Most read New Adult Romance books

When nineteen-year-old Feyre Archeron kills a wolf while hunting in the forest to feed her destitute family, a terrifying Fae creature arrives at her door demanding a life in exchange. She is taken to Prythian — a land of powerful, immortal faeries that most humans believe to be a place of nightmare — and placed under the protection of Tamlin, a High Lord of enormous power whose estate is beautiful but whose true form is hidden beneath a mask. As Feyre begins to understand the world she has been brought into, she learns that Prythian is cursed: every High Lord and their court has been trapped under an enchantment by a terrifying ruler Under the Mountain, and only an act of true love — achieved by someone who cannot know the curse's terms — has any hope of breaking it. A loose retelling of Beauty and the Beast filtered through dark Fae mythology, this first instalment establishes Maas's signature blend of lyrical prose, slow-burn romance, and a world whose beauty conceals genuine menace.

• slow burn

Three months after the events Under the Mountain, Feyre Archeron is living in the Spring Court as Tamlin's intended — and struggling to breathe. Haunted by what she did and survived, she finds the man she thought she loved has become her captor: controlling, suffocating, and blind to what she needs. When Rhysand, High Lord of the Night Court and the most feared Fae in Prythian, invokes a bargain that pulls Feyre away from the Spring Court for a month at a time, she begins to discover that the Night Court — and its ruler — are nothing like their reputation. The second book in the series is widely considered its definitive instalment: the recontextualisation of book one's events, the revelation of Rhysand's true character, and the development of Feyre's autonomy are handled with structural care and emotional depth. The Night Court's inner circle — Morrigan, Cassian, Azriel, and Amren — is introduced in full, and the world expands to reveal threats that will take the remaining books to address.

• found family

The war against Hybern has begun, and Feyre — now embedded as a spy in Tamlin's Spring Court — must gather intelligence and undermine its alliances from within before making her escape. Once she returns to the Night Court, the focus shifts to the building coalition: every court in Prythian must be brought to the negotiating table, old grievances set aside, and an army assembled that can face the Cauldron-backed might of the King of Hybern. Nesta and Elain Archeron, transformed into High Fae against their will, process their change in sharply contrasting ways. The book moves across Prythian in a manner more operationally sprawling than its predecessors, converging all seven courts and their politics toward a war that will determine the fate of both the Fae world and the mortal lands below the wall. The climax brings the full inner circle to open battle and delivers the kind of ending the series had been building toward — at considerable cost.

• found family
• court intrigue

When a fake dating scheme to get a Harvard professor to fund her research goes awry, PhD candidate Olive Smith finds herself in an unlikely relationship with the notoriously cold and brilliant Adam Carlsen. What starts as a mutually beneficial arrangement quickly becomes complicated as Olive navigates the cutthroat world of academia and her growing feelings for Adam. This charming romance is perfect for anyone who loves witty banter and a slow-burn connection.

• fake dating
• grumpy sunshine

Forced out of the Night Court's inner circle and into the House of Wind by her sister and Rhysand, Nesta Archeron struggles to rebuild her life after the devastating events of the war against Hybern. Haunted by trauma and numb to everything she once was, she spirals into self-destruction until Cassian — the battle-hardened Illyrian warrior who has always pushed her hardest — refuses to let her disappear. Thrown together in the mountain fortress, they must train alongside two other female warriors, Gwyn and Emerie, as a long-buried legend about an ancient order of Valkyries resurfaces. Meanwhile, a deadly set of magical objects called the Trove threatens to tip the balance of power across Prythian, and Nesta's terrifying power — absorbed during her transformation into High Fae — may be the only force capable of containing it. The first book in the series told from a perspective other than Feyre's, this instalment explores trauma, healing, and what it means to choose to survive.

