As we enter the month of love, as many refer to February, a new genre of books becomes the main interest. Whether you’re single or happily married to the love of your life, everyone loves a cheesy romcom, and what better time to read some than the season of love?

One of my all-time favorite books I read in 2024 is The Seven Year Slip, by Ashley Poston. It’s a magical realism story where the main character lives in an apartment and falls in love with a boy who just so happens to be living there seven years in the past. I adored this book. It did everything I needed it to. It was so fun, the romance was incredible, and the plot was so interesting. It’s one of my top 10 romcoms of all time, and I’m serious when I say if you haven’t read this book, please do.

Perfect, quick romance reads include the Bridgerton books, by Julia Quinn. As mentioned in this column before, the Bridgerton books are as lovely as the show, adding depth to the characters and an extra hint of spice. This series is interconnected, meaning all the characters appear in the others, but you don’t need to read one to read the others. Jumping into Benedict’s or Colin’s book without reading Daphne’s is totally OK and changes nothing from the book’s plot.

February is also Black History Month, so I will focus on incredible romcoms by Black authors. Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute, By Talia Hibbert, is an adorable YA novel about an unconventional romance between football player Bradly and your average high school girl, Celine. A Nominee for Goodreads Readers’ Favorite Young Adult Fiction (2023) with over 30,000 reviews, this is the perfect love story for young readers and hopeless romantics.

The Neighbor Favor, by Kristina Forest, is about Lily Greene, a nonfiction editor who dreams of editing children’s books. To escape real life, she starts an email correspondence with her favorite fantasy author – until he ghosts her. Months later, Lily is determined to find a date for her sister’s wedding to regain her life. She recruits her neighbor, Nick Brown, but little does she know he is an author – her favorite author. With an average rating of 3.83 stars out of five, there is no doubt that people love this book and its incredible romance and plot.
Kennedy Ryan is a fantastic USA Today bestselling author of mainly romance novels. Her most popular book, Before I Let Go, is a lovely novel about second-chance romance and the wounds that reopen when something begins after it hasn’t fully healed. A story with over 80,000 ratings and 14,000 reviews, readers everywhere love Ryan’s beautifully written romances.

Taking a look into Black history, Their Eyes Were Watching God, by Zora Neale Hurston, published in 1937 during the Harlem Renaissance, is a story of a young black girl in her 30s and her quest to be her own person through three marriages and other adversity. Most often taught in AP literature courses, students and readers love this book and Hurtson’s beautiful writing and prose. In a time when women, especially Black women, were often overlooked, Hurston wrote a stunning novel and became one of the most widely read authors of the Harlem Renaissance.