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MUST READ Romance & Romantasy Books in 2025
23
items Romance books that keep your toes curled with excitement and anticipation and filled with your favorite romance tropes! These Booktok favorites are some of my favorite to recommend!
Sections
7
Found Family ✨
Sports Romance 💘
Friends to lovers
Enemies to Lovers
YA Romance
Romantasy
Found Family ✨
For those who love books where the MC finds their family along side their love? These are for you!
If you’re craving a cozy fantasy with found family, grumpy x sunshine, and starting over in a small town vibes, The Spellshop is pure comfort. Think magical books, seaside charm, and a retired archivist rediscovering her power—and herself. It’s low-s...
The Spellshop by Sarah Beth Durst
BookTok is in love with this cozy small-town romance filled with found family, bookstore dreams, and a sweet-as-cinnamon connection. The Cinnamon Bun Bookstore is soft, safe, and perfect for fall—think comfort read with just the right amount of spark...
The Cinnamon Bun Book Store: Viral TikTok Romance
Sports Romance 💘
Listen, you may notice that I have a specific sport that I love to read romances about… keep your mouth shut.
The spice level on this is HIGH. Plus. Nate is hot.
Icebreaker
Russ is an amazing book boyfriend😍
Wildfire: A Novel
This is my favorite in the Maple
Hill series. Henry and Halle are the absolute cutest and I am Halle. It’s the best.
Daydream
Forbidden love AND a hockey romance? Sign. Me. Up.
Dream Girl Drama: A Novel
Could I be Tallulah? That would be great. Some of my favorite tropes happen to be in this book: grumpy x sunshine, forced proximity, and age gap. 😍
The Au Pair Affair: A Novel
Anything this woman writes I will snort like you know what.
Scarlett and Lukas are opposites attract with some forced proximity tropes. Deep End dives into forbidden romance, academic rivals, and opposites attract between a STEM heroine and a pro s...
Deep End by Ali Hazelwood
Collide delivers second chance romance, bad boy x good girl, and emotional healing with major intensity. BookTok is hooked on its raw emotion, crackling chemistry, and high-stakes love story that’s as tender as it is wild.
Collide (Off the Ice #1) by Bal Khabra
Friends to lovers
Going from strangers to friends to lovers? The mushiest feeling ever😍
When I say I’m obsessed with this book, that’s an understatement.
If you love books that blend a little magic with a lot of heart, The Seven Year Slip by Ashley Poston is a must-read. It’s a beautifully written, time-bending love story about grief, ...
The Seven Year Slip
Enemies to Lovers
The bell of the ball( for me). I love me a good romance that starts with enemies and turns into wistful passionate spicy times!
If you’re a sucker for witty banter, emotional depth, and the grumpy x sunshine trope, Book Lovers by Emily Henry is the romance for you. It flips the classic small-town love story on its head, pairing a cutthroat literary agent with a brooding edito...
Book Lovers
If you love enemies to lovers, STEM heroines, and off-limits hookups, Not in Love by Ali Hazelwood delivers all the tension and steam. With a fierce biotech engineer, a charming corporate exec, and a whole lot of workplace angst, it’s smart, spicy, a...
Not in Love
Phatasma brings together dark academia, magic school drama, and enemies to reluctant allies in a lush YA fantasy. BookTok loves the immersive worldbuilding, slow-burn tension, and the addictive mix of secrets, danger, and spellwork.
Phantasma (Wicked Games, #1) by Kaylie Smith
YA Romance
Young Adult Romances are so under hyped! Want all the feelings but not as much spice? I got you!
If you love enemies to lovers, letter writing, and fantasy with feelings, Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross is pure magic. Set in a war-torn world where gods are real, it follows two rival journalists connected by a magical typewriter and a growing secre...
Divine Rivals: A Novel
Rivals to lovers? Count me in.
If you’re into rivals to lovers, chess nerds, and slow-burn tension, Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood is a total win. It’s smart, swoony, and full of witty banter, featuring a fiercely talented heroine and the broody...
Check & Mate
Let me be clear: this is my god-tier recommendation. If there’s one series you read off this list? It’s this one right here
Throne of Glass
Romantasy
After enemies to lovers, this is my all time favorite genre.
Quicksilver is dark, gritty, and completely unputdownable featuring morally gray leads, trauma bonding, and enemies with chemistry that hurts. BookTok is obsessed with the emotional intensity, explosive attraction, and the addictive blend of darkness...
Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1) by Callie Hart
I think what I appreciate the most about this slow burn, enemies to lovers romance is the main character being great and also annoying at the same time. It creates an interest tension for me as the reader!
Spark of the Everflame (Kindred's Curse, #1) by Penn Cole
This is another series I’m constantly thinking about. It has Dragons, found family, vengeance, and an academic setting. I’m obsessed 🤩
Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, #1) by Rebecca Yarros
Slow burn 🔥
The yearning. The passion. Mr. Darcy, you have found your trope!
If you love small-town charm, grumpy x sunshine, and slow-burn cozy romance, The Pumpkin Spice Café is your fall-in-a-book fantasy. BookTok is obsessed with its Hallmark vibes, cinnamon-sweet setting, and the kind of comforting romance that feels lik...
The Pumpkin Spice Café (Dream Harbor, #1) by Laurie Gilmore
With fake dating, forced proximity, and a hero who’s way too convincing, The Fiancé Dilemma serves major slow-burn angst. BookTok can’t get enough of Elena Armas’s blend of swoony tension, big feelings, and laugh-out-loud banter.
The Fiancé Dilemma (Green Oak, #2) by Elena Armas
HOT HOT HOT. 🥵
With one bed, vacation tension, and exes who never got closure, Problematic Summer Romance is messy in the best way. BookTok can’t get enough of the emotional angst, steamy slow burn, and summer fling that turns into something deepe...
Problematic Summer Romance (Not in Love, #2)
This book was one I warn you about ahead of time. You will fall for Toven even though you don’t want to!! The slow burn is SLOW and the enemies to lovers plot hits the spot🥹😍
Rose in Chains (The Evermore Trilogy, #1) by Julie Soto