• forced proximity
• grumpy sunshine
• slow burn
• redemption arc

Hannah Wells has worked hard to leave a painful past behind and build a steady life at Briar University. She has good grades, a plan, and a hopeless crush on a boy who barely notices her. What she does not have is any idea how to get his attention—until she winds up tangled with the last person she would ever choose. Garrett Graham is the star of the college hockey team, a golden boy whose future depends on keeping his grades up. When he fails a midterm badly enough to threaten his spot on the roster, he needs a tutor, and Hannah is the only one who can save him. She refuses, so he proposes a deal: she coaches him through the class, and in return he pretends to date her to make her crush jealous. What starts as a transaction turns into something neither planned. As fake dates blur into real feelings, Hannah has to decide whether to trust Garrett with the parts of herself she has kept hidden. The first book in the Off-Campus series, The Deal is a warm, funny new-adult sports romance about two people who agree not to fall for each other and fail spectacularly.

• fake dating

Eighteen months of war college have left Violet Sorrengail battle-hardened, but the threats closing in on Navarre are bigger than anything Basgiath prepared her for. With enemies pressing from outside the wards and treachery festering within, Violet realizes the kingdom cannot hold without help—and the only allies who might turn the tide lie across uncharted seas. The search takes Violet and her fellow riders far beyond the map they know, into unfamiliar lands where the rules of power, magic, and loyalty are different, and where every potential ally comes with a price. As she races to secure the army and the magic Navarre desperately needs, the secret she's guarding grows heavier, and the cost of the truth climbs higher. The third book in Rebecca Yarros's Empyrean series widens the world beyond the college walls, trading some of the classroom trials for a perilous quest across new territory. It's a high-stakes middle chapter that deepens the mythology, tests the central romance under fresh pressure, and sets the board for the conflicts still to come.

• academy
• found family
• quest

Set in the winter months following the war against Hybern, this shorter companion book follows the inner circle of the Night Court as they navigate the difficult work of rebuilding — both the physical world and themselves. Feyre and Rhysand settle into their roles as High Lady and High Lord while managing the diplomatic fallout of the war. Cassian and Azriel return to Illyria. Nesta retreats into self-destruction. Elain tends her garden and her secrets. The novella-length book functions primarily as an emotional landing place between A Court of Wings and Ruin and A Court of Silver Flames, establishing the threads that the next instalment will develop. It is the series's most low-key entry — a deliberate deceleration after the war arc — and is best understood as a bridge rather than a standalone work.

• found family

Lily Bloom moves to Boston to open a flower shop and meets Ryle Kincaid — a successful neurosurgeon opposed to relationships — and Atlas Corrigan, the boy who was her first love and whose return complicates everything. What begins as a love story becomes something more difficult: an unflinching examination of the cycle of domestic violence, how it begins, why it continues, and what breaking it actually requires. Hoover has said the novel was inspired by her own parents' relationship. Originally published in 2016, the book went viral on BookTok in 2022–2023, spending over two years on the New York Times bestseller list and selling more than 20 million copies worldwide. It was adapted into a major film released in August 2024, starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni. Continued in the sequel It Starts with Us.

• second chance
• love triangle

Ava Chen is a warm, free-spirited photographer haunted by nightmares of a childhood she cannot fully remember. Alex Volkov is her older brother's best friend: ruthless, success-obsessed, and emotionally walled off by a tragic past that fuels his hunger for revenge. When Alex becomes Ava's de facto protector, the cold distance he keeps gives way to a possessive, all-consuming pull that neither is supposed to act on. Their grumpy-sunshine, brother's-best-friend dynamic plays out against the darker currents of Alex's history and the secrets surrounding Ava's own. The first book in the Twisted series, it introduces a tightly connected friend group whose members headline the books that follow, and it establishes the morally grey anti-hero that made Ana Huang a BookTok phenomenon.

• grumpy sunshine

With the Valg threat mounting and her kingdom of Terrasen weakened by years of Adarlan's occupation, Aelin Galathynius moves across the continent gathering allies and securing the resources she needs for the war ahead. Her crew — Rowan, Aedion, Lysandra, Elide, and Lorcan — navigates treacherous coastlines, pirate politics, and a Fae queen whose agenda crosses Aelin's own. Meanwhile, Manon Blackbeak confronts the full horror of what the Ironteeth covens have been used to do, and begins to make choices that will pull her from the orbit of her obedience. Empire of Storms is the largest in scope of any Throne of Glass book prior to Kingdom of Ash, sprawling across geography and character arcs while steadily closing off the narrative space available before the war. Its ending is one of the series's most devastating sequences — a full-scale assault on characters the reader has spent five books learning to love, culminating in a sacrifice whose weight will carry through the final book.

