I was part of a four-person committee force (or task-ittee?) with Michelle Monkou, Sherry Thomas, and Bobbi Dumas to determine the NPR’s Summer of Love list of 100 Swoon-Worthy Romances. After a ton (a TON) of nominations via Google and two very long (whoa long) conference calls, the list has been announced.
Have a look at the NPR top 100 Romances!
AND ALSO THE GRAPHIC which I LOVE SO MUCH, and was created by Mary McLain at NPR. Applause and champagne for Ms. McLain!
We tried to build a list that would show the variety of the different types of romance while highlighting titles that readers love to recommend. If you’re curious as to why a particular book didn’t make it, Petra, one of the NPR Books editors, write about that part of the process, too.
I’m sure there’s a book of six you think should have been on the list – and I know NPR wants to hear about it (and so do I if you’re inclined). This was a lot of fun – so thank you to NPR for inviting me.
And apologies to everyone who might have to add a bunch of these to the TBR. Oh, the dangerous temptation of lists.
Wow, you guys hit it out of the park. I was expecting a list of “same-old, same-old” romances not prepared to see 99% of my favorite authors of all romance type genres mentioned. I was only half surprised to see Susanna Kearsley but I was really floored when the late Judith Merkle Riley made your list. Thank you for remembering people like Robin Schone and Linda Howard’s fabulous McKenzie series while including my favorite cracktastic Motorcycle Man by Kristen Ashley . As Niles Crane would say “Kudos indeed!”
That’s an excellent list. Thanks for sharing and for being part of the project!
Wowzers! This list is incredible, and so comprehensive! And So. Freaking. Tempting. I only bought two for now, but have bookmarked the list for later perusal.
Oh my god! There’s a Judith Merkle Riley book on your list! My personal favourites of hers are A Vision of Light and its sequel In Pursuit of the Green Lion. They set my expectations for medieval romance so high only The Pillars of the Earth has ever managed to challenge them, but all her books are gold.
That broad, diverse, clearly-well-informed list dulls the memory of the horrid Mary Sue article. Thank you! So many new-to-me titles to explore!
Such a wonderful list to scroll through. Lots of favorites and lots of book to add to my wishlist.
Can’t get the list page to load on my iPad (keep getting an error message, although I could read Petra’s article) – frustrating! A couple of years ago NPR did a great list of SF and Fantasy, my son decided to read the SF portion of the list and has almost completed it.
Love it! So many faves on the list, plus many I have been wanting to try, and ones I read long ago and forgot how much I loved (Nine Coaches Waiting!).
*sigh* My tbr list is already too long.
By sheer coincidence, I’m reading this in my local library, so at least that’s convenient.
My Amazon wishlist runneth over! So many new titles and authors to explore. Thanks for posting this.
But… no Victoria Dahl?
Sarah, it’s a marvelous list. M.M. Kaye! Judith Ivory! Radclyffe and Carla Kelly, together for the first time! I immediately shared it on Facebook, because I want to evangelize the heck out of it.
Great list! There are so many books I’ve heard about hear and elsewhere, plus a few I’ve not seen before.
So many good choices in the Historical category and so many I have read. May be time for a re-read of Something Wonderful.
@joanna I’m on an IPad too and I’m having the same problem.
I would never have thought to include them, but I’m so happy one of Eva Ibbotson’s romances made it onto the list. I adore those books SO MUCH, old fashioned and purple though they may be, and I want more people to have read them!
That graphic. #relationshipgoals
Great list! How did I not know that Eva Ibbotson wrote a historical?!
Great list! So many favorites and so many discovered right here. I loved that entire series were on the list. Way to expand your options.
I’m sorry Victoria Dahl, Edith Layton and Rachel Gibson didn’t make the cut, but it’s inevitable that that will happen on any 100 best list. I’m sure I’ll think of others that would have made my personal top ten, but the amazing thing is I didn’t see anything that made me say, Oh my god, what were they thinking to choose that!
One question: is there a printable text list available, preferably not annotated?
My internal monologue, reading the LGBTQ section: “Dudes; ladies (yay!); dudes, dudes, dudes, du—WHAT? There’s a bisexual romance! Yes! Fucking finally! Woo-hoo! I must buy it immediately. Where’s the link, give me the link, gimme gimme gimme!”
It is so damn hard to find a bisexual romance in general, and even harder to find one that doesn’t stereotype us as insatiable sex fiends who must HUMP ALL THE THINGS in order to be fulfilled.
Thank-you for a great list. Good to see some of my favourites on there, and interested to read some of the ones that I don’t know!
