Most Read Romantic Comedy Books

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

January Andrews writes happily-ever-afters for a living, but she no longer believes in them. Reeling from her father's death and the discovery of the double life he kept hidden, broke and blocked, she retreats to the lakeside Michigan cottage he secretly owned to sort through his things and, she hopes, salvage her career. The catch: her new next-door neighbor is Augustus Everett, the brooding literary-fiction star who was her rival in college and who has never written anything that ends in anything but despair. Both are stuck. So they make a bargain — over the summer, January will try to write something serious and bleak, and Gus will attempt a love story with a happy ending. To research, they trade field trips: she drags him line-dancing, he takes her to interview the survivors of a local death cult. What begins as a competitive dare turns into something neither expected, as two people who write for a living learn how hard it is to be honest about their own lives. Warm, funny, and quietly devastating in its handling of grief, Beach Read is a romance about writer's block, disillusionment, and the stubborn possibility of hope.

• rivals

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

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love. Poppy and Alex have been best friends since college, and for a decade they've spent one week a year on vacation together, far from their regular lives. But after a trip that ended their friendship two years ago, they haven't spoken since. Poppy has everything she should want, but she's unhappy, and she knows the answer is Alex. When she calls and asks him to take one more vacation together, to try and salvage the friendship, he agrees. This might be the last chance they have to fix what went wrong, and it might also be their last chance to admit what they've been dancing around for years.

• friends to lovers
• grumpy sunshine
• dual timeline

Daphne moved to the small lakeside town of Waning Bay, Michigan, for her fiancé, Peter — right up until he called off the wedding because he'd fallen in love with his lifelong best friend, Petra. Now Daphne is heartbroken, nearly homeless, and stuck in a town where the only person who understands exactly how she feels is Miles Nowak: Petra's dumped ex-boyfriend. With nowhere else to go, Daphne takes the spare room in Miles's apartment. They could not be more different — she's a careful, buttoned-up children's librarian; he's a warm, chaotic mess — and at first they barely speak. Then, almost by accident, they start pretending to be a couple, partly to save face and partly to needle the exes who left them. What's meant to be a performance turns into long summer days at the beach, honest late-night conversations, and a friendship that neither of them planned on. Funny Story is a warm, funny, tender romance about rebuilding a life after it falls apart, and discovering that the person who gets you might be the last one you'd expect.

• fake dating
• grumpy sunshine

Nora Stephens is a cutthroat literary agent, not the sweet small-town heroine who gets swept off her feet in the novels she sells. So when her sister Libby drags her to the tiny town of Sunshine Falls, North Carolina, for a month-long escape, Nora doesn't expect a fairy-tale transformation — and she certainly doesn't expect to keep running into Charlie Lastra, a brooding big-city editor she already can't stand. But the more their paths cross, the harder it is to remember why they're supposed to be enemies. As Nora tries to give her burned-out sister the perfect getaway and untangle her own fear of being left behind, she starts to wonder whether the woman who never gets the guy might be writing her own story wrong. Emily Henry's sharp, funny, and surprisingly tender romance is a love letter to books, to sisters, and to the people who don't fit neatly into anyone else's plot.

• enemies to lovers

A cozy fantasy romantic comedy in which Evie Sage, twenty-three and desperate to support her ailing family, takes a job as personal assistant to the most feared man in the kingdom of Rennedawn — and finds herself hunting the traitor sabotaging his empire while trying very hard not to fall for her boss.

• grumpy sunshine
• workplace romance
• slow burn
• morally grey

Sloane Sutherland and Rowan Kane are both serial killers — but they only kill other killers, the predators the law never catches. When their paths cross during a competitive, invitation-only "game" that turns vigilante murder into an annual contest, the two rivals strike up an unlikely friendship built on gallows humor, shared trauma, and a mutual appreciation for creative violence. What starts as banter and one-upmanship slowly deepens into something neither of them expected or knows how to handle. But Sloane and Rowan both carry wounds from the past, and as their bond grows, an old threat begins closing in — one tangled up in the reasons they each became what they are. The first book in Brynne Weaver's Ruinous Love Trilogy, Butcher & Blackbird is a dark romantic comedy that swings between graphic horror and genuine tenderness. Following the Kane family and the dangerous women they love, it pairs an extremely violent premise with banter-driven, slow-burn romance — squarely for readers who like their love stories pitch-black.

