Best romance novels
Two people and the distance between them, closed slowly and on purpose.
Ranked by how often each title comes up across 22 reading lists on NextBook — not by our opinion of them.
1 of 12recommended on 7 listsThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
If you read Harrow mostly for the sentences and the sense of somewhere just out of reach, this is the same spell cast with more discipline.
2 of 12recommended on 6 listsShadow and Bone
Leigh Bardugo
An occupying military power, a girl conscripted into its magical elite, and a commander who is very good at seeming kind. Easier going than Tahir, similar shape.
3 of 12recommended on 6 listsThe Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
For the flashback architecture and the pleasure of watching a clever poor boy learn a trade. Rothfuss lingers where Lynch cuts, but the swagger is identical.
4 of 12recommended on 5 listsRed Queen
Victoria Aveyard
A poor girl hauled into a glittering court, dressed, renamed and marketed to the public while a rebellion quietly uses her. The Capitol makeover, extended into a whole plot.
5 of 12recommended on 5 listsThe Magicians
Lev Grossman
Magic learned as hard, boring, unglamorous work by people who are not nice about it. A corrective to Morgenstern's enchantment, and useful precisely for that.
6 of 12recommended on 5 listsThe Starless Sea
Erin Morgenstern
Morgenstern doing the same thing again, larger and stranger: an underground library of stories, doors painted on walls, and a plot that matters less than the rooms.
7 of 12recommended on 4 listsDivergent
Veronica Roth
The closest structural cousin: a teenage girl choosing a faction, training among strangers, and discovering the whole sorting system is a lie. It wears its debt openly.
8 of 12recommended on 4 listsLegend
Marie Lu
Two fifteen-year-olds on opposite sides of a rotten republic, one hunting the other. Lu matches Collins for pace and does the class divide with more teeth.
9 of 12recommended on 4 listsNeverwhere
Neil Gaiman
Fall through the wrong door in London and you end up in the version underneath. Rougher and funnier than Harrow, with the same thrill of the threshold.
10 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Bone Season
Samantha Shannon
A girl held by a power that considers her a resource, kept alive by the one person in the hierarchy who might be worth trusting. The captive-and-keeper dynamic, done well.
11 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Cruel Prince
Holly Black
A mortal girl in a court that despises her, arming herself with cunning and violence. The antagonism Laia and her captors generate, sharpened to a point.
12 of 12recommended on 4 listsThe Giver
Lois Lowry
Quieter, older, and the ancestor of this whole shelf: a comfortable society that has calmly decided which lives are disposable, and one boy who is told why.
Start from one you already loved
A genre is a blunt instrument. Pick the romance book you actually liked and we’ll rank the next one by what you liked about it.
- Books like The Night CircusErin Morgenstern
- Books like The Hunger GamesSuzanne Collins
- Books like The SelectionKiera Cass
- Books like The Ten Thousand Doors of JanuaryAlix E. Harrow
- Books like An Ember in the AshesSabaa Tahir
- Books like The 5th WaveRick Yancey
- Books like A Darker Shade of MagicV.E. Schwab
- Books like The Darkest MindsAlexandra Bracken
- Books like The Lies of Locke LamoraScott Lynch
- Books like Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and TomorrowGabrielle Zevin
- Books like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRueV.E. Schwab
- Books like The Raven BoysMaggie Stiefvater
- Books like The Song of AchillesMadeline Miller
- Books like The Rosie ProjectGraeme Simsion
- Books like Ella EnchantedGail Carson Levine
- Books like 2312Kim Stanley Robinson
- Books like Serpent & DoveShelby Mahurin
- Books like The House in the Cerulean SeaTJ Klune
- Books like The Priory of the Orange TreeSamantha Shannon
- Books like Beach ReadEmily Henry
- Books like Fourth WingRebecca Yarros
- Books like Strange the DreamerLaini Taylor
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