• found family
• court intrigue
• quest

The concluding volume of the Throne of Glass series brings every thread of seven books to convergence. Aelin Galathynius, captured by the Fae queen Maeve at the end of Empire of Storms, is being tortured in a bid to break her will and use her power to forge a new Wyrdkey. Rowan and her companions tear the world apart searching for her. Meanwhile the armies of Erawan march, Terrasen is besieged, and every alliance Aelin spent the series building is now called to its purpose. Kingdom of Ash is the longest book in the series — over 900 pages — and the most operationally complex: multiple armies, multiple POV characters, and converging storylines across two continents. It is written in the awareness that every character who has survived to this point has earned their place, and it does not spare them. The resolution it delivers is hard-won, earned across seven books, and Maas has said she had laid out Aelin's path in advance right down to the book's very last line.

• quest
• multiple povs
• sacrifice

As the war against Erawan reaches its critical phase, Chaol Westfall — former Captain of the Guard, now hobbled by a spinal injury sustained in Queen of Shadows — travels to the Southern Continent with Nesryn Faliq to seek military aid from the Khagan of the Southern Continent and his army. What begins as a diplomatic mission becomes a murder investigation and a reckoning as Chaol works with a healer named Yrene Towers — whose journey to the Torre Cesme was enabled years ago by a young assassin who passed through Innish — to heal not just his body but the wounds he has been carrying since Crown of Midnight. Set in the city of Antica and the Khagan's palace, Tower of Dawn expands the Throne of Glass world beyond Adarlan into a richly developed Southern Continent with its own politics, culture, and stakes. It takes place simultaneously with the events of Empire of Storms and converges with Kingdom of Ash.

• court intrigue
• slow burn
• redemption arc

Bridget von Ascheberg never expected to inherit a throne, but when her brother steps aside she becomes the reluctant heir to a small European kingdom, her every move dictated by duty. Rhys Larsen is the stoic ex-military bodyguard assigned to protect her, a man with an iron rule against getting emotionally involved with the people he guards. Forced into constant proximity, the princess and her protector slide from wary friction into a romance that neither royal protocol nor his professional code permits. The second Twisted book trades the first's darkness for a forbidden royal-bodyguard slow burn, following one of the four friends at the heart of the series as she fights for a sliver of freedom and the one person she is forbidden to want.

• forbidden love
• slow burn

Chosen from birth, Penellaphe — known to the kingdom of Solis only as the Maiden — has spent her life in isolation, forbidden to be touched, to speak unless spoken to, or to look anyone in the eye. She waits, veiled and guarded, for the day of her Ascension, a sacred rite that will supposedly lift her people closer to the gods. But Poppy is restless, curious, and desperate for a taste of the life she has been denied. When Hawke, a charming and lethal guard, is assigned to protect her, the careful walls around Poppy's world begin to crack. Their forbidden attraction pulls her toward everything she is supposed to resist — and as the bloodthirsty Craven threaten Solis and the truth behind the Ascension begins to surface, Poppy must decide how much of what she has been taught is a lie, and how much she is willing to risk to be free. The opening book of Jennifer L. Armentrout's runaway-bestselling Blood and Ash series, this is fast-paced, high-heat fantasy romance built on a forbidden guard-and-charge romance, a richly drawn kingdom, and secrets that reshape everything Poppy thought she knew.

• forbidden love
• slow burn
• forced proximity
• enemies to lovers

Matty McKnight has been out since he was fourteen, and David Kruk hasn't even admitted the truth to himself. When a drunken night leads them both into a compromising situation, their rivalry turns into something neither of them can ignore — until Matty's family finds out about David's secret.