• rivals
• morally grey
• found family
• slow burn

For eight years, Harriet and Wyn were the couple everyone else measured themselves against — until, quietly, they weren't. Five months after their engagement fell apart, they still haven't told a soul. So when their tight-knit college friend group gathers for its annual week at the beloved cottage in Maine, Harriet and Wyn do the only thing that seems less painful than the truth: they pretend nothing has changed. That means sharing a room, sharing a bed, and performing a relationship they no longer have — all while the friends around them nurse secrets of their own, and the cottage that anchors every summer is quietly slipping out of reach. A surgical resident who avoids conflict at all costs, Harriet finds a week of forced proximity with the man she still loves almost unbearable, and slowly the reasons they broke up start to surface. Told across the golden week in Maine and the years that led to it, Happy Place is a tender, bittersweet romance about the difference between loving someone and being right for them — and about whether a second chance is worth the honesty it demands.

• fake dating
• second chance
• forced proximity

Clementine West is a New York book publicist still hollowed out by the death of her beloved aunt Analea, who left her a coveted Upper East Side apartment. Analea always claimed the apartment was "a pinch in time" — a place where moments blur together like watercolours. Clementine never believed it, until she walks into her own kitchen and finds a warm-eyed stranger with a Southern drawl and a weakness for lemon pie standing where he shouldn't be. The catch is that he is living in the apartment seven years in the past, and she is seven years in his future. As their impossible visits continue, Clementine finds herself falling for a man she can only meet across a gap of time — and then she begins to encounter him in her own present, where nothing is quite as she remembers it. A tender, wistful romance about grief, timing, and the courage to love again, The Seven Year Slip blends a light touch of magic with a very grounded story of learning to live after loss.

• dual timeline

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

Justin Dahl seems to be under a curse: every woman he dates meets the love of her life immediately after they break up. When he jokes about it online, a stranger named Emma reaches out, because the exact same thing keeps happening to her. Emma, a traveling nurse who has spent her life moving from town to town with her unreliable mother, proposes an experiment: they should date each other and then break up, hoping the two curses cancel out and finally leave them both free. Emma takes an assignment in Justin's Minnesota town for the summer, planning a low-stakes fling in a lakeside cottage. But Justin's crowded, chaotic family and Emma's complicated relationship with her mother refuse to stay out of the way, and the arrangement starts to feel like something neither of them planned for. Abby Jimenez pairs a charming high-concept premise with the harder material she is known for, including family dysfunction and the long shadow of an unstable parent. Just for the Summer is a warm, funny romance about people who have learned not to count on staying, learning what it might mean to stay anyway.

• fake dating
• multiple povs

Rowan Kane is a Kane — which means he is a billionaire, an heir to a fading amusement empire, and, by his own account, cursed to ruin every good thing he touches. When his late grandfather's will hands him a single condition — revive the family's beloved theme park, Dreamland — he throws himself into the work and leaves feelings firmly out of it. Then Zahra Gulian, a sharp, imaginative employee, pitches him an idea (badly, and a little drunk) that could change everything — and lands herself squarely under his notoriously exacting management. The closer they work, the harder Rowan's rules are to keep, and the more Zahra suspects the real project isn't the park at all. The first book in Lauren Asher's Dreamland Billionaires series, The Fine Print is a grumpy-sunshine workplace romance about inheritance, self-sabotage, and learning that the things that matter most can't be bought.

• grumpy sunshine
• workplace romance

Lara Jean Song Covey writes a love letter to every boy she's ever loved — then hides it away, never to be sent. When all five letters are mailed without her knowledge, she strikes a fake-dating bargain with Peter Kavinsky to survive the fallout. Book one of Jenny Han's To All the Boys trilogy.

