Let's face it, romance is not a genre that everyone will love. It is actually quite popular, which is why the publishing firm Harlequin Books is able
Let’s face it, romance is not a genre that everyone will love. It is actually quite popular, which is why the publishing firm Harlequin Books is able to churn out hundreds, if not thousands of romance novels every single year. Despite its popularity, some often dismiss it as being shallow, inane, or overdramatic. There’s also the social stigma that romantic fiction is “only for women,” which is, quite frankly, not true at all. Still, some people have taken a vehement stance against the genre and refuse to touch it for one reason or another. And that’s okay — everybody likes different things.
As mentioned though, the genre is popular for a reason. If you’re someone who is maybe interested in romantic fiction, and aren’t sure where to start, there are a few books you should probably visit first. Some of these books are contemporary classics, others are older but highly influential, while others are still underrated gems. These are the best romance novels for newcomers to the genre.
‘Hope Makes Love’ (2015)
The front cover of ‘Hope Makes Love’ by Trevor ColeImage via Cormorant Books
Trevor Cole‘s Hope Makes Love is a really intriguing book that is extremely basic to get lost in. The story follows two individuals. The first is Zep Baker, a former MLB player who is willing to do anything to win back the heart of his ex-wife and mother of his daughter. The other is Hope, a neuroscientist whom Zep hires to guide him in the process. Knowing how the brain works, Hope helps Zep execute “mind control,” which is really just a series of psychological maneuvers that will hopefully facilitate his ex-wife see him in a fresh airy and begin to love him again.
The book is divided into two alternating segments: half of the book is Hope’s journal, where she details what maneuvers she is advising Zep on, her personal feelings on the matter, and her past. The other half of the book is Zep’s voice memos that he leaves for his secretary, which are possibly the best part of the book. Zep is kind of a goofball, so a lot of his voice memos include his hilarious inner thoughts and descriptions of how he fails some of his efforts in spectacular fashion, occasionally interrupted by what’s going on in the room around him as he leaves the messages. The book alternates between these two points of view with every “chapter.” Ultimately, the book poses an crucial question: What exactly is love? Is it just a transmission of chemicals in our brains? Or is it something beyond human explanation? Not only is the book philosophical, analytical, and hilarious, but it’s brilliant because it doesn’t even feel like a romance novel. Even non-romance fans can love it, which is why it’s great for beginners.
‘Jane Eyre’ (1847)
Jane Eyre book coverImage via Bloosmbury Publishing
Jane Eyre is an autobiography about a woman who does not actually exist. The eponymous Jane Eyre is an orphan who has grown up with her abusive aunt, forcing Jane to grow up quickly and learn to fend for herself. She eventually finds work as a governess to a ward named Mr. Rochester. Jane and Mr. Rochester do end up developing feelings for each other, but this is impeded when Jane uncovers terrible secrets about Rochester’s family history, compelling her to choose between her own pleasure and her own morality.
This is a very early feminist novel that happens to be a romance. Though it is largely about love between a man and a woman, it is also about a woman’s search for individuality, equality, and personal freedom. This is one of those books that went on to establish itself as a literary classic, so much so that there are still high school and university kids writing book reports about it to this day. It’s such a masterpiece of fiction, and a super crucial romance novel for beginners to read.
‘Outlander’ (1991)
Outlander by Diana GabaldonImage via Dell Publishing / Penguin Random House
Outlander is a series of romance books that became super popular. This is in no petite part thanks to the wildly successful TV adaptation from 2014, but the books are pretty good on their own, too. The story opens up the year after World War II, where a former nurse named Claire is on a vacation in Scotland with her husband, Frank. Frank is working as a history professor, looking into his family lineage, while Claire goes for a picturesque stroll in the highlands. She encounters some sort of temporal anomaly, being magically transported 200 years back in time. Here, she comes face-to-face with Frank’s ancestor, a Scottish Highland warrior.
However, she also meets Jamie, a wounded Highland warrior in desperate need of medical attention. Using her nursing skills, Claire is able to heal Jamie, after which the two begin to fall in love. Each book in the series takes the couple to a different time period throughout history, where their relationship only grows. The main reason this novel is so accessible to newcomers is that romance isn’t the only thing it has to offer. It’s also a stellar bit of historical fiction, with a little bit of danger mixed in. While it still definitely feels like a romance, its ease of reading and additional plotlines facilitate readers from other genres transition into romance without feeling too much of a jarring shift.
Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes
Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite?
Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic
Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours.