DPR:
I know what you mean. One of my biggest pet peeves is that when I do, in fact, find a romance with a bi character, it’s almost always menage erotica, which ain’t my cuppa and it pisses me off, because it contributes to this outrageous idea that bi people are not monogamous (and happily so) and that every bi-person is up for a three-way to fulfill someone else’s sexual fantasy. I just want a story about a bi girl who falls in love with another girl and she’s not looking to “add a guy because she misses the d” or anything. Or about a bi guy who falls in love with a guy and no, he’s not gay and in denial, he legit loves this other guy and doesn’t feel like “the girl” because he’s not boinking a girl. Ugh. If I can’t find it, then one day I’ll write it, darn it!
Dear Authors: “Bi” does NOT MEAN “sex fiend who only has poly relationships and when they don’t have poly relationships their sex lives are incomplete and need that other person to make it all “just right” or run out and cheat to “get what they lack”. Urgh.
@Heather S,
“it’s almost always menage erotica, which ain’t my cuppa and it pisses me off”
Come sit with me. We can drink wine and complain about our mutual pet peeve and throw darts at offending titles.
Some glorious day, I will find a romance about a bisexual, atheist, childfree feminist, and she won’t be vilified for any of those things, and she won’t change her mind, and I will live happily ever after.
Thanks, Sarah, for being part of the jury process. I Love the list, and added a half dozen books to my TBR pile.
Most of the list is in my AR pile – Already Read – and are indeed my favs too.
One author I would add for those looking for more SF romance: Linnea Sinclair.
@Dread Pirate Rachel: Not sure if this is up your alley, but check tomorrow’s Books on Sale! We’re featuring a poly-romance between a group of bisexual and gay/lesbian characters, though it’s erotica, so it’s definitely heavy on the humpage.
Great overall list. Some authors I wish were on it but aren’t, of course that is always to be expected. What I like about this list is over all variety of books and authors. Most all it adds to my “need to read” list and that is never a bad thing.
The one exception to this fabulous list is Moning. Her Highlander series is much, so much better than the Fever series (true HEA and not just UF) and is what really got her on the map to begin with. Other than that, a great list with some new stories for me to read!
DPR:
I’ll take sparkling apple cider. You’re ALSO CF? Girl. We need to hang out. All my friends have kids and I practically never see them. Or they live super far away and I never see them. Also a pet peeve: romances that end with the woman pregnant or with newborn offspring or x number of offspring corresponding to the number of years said couple has been wed. Reproduction doesn’t make your love “more real and better” and all that jazz! You can be crazy in love and devoted to each other and NOT HAVE KIDS. It’s OKAY. *sigh*
I’d love to read a story about a bi, childfree, hijabi Muslim woman who falls in love with another woman and it’s legit and the Muslim lady is never made to feel like she can’t be bi and a person of faith and neither of them wants or even likes kids but they love cats and books and the beach and beautiful fall days and they live happily ever after.
I’m rambling. I need to step away from the interwebs. Or maybe I’ll go back to ogling that post about Jareth, the scrumptious Goblin King of Tights.
Heck yes to a bi romance that is actually a romance and not a “hump eveyone! hump everything!” tepid tale of sex. And if the heroine could be physically disabled, just once, that would be fantastic.
Almost every one of my votes is on this list (minus The Bronze Horseman, but I understand that’s more historical epic than romance novel). I’m really curious to read Pennyroyal Green, The Lotus Palace, Indigo, and Blaze!
Of course LoS is first! I was very happy to see MJP’s The Rake make the list and Georgette Heyer’s Venetia. A great list! Well done NPR.
@Heather S and @Kate:
Hell. Yes. I would read the absolute crap out of those stories. Especially if they were lighthearted and fun and not all about angst and tragic backstories. Because goddamn am I tired of reading LGBTQ tragedies–why do they always have a partner who got fridged? Even the bisexual romance that got me started on this rant has that trope.
It would be lovely to read a romance that just happens to be about a couple of queer ladies without their sexual orientations being one of the main sources of conflict in the book. My list of requirements is getting longer. I should probably stop before I veer into really unrealistic territory, like hoping never to see another late night host ask a bisexual celebrity when they’re going to make up their mind.
While we’re wishing for romances that don’t exist, I’d love more romances not written by Americans. Because whether the novels take place in France, or the Caribbean, or Scotland (hello objectified Scotsman Thursday on tumblr), or Iceland, or some planet inhabited by lizard people with boobs, they’re always written by Americans.
I’m jealous of people who read crime, because they get books and authors from all over the globe. I want diversity!
Nightsmusic: that’s funny, because the only books I really liked from Moning were the first set of Fever books (and I did really really like them!!)
Overall this is such a great list, of the books I’ve read, 90% are faves (there were a few that had me giving the list some side eye), and my TBR list is going to grow so much now …. I especially love the mentions of series and other books by each author, so my TBR list can grow even more!
