For almost twenty years, I ran All About Romance, one of the genre’s essential institutions: a place where romance was taken seriously without anyone having to pretend we were all swooning over the latest unreadable Booker Prize winner. I’m not sure how many romances I’ve read—2,000? 3,000?—but it’s a lot. A lot a lot.

I don’t read much romance anymore. The genre has moved away from my tastes, and my tastes have changed too. Still, I think romance novels are the bomb. They lift readers up—I’m a big fan of aspirational fiction—and at their best, they can be excellent in all the ways great books are excellent: thrilling plots, characters you’d love to meet, and prose that makes you gasp.

I’m often asked which are my favorites.

Here, in no particular order, here are my top ten.

The Everlasting by Alix E. Harrow

Bench Player by Julianna Keyes

Dukes are Forever by Bec McMasters

My Lord and Spymaster by Joanna Bourne

Off the Edge by Annika Martin

Uncommon Passion by Anne Calhoun

His at Night by Sherry Thomas

Reckless by Anne Stuart

The Duke of Shadows by Meredith Duran

I Kissed an Earl by Julie Anne Long.

note: this list may change with time as most things do

and

a contemporary romance coming out in October—Bad Words by Rioghnach Robinson—will replace Reckless by Anne Stuart