• fake dating
• coming of age

Figure skater Anastasia Allen has built her life around a single goal: a place on the U.S. Olympic team. Her training, her diet, and her tightly managed routines leave no room for distraction, least of all the university hockey team that suddenly has to share her rink after the campus arena is damaged. Nate Hawkins, the hockey captain bound for the NHL, is everything Anastasia tries to avoid: loud, easygoing, and impossible to ignore. When a prank pushes the two teams into the same practice schedule and her own skating partnership falls apart, Anastasia and Nate strike an uneasy deal that forces them together day after day. What begins as friction slowly turns into something neither of them planned for. Set at the fictional University of California, Maple Hills, this hockey romance balances competitive pressure, anxiety, and a controlling skating partner against the easy warmth Nate brings into Anastasia's carefully ordered world. The first book in the Maple Hills series, it follows two driven athletes learning to let someone in without losing sight of who they are.

• grumpy sunshine

An adjunct physicist moonlighting as a professional fake girlfriend meets her match in the one man who refuses to let her hide behind a performance.

• enemies to lovers
• workplace romance

Olive Torres considers herself chronically unlucky, especially beside her identical twin sister Ami, whose life always falls into place. The pattern seems to flip at Ami's wedding, where nearly the entire reception is felled by food poisoning from the buffet -- everyone except Olive and Ethan Thomas, the groom's brother and the one man Olive cannot stand. With the newlyweds too sick to travel, their non-transferable, all-expenses-paid tropical honeymoon would go to waste, so Ami insists Olive take it. The catch: it is booked under the newlyweds' names, so Olive and Ethan must go together and pose as the married couple. Sworn enemies forced into close quarters, they agree to a fragile truce -- which grows more complicated when Olive runs into someone from her professional life and a small lie spirals, forcing them to fully commit to the loving-newlywed act in public. As the days pass, Olive begins to question whether her dislike of Ethan was ever the whole story. The novel pairs sharp banter with a warm, family-centered emotional core.

• enemies to lovers
• fake dating
• forced proximity

Liz Buxbaum has scripted her senior-year romance with childhood crush Michael Young down to the last cinematic beat — except Michael barely notices her. Enlisting her prank-loving neighbour Wes Bennett as an unlikely coach, Liz starts to wonder whether the movie-perfect ending she planned is really the one she wants.

• enemies to lovers
• grumpy sunshine
• slow burn
• coming of age

Divorcing, overworked ER doctor Briana Ortiz clashes with Jacob Maddox, the new doctor competing for her promotion, until he wins her over with an unexpected letter. Their fake-dating arrangement and growing correspondence turn into something real. A warm, funny Abby Jimenez romance about anxiety, generosity, and learning to trust.

• fake dating
• epistolary
• workplace romance
• rivals

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

Aiden Valentine hosts Heartstrings, Baltimore's late-night radio romance hotline — and privately he has stopped believing in love. When a young girl calls in asking for dating advice for her single mother, the segment goes viral and the station puts the pair at the centre of an on-air matchmaking campaign. A Sleepless in Seattle–inspired slow burn, and book one of B.K. Borison's Heartstrings series.

• slow burn
• forced proximity

Adjunct physicist Elsie Hannaway moonlights as a paid fake girlfriend — until the brother of her favourite client turns out to be Jack Smith, the MIT physicist standing between her and the tenure-track job that would change her life.

• enemies to lovers
• rivals
• fake dating
• workplace romance

Spanish-language edition of "The Spanish Love Deception." Catalina Martín needs a date for her sister's wedding in Spain and ropes in Aaron, the office colleague she can't stand, to pose as her boyfriend. Enemies-to-lovers slow burn, first book in Elena Armas's Love Deception series.