Harry & Sally(1989)
Love & Basketball(2000)
Heated Rivalry(HBO Max)
Titanic(1997)
FIND YOUR ROMANCE →
01
How does your love story start?
The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.
AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything.
BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down.
CNobody can know, including our closest friends.
DOne look across a room and everything changes.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
What do the two of you keep arguing about?
Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.
AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it.
BWhose career comes first this year.
CWhether we will ever be straightforward about this in public.
DNothing petite. When we fight, it is about everything.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
How do you show somebody that you love them?
Grand gestures are basic to write. This is the harder question.
AI remember every single thing they have told me.
BI show up to the things that matter to them.
CI keep their secrets like they are my own.
DI would give up something enormous for them.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
What is actually standing in the way?
There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.
ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment.
BAmbition. We both want gigantic lives and they do not match.
CThe world. It is not sheltered to be open about this yet.
DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
Which romantic moment gets you every single time?
Be straightforward. There is one that works on you and you know which.
ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight.
BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end.
CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches.
DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
What would you actually risk for the right person?
Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too behind schedule.
AA friendship I could never get back.
BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid.
CMy privacy. All of it would become public.
DEverything. I would not think about it for long.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
Where are the two of you in ten years?
Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.
AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say.
BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious.
CFinally open about it, after years of being careful.
DApart, and I still think about it constantly.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
Which of these sounds most like something you would say?
Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance.
AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever.
BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both.
CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone.
DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends.
REVEAL MY ROMANCE →
Roll The Credits
Your Romance Is…
Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.
Harry & Sally
You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
hard-wearing way anybody has found to do this.
- When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening. - You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers. - The film is unusually straightforward about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it. - You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.
Love & Basketball
You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.
- This is the infrequent romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
them equally seriously. - You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
rival, and that never entirely goes away. - It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
other, but whose turn it is this year. - You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.
Heated Rivalry
The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.
- Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned. - You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
more real than public ones. - The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
it would cost either one to say it out raucous. - Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
stop hiding.
Titanic
You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.
- Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
days, which is precisely the point of it. - You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
decades of something merely comfortable. - The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
enormous life afterwards because of it. - You would still be telling this story at a hundred years senior, and telling it exactly the
same way.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ (2015)
The front cover of ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ by Sarah J. MaasImage via Bloomsbury Publishing
A Court of Thorns and Roses is a romantic fantasy that has been absolutely dominating the charts in recent years, to the point where it’s due to receive a TV adaptation. Sarah J. Maas‘ smash-hit became a beloved and ongoing series, one loaded with spice. This caused some fantasy fans to dismiss it as smut, while others came to love it for reasons outside its sexual content. This is basically a up-to-date version of the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, albeit one that is less kid-friendly and much more fleshed-out.
In this story, a huntress kills a wolf, only to be approached by a lupine beast demanding retribution. Dragging her to a land where the immortal faeries have gone into hiding, the huntress discovers that the beast can turn into a faerie, gaining a more human-like form at will. While there is initially tension between the two, they eventually come to love each other as they are forced to adapt to each other’s worlds. If you’re hoping to get into romance or romantasy, this is the perfect place to start because it has all the hallmarks of the genre, and it’s been such a massive critical and financial success.
‘Pride and Prejudice’ (1813)
Book cover of Jane Austen’s ‘Pride & Prejudice’Image via Penguin Classics
Pride and Prejudice is basically the romance novel. It’s a quintessential entry into the genre that has seen countless screen adaptations, both in film and on television. Some put more imaginative spins on it, like 2004’s Bride and Prejudice, which turns the story into a Bollywood/Hollywood fusion musical. Or there’s the movie Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, based on a book of the same name by Seth-Grahame Smith, which serves as a parody of Jane Austen’s original novel. Clearly, any book that has this much of a legacy behind it over 200 years later is doing something right.
The story is about a family of five sisters living in England during the 1800s, all of whom are in search of husbands, although this is mainly due to familial societal pressures rather than their own desires. The book is one of the most shining examples of feminist literature, examining fixed social norms, the stigma of unmarried women, and the immorality of arranged marriages. Even though it was written two centuries ago, the language doesn’t feel super archaic, nor does the writing style. It’s actually pretty basic to read, though non-romance fans might find it a bit uninteresting. In any event, if you’re planning on getting into romance novels, there’s just no way you can skimp out on this one, especially with how it establishes many feminist themes of the genre that still resonate today, and with how it completely rewrote the rules of romantic fiction.
Pride & Prejudice
Release Date
November 23, 2005
Runtime
127 minutes
Director
Joe Wright
Writers
Deborah Moggach
