The apparently-frivolous romance genre has always had a subversive thread at its heart: by centring the perspectives and desires of women when these were not often valued, romance served an important function. And authors are continuing this grand tradition by creating main characters with diverse backgrounds and personalities.
In the only genre that promises happy endings, it can be incredibly satisfying to meet a main character who is queer and/or marginalised in other ways, and know from the beginning that they’ll find love and happiness. The anticipation of assured future happiness can be sweet for readers who are not used to characters like these getting a love story, or at least one that doesn’t end in tragedy. Many wonderful queer romances have been published (especially in Western fiction) in the last decade, and you can find many lists and round-ups. But if you need a guide, here are my hand-picked favourites.
Adiba Jaigirdar’s Bengali-Irish girls
Adiba Jaigirdar writes delicious YA (young adult) novels about Bengali-Irish teenage girls falling in love (often with another Bengali-Irish girl). In Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating, nerdy, ambitious, maybe-lesbian, atheist, Indian-Bengali Ishita (dak naam: Ishu) fake-dates soft, people-pleasing, popular, bisexual, Muslim, Bangladeshi Humaira (dak naam: Hani) for convoluted teenager-logic reasons. As in all romances where two people pretend to date each other, they fall in love. Other similar novels by Jaigirdar (which I have read excerpts of and can’t wait to get into) include The Dos and Donuts of Love, set in a Great British Bake Off-type reality TV show, and Rani Chowdhury Must Die, an enemies-to-lovers story.
Darcy Liao’s protective meet-cute
A Jewish-Indian grad student whose ex-boyfriend is harassing her on a New York street gets rescued by a Chinese electrician who then invites her to be her roommate. Mira is trans and broke and trying to get her co-workers to unionise, and Isabel is a butch lesbian who’s grieving the death of her sister and her subsequent break-up. I have never rooted for a fictional couple more than I have for the characters of Make Room for Love.
Cat Sebastian’s tender men
In We Could Be So Good, a journalist in 1950s New York falls in love with his colleague and roommate. One of the reasons I love period romances is for their exploration of queer people finding love and joy despite anti-gay laws (which feels cathartic with Section 377 being a recent memory). Peter Cabot Gets Lost, set in the USA in 1960, has two college classmates taking a long road trip together and inevitably falling in love. Sebastian also writes Regency romances: Unmasked by the Marquess is a fun romp featuring a nonbinary domestic servant and a bisexual aristocrat.
KJ Charles’s historical suspense romcoms
KJ Charles has a substantial oeuvre of romances set in England, and you could do worse than to start with An Unseen Attraction by KJ Charles (the first in her Victorian Sins of the Cities trilogy), featuring Clem Talleyfer, a part Indian, likely neurodivergent lodging-house keeper who falls in love with a white lodger who is a taxidermist.
Most of KJ Charles’ romances have a bonus murder mystery or some kind of crime suspense, which I for one really appreciate, as well as interesting class dynamics, which is refreshing for a sub-genre (historical romance) which disproportionately features rich, powerful people. I’ve read all of them, so here are a few more to whet your appetite. An Unsuitable Heir is also part of the Sins of the Cities series, and I am especially fond of the nonbinary circus-artist hero who refuses to compromise on his gender presentation (though the book does use the hero’s queerness as a plot point). In Regency-era Wanted, A Gentleman, one of the heroes is Black and runs the self-explanatory Matrimonial Advisor.
For something a bit more modern, try Think of England, set in the early 1900s, in which an uptight ex-military man is at first disgusted and then intrigued by a suspicious young man (he’s a foreigner and obviously queer!) and then they team up and survive a shootout (spoiler, but I told you this is happy endings only).
Olivia Waite’s middle-aged heroines
The Care and Feeding of Waspish Widows by Olivia Waite features two middle-aged women: a widow who runs a printing press and a beekeeper with a long-distance husband. Cranky middle-aged women falling in love and figuring out how to build a life together in 1800s England? This book was everything I didn’t know I needed. Also try Hen Fever – another animal husbandry pun! – where the heroines keep chickens together before, of course, falling in love.
