By: Sarah Rosales I Published: February 10, 2025.
What better way to celebrate your Valentine’s Day than immersing yourself in a feet-kicking, blush-inducing romance story?
Whether you have that special somebody to snuggle up with, you’re looking for that somebody, or you like to step away from all that stuff and joyfully enjoy your own company, these love stories will have you willfully seduced to the end.
- The Charm Offensive
“I don’t think happily ever after is something that happens to you, Dev. I think it’s something you choose to do for yourself.”
“The Charm Offensive” by Alison Cochrun is an adult contemporary story about Dev Deshpande, a reality show producer, who falls in love with the main character of his long-running reality dating show, Charlie Winshaw, an awkward and bumbling disgraced tech prodigy.
The story elegantly handles its themes of asexual representation and mental health issues such as severe anxiety, OCD, and clinical depression. These sorts of themes rarely appear in your typical commercial romcom, which makes “The Charm Offensive” stand out from the rest.
- Assistant to the Villain
“She wasn’t light; she was color. Every single one, dancing otherworldly and bright over his unworthy eyes. She was the explosion of the vivid gleams and glows of the world around him, like a constant rainbow, shining not after the rain but during.”
Are you a fan of the sunshine-smiling character who gets together with the dark-grimacing softie?
“Assistant to the Villain” by Hannah Nicole Maehrer is exactly that, wrapped up in a slow-burning relationship with a fantasy hijinks setting.
The story centers around Evie Sage, who through a series of unlikely events, finds herself employed to Rennedawn’s most infamous Villain. Though it’s discouraged, she can’t help but find herself falling for her boss, who is more than he seems under his evil facade. And it seems the feelings might be mutual, though the Villain will deny all accusations of him being in love.
- Daughter of the Moon Goddess
“Some scars are carved into our bones – a part of who we are, shaping what we become.”
“Daughter of the Moon Goddess” by Sue Lynn Tan is an epic fantasy romance (or romantasy) that follows our protagonist, Xingyin, daughter of the powerful Chinese moon goddess Chang’e.
Forced to run away from home after her magic flares, Xingyin arrives at the Celestial Kingdom where she not only has to find the strength to survive, but also try not to fall for the emperor’s son, the very same emperor who imprisoned her mother on the moon.
Though the story might be tropey in some areas with its addition of a love triangle, Xingyin’s journey is compelling enough to make you want to find out if she’ll make it to the end or not.
- This is How You Lose the Time War
“I love you. I love you. I love you. I’ll write it in waves. In skies. In my heart. You’ll never see, but you will know. I’ll be all the poets, I’ll kill them all and take each one’s place in turn, and every time love’s written in all the strands it will be to you.”
Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone’s “This is How You Lose the Time War” is rife with beautiful, heartache-inducing descriptions. The novella follows two main characters, Red and Blue, as they are on opposing sides of the Time War, but slowly find themselves drawn to each other over and over again, no matter the time or place.
Truly, this isn’t like any time travel story you’ve read before. Red and Blue send each other letters, not in the typical fashion as we know, but through the environments they’ve traveled to. Carving their love on the nearest surface they could get to, desperately, hopelessly. The story is pure poetry.
- Red, White & Royal Blue
“History, huh? Bet we could make some.”
“Red, White & Royal Blue” by Casey McQuiston follows First Son Alex Claremont-Diaz and his (one-sided) longtime nemesis England’s beloved royal sweetheart Prince Henry. After a messy confrontation with Henry, Alex’s actions threaten US/UK relations, and his mother, President Ellen Claremont cannot have that happen, especially as she’s running for re-election.
So she stages a friendship between them, one worthy for the tabloids, and it’s from there that Alex and Henry start to grow closer.
- Last Night at the Telegraph Club
“Perhaps that was the most perverse part of this: the inside-outness of everything, as if denial would make it go away, when it only made the pain in her chest tighten, when it only made her emotions clearer.”
“Last Night at the Telegraph Club” by Malinda Lo is a soft-budding romance between teens Lily Hu and Kathleen Miller. Set during San Francisco’s Chinatown during the Red Scare, this novel tackles themes of internalized homophobia, race, and social class.
The relationship established between Lily and Kath is something sweet to witness. Amid all the political fear mongering they have to live through, they still found the space to love and be themselves. This is a story for the kids who think they’ll never find a place of acceptance, because this book tells you that you will.
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