• enemies to lovers
• forbidden love

Lily Bloom is rebuilding her life after leaving Ryle, cautiously beginning something real with Atlas Corrigan — her first love, who has been present at the edges of her life since she returned to Boston. But navigating a new relationship while co-parenting with an ex who is not ready to accept that the marriage is over requires more than love; it requires the kind of clear-eyed courage that It Ends with Us spent an entire novel establishing Lily had. The direct sequel to It Ends with Us, It Starts with Us focuses on what happens after the ending — the legal complexity, the co-parenting negotiations, the small ordinary moments of starting over — and completes the duology. Published in October 2022, it debuted at number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

• second chance
• multiple povs

Evan Zanders is the NHL's most notorious playboy, known for burning through one-night stands and clashing with authority. Stevie Shay takes a job as flight attendant for his team hoping for a fresh start, and instead finds herself sparring with Zanders on every flight. A team fraternization policy puts her job on the line if anything develops between them, but the friction between the two slowly gives way to something neither expected as the season wears on.

• enemies to lovers
• forbidden love
• slow burn
• multiple povs

John Logan has always been the dependable one—the Briar University hockey player who holds his team together and quietly holds up a family falling apart at home. He is not looking for anything serious the night he meets Grace Ivers, and their first encounter goes about as badly as a one-night stand can. But he cannot stop thinking about her, and when he decides he wants a real chance, he discovers that a first impression this bad is not easy to undo. Grace has spent her freshman year finding her footing and has no interest in being anyone's second choice, least of all a cocky athlete who already blew it. As Logan sets out to prove he has changed, he is also wrestling with pressures he hides from everyone: a struggling father, an uncertain future, and feelings for his best friend's girl that complicate everything. The second book in Elle Kennedy's Off-Campus series, The Mistake is a steamy, emotional new-adult sports romance about second chances, growing up, and earning back the trust you carelessly threw away.

• second chance

Josh Chen is a cocky, charming aspiring doctor who can usually get anything he wants; Jules Ambrose is the fiery best friend of his sister, and the one woman who has always seen straight through him. Their long-running, very public mutual hatred boils over when Jules turns up working at his hospital, and one night together leads to an enemies-with-benefits arrangement built on three rules: no jealousy, no strings, no falling in love. As the line between hate and want blurs, both are forced to face the private wounds they hide behind banter and bravado. The third Twisted book pairs sharp comedic sparring with real emotional stakes, continuing the interconnected friend-group saga and tying back to the cast of Twisted Love.

• enemies to lovers

Bree Prescott arrives in the small lakeside town of Pelion, Maine, hoping to outrun the violence that shattered her life the night she watched her father die. She plans only to pass through, but the quiet town — and one of its most solitary residents — gives her reasons to stay. Archer Hale lives on the edge of Pelion, watched over from a distance by a town that pities and avoids him in equal measure. A childhood tragedy left him unable to speak and largely cut off from the world, and he has spent his life in near silence, tending his land and keeping to himself. When Bree wanders onto his property, the two begin an unlikely friendship built on written notes, patient attention, and a slowly dawning trust. As Bree teaches Archer to reach beyond the walls his family built around him, buried secrets about his past — and the people who profited from his isolation — begin to surface. Archer's Voice is a tender, emotionally charged love story about two wounded people who find healing in each other, and about the courage it takes to claim a voice of your own.

• slow burn
• grumpy sunshine
• friends to lovers

Shy, bullied Shannon Lynch transfers to Tommen College hiding bruises from her father — and is noticed by rugby prodigy Johnny Kavanagh. Book one of Chloe Walsh's Boys of Tommen: a 600-page slow-burn Irish sports romance about abuse, safety and found family.

• slow burn
• friends to lovers
• found family
• multiple povs

When Tate Collins moves in with her brother, she meets Miles Archer — a commercial airline pilot who is closed off to any emotional connection but not to a physical one. Miles offers an arrangement with two rules: no questions about the past, no expectations of a future. Tate agrees, certain she can manage the terms. Told in dual timelines — Tate's present alternating with Miles's past narrated six years earlier — the novel gradually reveals the trauma that made Miles who he is, while Tate discovers that agreeing to rules and living within them are very different things. Ugly Love won the Goodreads Choice Award for Romance in 2014 and reached #1 on the New York Times bestseller list.