• fake dating
• enemies to lovers
• slow burn

Lucy Hutton and Joshua Templeman are executive assistants to the two co-CEOs of a merged publishing house, and they have made a full-time occupation out of hating each other. They share an office and an ever-escalating series of games — the staring game, the mirror game, the HR game — that Lucy is determined never to lose. When a coveted promotion opens up and pits them directly against one another, the war turns white-hot. But a single unguarded moment in an elevator makes Lucy wonder whether what she feels for Joshua is really loathing at all, or just the flip side of something she's been refusing to name. Sally Thorne's debut is a sharp, funny, slow-burn enemies-to-lovers rom-com about workplace rivalry, misread signals, and the thin line between hate and want.

• enemies to lovers
• workplace romance
• slow burn

Autistic econometrician Stella Lane hires escort Michael Phan to teach her how to date, treating intimacy as a problem to be practiced and solved. But their arrangement grows into something neither planned. Helen Hoang's warm, tender debut romance about self-acceptance and being loved as you are.

NBA star Ryan Shay needs to convince his team's GM he has a work-life balance, and who better to help than his sister's best friend, Indy Ivers, who just moved in? They strike a deal to fake a relationship, but with Indy living under his roof and sharing his bed, the lines between real and pretend quickly blur. Ryan finds himself drawn to Indy's warmth, while Indy is navigating her own complicated feelings, especially with her ex-boyfriend attending an upcoming wedding.

• fake dating
• forced proximity
• grumpy sunshine

Naomi Witt has always been the responsible twin, so when her troublemaking sister Tina summons her to the rough-around-the-edges town of Knockemout, Virginia, Naomi drops everything to help. Instead she finds herself robbed, stranded, and suddenly responsible for a niece she never knew existed — with no money, no plan, and nowhere to go. Enter Knox Morgan, the gruff, tattooed local who wants nothing to do with other people's problems and even less to do with a woman who clearly means trouble. But as Naomi digs in and refuses to run, the two of them keep colliding, and the walls Knox has built start to crack. Lucy Score's small-town romance mixes grumpy-meets-sunshine banter, found family, and a thread of danger, launching the Knockemout series with humor and heat.

• grumpy sunshine
• found family
• fish out of water

When social media manager Samantha Diaz brings her ailing kitten to veterinarian Xavier Rush, the visit goes badly — he gently suggests it may be kindest to put the kitten down, and Samantha, refusing to accept it, crowdfunds the treatment to prove him wrong. Weeks later, a chastened Xavier apologizes and asks her out, and their first date turns out to be the best night of Samantha's life. There is just one problem: the very next morning, Samantha is leaving Minneapolis for Glendale, California, to care for her mother, who has early-onset dementia. What might have been the start of something becomes a long-distance leap of faith, tested by two thousand miles and by the very real weight each of them is already carrying. The first book in Abby Jimenez's Say You'll Remember Me series, this is a warm, funny, and emotionally honest contemporary romance that pairs sweet and steamy moments with a clear-eyed look at caregiving, grief, and the courage it takes to fall for someone when your life is anything but settled.

• grumpy sunshine
• multiple povs

A pediatrician gets snowbound with the tech-billionaire brother of her best friend—the man she once loved and left. Ali Hazelwood's cozy, high-heat holiday novella is a quick, one-sitting second-chance romance, first in the Under the Mistletoe Collection.

• second chance
• forced proximity

Piper Bellinger has spent her twenties as a Los Angeles socialite, coasting on beauty, a huge online following, and her stepfather's money. When a party stunt lands her in the tabloids one too many times, he cuts her off and sends her north to run the rundown Washington bar her late father left behind, betting that a season of honest work will teach her who she is without the spotlight. Westport is cold, damp, and utterly unimpressed by Piper. So is Brendan Taggart, the broad-shouldered fishing-boat captain who becomes her most maddening problem and her most magnetic one. He is quiet where she is dazzling, rooted where she is restless, and certain she will bolt back to California the moment things get hard. With her steady younger sister Hannah at her side, Piper starts to rebuild the bar and, almost without meaning to, a life. Warm, funny, and unabashedly steamy, It Happened One Summer is a fish-out-of-water romance about grief, reinvention, and the pull between the person you were raised to be and the one you actually want to become.

• grumpy sunshine
• forced proximity
• fish out of water