Romance novels are all over the big and small screen. Bridgerton, Virgin River, The Hating Game, One Day, Red, White & Royal Blue—they’ve all drawn huge audiences and proved, again, what romance readers have always known: these stories can work. Their source material is rich with tension, grounded in emotion, and built around the thing most screenwriters claim to want—strong characters whom viewers connect with and care about.

More adaptations are coming. Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation are in production. The Kiss Quotient, The Unhoneymooners, and Not In Love have been optioned. Ana Huang’s Twisted Love series is headed for television. These are all high-profile titles with wide appeal, and here’s hoping their screen versions please romance lovers the way the print one do. 

Honestly, I’d love to see many more. 

Julie Anne Long’s Pennyroyal Green series is at the top of my list. Give it the time and scope of a prestige drama and let the ache build properly. Meredith Duran’s Rules for the Reckless series deserves a serious adaptation—one that trusts its audience to follow the quiet devastations alongside the big moments. Kristan Higgins’s Blue Heron books would make a beautiful, funny, (at times) heartbreaking series if the writers understood that humor doesn’t cancel out depth. And I’d love to see Alyssa Cole’s Runaway Royals adapted with its intelligence and joy intact.

For films, I’d start with Forever Your Rogue by Erin Langston, Eleanore of Avignon by Elizabeth DeLozier, and Bride by Ali Hazelwood. Each of these novels has the kind of focused emotional arc that suits a feature format—provided, of course, the adaptation honors the book’s tone, pacing, and conclusion. For me, a romance only works on screen if the people making it treat the story and its ending with respect.

Which romance novels would you like to see adapted? And what are your criteria for doing it right?