Rose Lerner’s nerdy protagonists
The Wife in the Attic is Jane Eyre fan fiction, where the “mad” wife and the young governess become allies and lovers and the Rochestor-like husband/employer is the villain. I also very much enjoyed Sailor’s Delight, where a diffident Jewish bookkeeper falls for a handsome sailor.
Lex Croucher’s arty parties
Lex Croucher’s Infamous is difficult to categorise, as much YA/coming-of-age as romance. The protagonist is a young aspiring writer who is starstruck by a douchebag male writer, while remaining annoyingly oblivious to her Chinese-British best friend’s feelings. And there are literary house parties which I enjoyed reading about. Reputation too has a similar combination of a lot of wild parties and a grounded romance. These are both Regency-era novels but the setting feels more of a suggestion than a constraint: the vibe is Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, without the impending revolution.
Alexis Hall’s un-binary main characters
You may not believe me when I say I have never watched an episode of The Great British Bake-Off, given that two novels in this listicle are set in fictional versions of that show. Rosaline Palmer Takes the Cake by Alexis Hall has a bisexual single-mother protagonist who falls in love with a man but wants you to remember she’s bisexual (which is a sentiment I may relate to). If you want another historical romance instead, try A Lady for a Duke, where two old friends who fought together at Waterloo have an emotional reunion – and one of them is a trans woman.
Laura Kay’s queer communes
Wild Things by Laura Kay is a friends-to-lovers romance that is full of melancholy pining as well as joy and friendship. More than the romance, the appealing fantasy is of a group of friends buying a big house in a beautiful village and living together and going swimming in the village pond and throwing a big party for their wonderful new neighbours. Also check out Kay’s Making It, where a deeply depressed crochet artist moves to London and instantly finds friendship and, eventually, love. Both these books have romantic entanglements with colleagues and housemates, and the inevitable fallout; though, of course, everything comes right by the end.
Casey McQuiston’s fantastical happy endings
Another book in which our heroine (August) moves to the big city (in this case, New York) and gets roommates who turn out to be great friends (instant-found family!) is One Last Stop by Casey McQuiston. It’s an unrealistic trope but a deeply appealing one, and in books like these (One Last Stop, as well as Wild Things and Making It by Laura Kay) the romance is just one aspect of the perfect community that is awaiting our heroine in the big city. The love interest is a time-travelling Chinese-American love interest who was a queer rights activist in the 1970s, though Jane never quite becomes a fully fleshed-out person instead of merely August’s object of desire.
You have likely already heard of Casey McQuiston’s more famous novel, Red, White and Royal Blue, which was made into a movie. An impossible premise – the son of the American president and a British prince get together – that glosses over the colonial sins of both these two gigantic empires and focuses on the celebrity aspects, but if you can accept this as an alternate, more just world, is pretty well executed.
Rebecca Fraimow’s space shenanigans
Lady Eve’s Last Con takes place in the distant future on a distant planet. Our heroine (the titular Lady Eve, otherwise known as Ruthi, who is Black and Jewish) is out for revenge and compensation for her sister. What follows is impersonation, intrigue, space business (literally) and a hot hot romance between the crooked lead and the protective sister of her mark. Very fun.
Felicia Davin’s genre/gender-bending
In the Scandalous Letters of V and J, Victor and Julie/Julien, meet and become close as inmates of a boarding house in 1823 Paris. Both leads are nonbinary, and Julie/Julien is a magical artist who uses their self-portraits to change their appearance. A+ pining, lots of love letters, some magic and a thrilling revenge plot.
I don’t know why I haven’t read the sequels yet, but I guess I now know what I’m doing on Valentine’s Day. If you’ve read this far, may yours too be full of love.
Unmana is a writer based in Mumbai. Their debut novel Chikkamma Tours (Pvt.) Ltd was published in 2024. It is a queer bibliomystery.
