questions of consent, masochism and gender roles. It's not for the faint hearted: think Fifty Shades of Grey as written by Rachel Cusk. The Guardian described it as "a sex masterpiece."
Vladimir: A Novel
by Julia May Jonas
This unsettling novel about a female professor’s obsession with a much younger colleague—as her own husband faces a #MeToo-type reckoning—is an sharp, bold and rather raunchy literary romance with heart of darkness. A satisfyingly intelligent novel, with just the right amount of pulpiness.
Book Lovers
by Emily Henry
The highly anticipated new romantic comedy from the author of Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation. When two ambitious publishing executives meet while summering in Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, they are forced to reconsider the well-worn narratives they tell about themselves. Casey McQuiston called it “Schitt’s Creek for book nerds.”
You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty
by Akwaeke Emezi
Nigerian author Akwaeke Emezi (best known for Freshwater and The Death of Vivek Oji) has released a steamy new book: You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty, the moving story of a Brooklyn-based artist who—five years on from the death of her husband—is ready to consider dating again. Vogue called it “this summer’s must-read love story.” Darker than your average romance novel, Emezi's latest will appeal to those with literary leanings.
A Marvellous Light
by Freya Marske
A comedy of manners set in an alternative Edwardian Britain, featuring box hedge mazes, a magical murder mystery and a queer enemies-to-lovers romance. A sparky, fun debut that sits somewhere between Bridgerton and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell.
It Starts With Us
by Colleen Hoover
Fans of blockbuster romance author Colleen Hoover must not miss her long-awaited sequel to her beloved and perennially bestselling It Ends With Us. Picking up right where the epilogue for It Ends with Us left off, we see the world through the eyes of both Lily and Atlas as they embrace a second chance at true love—that is, if Lily’s ex-husband Ryle will let them.
Again, Rachel
by Marian Keyes
25 years after the publication of her million copy-selling rehab novel Rachel's Holiday, Marian Keyes revisits one of her best known fictional creations Rachel Walsh. Now sober, sensible, and holding down a successful job as an addiction counsellor, Rachel's steady world is rocked again by the reappearance of an old flame. With lashings of Keyes' trademark wit and snappy dialogue, Again, Rachel is a superlative romantic comedy that will break your heart. Comfort reading of the highest order.
The audiobook version is read by the author and features an exclusive Q&A with Irish talkshow host Graham Norton.
Young Mungo
by Douglas Stuart
Douglas Stuart's eagerly awaited follow-up to his Booker Prize-winning, internationally bestselling debut Shuggie Bain centres a love affair between two Glaswegian men, from either side of the sectarian divide. Having come of age in a violent, homophobic community, Mungo and James find peace—and each other—in a racing pigeon loft. A Romeo and Juliet story set in 1990s Glasgow, it is a powerful and deeply moving tale of passion, poverty and toxic masculinity.
The Best Romance Books of 2022, recommended by Katherine D. Morgan
If you like your novels to end happily ever after, then do we have reading recommendations for you. Guest editor Katherine D. Morgan selects five of the best romance books of 2022, and offers a quick round-up of the love stories you should be looking forward to over the next few months.