Two of my three favorite historical series made the list (Rose Lerner’s “Lively St. Lemeston” will get its due recognition someday.) I as really pleased with how up to date and diverse it wad; makes me willung to believe that it’s a good source of revommendations.
@DPR and HeatherS:
I hear you! One thing I really liked about Beneath the Lights by Dahlia Adler was how accepting the narrative was of people who were bi, and the heroine’s realization that maybe she’s bi, too. I dislike the device of being bi as a “hey, you can menage, right?” instant plot opportunity. The thing I like very much about Butterfly Tattoo (among other things) is that the hero and his friends struggle with his attraction to the heroine, that it’s not what they expected, and a lot of perspectives have to adjust. So it is a m/f story, but that adjustment and acceptance is part of the narrative arc. If you haven’t read it, I hope you like it.
I want to point out that the list is not numbered or ranked. The top of the page is not #1, and so on, though I completely understand reading it that way! That isn’t how the list was intended.
Also: it is amazing how fast you run out of space when you’ve got 100 spots. So difficult!
But I’m so pleased that you like it, and that you’re finding new books to read. It was a lot of work to put together, and reading the discussions about it (since any list generates discussion) has been terrific. Thank you.
@Linnet:
I know exactly what you mean. Oddly enough, most romance published in the US is written in English in the US or UK. But I heard at RWA about an upcoming romance from a Swedish bestselling author that’s being translated into English for the US market. I think – and I’m not 100% sure I’m remembering this right – but I believe that less than 5% of books (not just romances, but books in general) published in the US are translated from other languages.
So thrilled A BOLLYWOOD AFFAIR made the list! Also, my TBR pile just tripled in size…
Why did I not know about The Serpent Garden!? Thank you!
Hell to the yes re: Judith Merkle Riley. I happened upon The Oracle Glass one fateful summer day at my local library and then I devoured her body of work.
This list might push me into reading some of the other historical entries. Milan, Dare, Long, and lately MacLean are must read authors for me and I’m loath to take chances sometimes.
@ DPR @ Heather S @ Kate?
I have a question for the BI lot. Please, please forgive me for sounding like I live under a rock but… I live under a rock?
I totally understand bisexuality in a single person, or a person in an uncommitted relationship, or in a poly relationship. What I don’t understand is calling yourself bisexual if you have settled on a single person.
I mean, I get that if that relationship ended you would continue to be bisexual but, if you’re a BI woman and you commit to a relationship with another woman, wouldn’t you be lesbian during that time? Or if you’re a BI woman and you settled on committing to a relationship with a man wouldn’t you stop being bisexual for that time?
Honest questions. I really am confused over the terminology.
I think where I’m confused is that if I happened to be in a relationship, for me it would be with a man, because that’s how I roll, and he designated himself as bisexual during our relationship, I would feel very insecure. And I wonder if that’s an issue?
Also, I totally agree that the not having straight romance, no pun intended, for bisexual people, or any other group of people, is maddening. More so when your particular sexuality is used for wish fulfillment, or fantasy, for straight people. When it’s fetishized. I’m 100% straight and that pisses me off. I can’t imagine how I would feel if I actually were inclined toward that.
@ Kate @ The Bitchery
I have been really thinking a lot lately about there being no disabilities in romance. It’s becoming a little bit more common to see men with disabilities, because there are returning soldiers, but even with female soldiers you’re not seeing physical disabilities.
I am disabled. I have all of my limbs, and I can walk and move freely without assistance. But I can’t jog around the block, much less take a five mile run every morning. Most days, I can’t take a walk in the park without wanting to die. I have constant pain. I have disabling pain.
If I see a lack of representation for myself, then I really see a lack of representation for people who are obviously disabled. I have friends who are wheelchair bound. I have friends who walk with canes. They are whole people. They have romance in their lives. They should be represented in this genre.
I am childfree due to circumstance. I don’t have a uterus anymore. With my health being what it is, adoption is not an option. This is not going to change.
Also, as previously stated I have pain, I have a lot of pain. It is with me always. This is not going to change.
If or when I have a happily ever after, it isn’t going to end with me being healthy, or being a parent (and I guarantee you I’m not going to be a billionaire!). A thing that you have to work very hard at when you have betrayal in your person, when your body fails you, is acceptance. This is how my life is. This is not going to change. I accept that, and still, I don’t rule out a happily ever after for myself.
My wish, which has not yet been fulfilled, is to find that sort of acceptance in my preferred genre. To find happily ever afters for not just so-called normal, healthy, pretty people, but for people like me. For people whose daily lives are impacted by illness, whether physical or mental, and who are getting on anyway. And who are not miraculously healed, and childbearing, at the end of the book.