• dual timeline

After five years in prison for a tragic accident that killed her boyfriend, Kenna Rowan returns to the small town where he grew up, desperate to reconnect with the daughter she had to leave behind. The child is being raised by her late boyfriend's family, the Landrys, who want nothing to do with the woman they hold responsible for his death. The only person willing to give Kenna any chance is Ledger Ward — a local bar owner, her daughter's godfather, and her boyfriend's closest friend. As Kenna and Ledger grow closer against every instinct and every loyalty, they must decide whether healing is possible when grief and guilt stand between them and the people they love most. A number-one New York Times bestseller (January 2022), adapted into a Universal Pictures film released in March 2026.

Following the reality-fracturing events at the end of House of Sky and Breath, Bryce Quinlan finds herself stranded in Prythian — the world of the Fae from A Court of Thorns and Roses — with no way home. Everything she loves is back in Midgard: her family, her friends, her mate. Alone in a strange new world and unsure who among its powerful players she can trust, she has to think her way back before the Asteri finish what they started. In Midgard, Hunt Athalar is back in the Asteri's dungeons, stripped of his freedom and without any word of Bryce's fate. Ruhn is held alongside him, and their allies above ground — Ithan, Tharion, Lidia Cervos and the rest — are left to work in the shadows, hunting for a way to reach them while the Asteri tighten their grip on the city. Lidia's double life comes fully into the light, recasting much of what came before. The third book in the Crescent City series, House of Flame and Shadow is its longest and most expansive entry, drawing threads from Sarah J. Maas's connected worlds together as the fight against the Asteri comes to a head.

• portal fantasy
• multiple povs
• secret identity

Reeling from betrayal and the truth about the man she trusted, Poppy is taken deep into the kingdom of Atlantia — captive, bargaining chip, and something harder to name. As she navigates a court that may want her dead and a bond she can't deny, she clings to one goal: finding her brother and learning what of her old life was ever true. The second Blood and Ash book widens the world and raises the stakes.

• enemies to lovers
• marriage of convenience
• secret identity
• betrayal

Hockey player and unrepentant playboy Dean strikes a no-strings deal with Allie, a theater major nursing a breakup—only to find there's a real person under his reputation, and that letting her see it is the scariest thing he's done. Book three of the Off-Campus series: a funny, steamy new-adult sports romance.

• forced proximity
• redemption arc

Twin sisters Tory and Darcy Vega have spent their lives in the foster system, scraping by and looking out for each other, with no idea where they come from. On the eve of their nineteenth birthday, they learn the impossible truth: they are Fae, the lost heirs to the throne of the magical kingdom of Solaria, and their power is only beginning to wake. To claim their birthright, the sisters must enrol at Zodiac Academy, an elite and brutal school where students are sorted by star sign and Order—dragons, sirens, werewolves, and worse—and where magic is currency and cruelty is a lesson plan. Standing in their way are the four Celestial Heirs, impossibly powerful young men who have been raised to rule Solaria and have no intention of letting two clueless outsiders take the crown. What follows is a savage test of survival, as the Vega twins fight to master their gifts, endure relentless hazing, and resist the dangerous pull of the very people determined to break them. The first book in Caroline Peckham and Susanne Valenti's wildly popular Zodiac Academy series, The Awakening is a dark, addictive, and steamy bully-romance fantasy set in a richly built magical world of star signs, elemental power, and shifting loyalties.

• enemies to lovers
• academy
• chosen one
• multiple povs

Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman are executive assistants who despise each other, locked in a daily battle of wills across their shared office. When a new co-CEO position opens up, their rivalry intensifies, forcing them to confront their true feelings. As they compete for the promotion, their animosity begins to blur into something unexpectedly passionate.

• enemies to lovers
• workplace romance
• slow burn

Rugby prodigy Johnny Kavanagh and anxious, traumatized Shannon Lynch fight to hold on to the fragile safety they've found together, as an injury threatens Johnny's future and Shannon's dangerous home life closes in. The emotional, slow-burn second novel in Chloe Walsh's Boys of Tommen series.

• slow burn