I’ve really missed doing Friday Favorites, and since no one was currently hosting it, Cait @ Functionally Fictional decided to jump into the gap. Each week, she provides a prompt, and I get to talk about my favorite books that fit the topic. Feel free to join in – the more the merrier!

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, it makes sense that today’s post would be all about romance books. And here’s my confession: I only started reading romance recently. Why? Well, when I was young, there weren’t any YA books. We just kind of jumped from picture books to chapter books to reading whatever the heck we wanted. My generation went right from reading Beverly Cleary books to V.C. Andrews. The romance books we read used terrible euphemisms for anatomy, and kind of put me off romance for decades. But fortunately, I was strongly encouraged to try again, and I’m so glad that I did. Here’s some of my favorite romance novels:

1. Speechless by Lindsey Lanza — a Jewish woman with endometriosis and a lovable service dog, and a man with severe anxiety and selective mutism, all in one amazing and super sweet romance? This one was an immediate fave.
2. Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert — how can I resist a story involving a Black woman with chronic illness that manages to portray her disability accurately, while still painting her as hilarious and sexy in the romance?
3. Witchful Thinking by Celestine Martin — a paranormal romance between a Black witch and a Black merman in a small town, and I loved every second of this wonderful story.
4. Never Ever Getting Back Together by Sophie Gonzalez — the ultimate in revenge happens in this book when the absolute worst ex-boyfriend hosts a dating show involving all of his exes, and two of them wind up falling for each other instead!
5. Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez — this is one of the funniest romances that I’ve ever read, and I loved the way that the romance involved writing letters between a Salvadorian doctor and a doctor with social anxiety.
6. Eternal Rider by Larissa Ione — a super hot paranormal romance between one of the horsemen of the apocalypse and a mortal woman who gets caught in the middle.
7. The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen — this super-sweet enemies to lovers story takes place in some kind of zombie/western parallel universe that was just whimsical and amazing.
8. The Dark King by Gina L. Maxwell — this was the hot book of 2022, and it’s a steamy paranormal romance that captured my heart completely.
9. The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang — I couldn’t help but love this sweet and amazing fake dating romance between a woman with autism and a gigolo who helps her break out of her shell.
10. Partners in Crime by Alisha Rai — this was such a fun, over the top, action-packed romance that I really enjoyed.

What are some of your favorite romance novels?