Genre: Contemporary Romance

Set point, forty‑love to Austin Hardy’s intrusive thoughts. The Open Era by Edward Schmit is a wonderfully written queer lit novel that doubles as a sports romance book. Covering difficult topics such as mental health and anxiety, grief and familial loss, and finding one’s confidence beneath stadium spotlights and public judgment, Schmit serves and delivers an ace of a debut novel (I know these puns are bad, just let me roll with it). Humorous, relatable, and romantic when it wants to be, this book is incredibly wholesome and warm in all the right ways. A sports romance with actual sports content and a book of queer joy without feeling contrived or sanitized, The Open Era is a brilliantly written novel that I picked up and wouldn’t put down until I finished it. “Anxiety wrecks me almost daily. It makes me question everything. It makes me believe things that aren’t true. It makes me spiral. It knocks me out. Falling in love does all those things too. At this point it’s all the same.” Sporting one of the most beautiful and striking covers of the year, The Open Era was one of my most anticipated queer titles. While I don’t consider…

In anticipation of his new book Dearly Departed, I thought it would be an appropriate time to finally read Chip Pon’s debut novel You & I, Rewritten. Originally self‑published as an indie title, this book was subsequently picked up and given a limited hardcover print run by Rainbow Crate as their indie title for their Jan 2025 book box. Following newly hired publishing editor Will Cowen, this book follows his professional and personal journey with his boss Graham Austin as work and romance blend together. This book feels like a safe and wholesome hug to the queer booktok romance community that Chip is a part of, though its indie roots and debut novel nature are quite apparent compared to his more recent trade‑published titles.  I’m fully aware I’m reviewing Chip Pons’s books out of order, in addition to reading an indie self‑published book after a trade‑published one, which puts You & I, Rewritten on an uneven playing field. This book wasn’t on my radar when it was first published, but I had read and generally enjoyed Chip’s 2025 release Winging It With You, which was entertaining and had some unexpectedly great character writing, but left me wanting more given it…

This review is based on a complimentary Advanced Reader Copy provided by Viking Books for Young Readers. A story of grief and loss mixed with contemporary romance and mythological fantasy flavor, Find My Way Down to You by Julian Winters is a wholesome and sweet YA novel covering somber topics. By exploring the long, individual road to healing while honoring loved ones lost, the book feels like a warm and supportive hug that maintains an uplifting and hopeful outlook even when the pain feels unending. Well‑intentioned and earnest, it sometimes plays things too safe and doesn’t push its strongest narrative elements far enough, but it remains an accessible read with strong YA appeal. Marketed as a YA romance with crossover elements in fiction, social issues, and fantasy, the book blends a wide range of narrative components into a story focused on grief and loss. Its greatest strength is its relatability for YA readers. Purposely flawed and immature to a fault, the main character August and his internal logic match his age, highlighting teenage shortsightedness and tunnel vision. Winters captures teenage angst well, especially in the wake of August’s catastrophic loss of his boyfriend London, around whom he built his entire world.…

Strained and conflicting scifi tv show actors faking a friendship as a publicity stunt to save their acting career is an incredibly fun concept that serves as the premise for Cat Sebastian’s contemporary queer romance novel Star Shipped. Entertainment industry expectations, social media and online fandom engagement, a fake friendship road trip across the American southwest, this book has no shortage of good narrative hooks. A comfy and safe space of a romance novel, unfortunately the execution across the board hinders its great potential and results in a book that feels like it lacks a purpose or direction. One of my highly anticipated queer literature reads of 2026, this book wasn’t for me and was quite the disappointment at every turn despite it having good intentions and nice mental health representation. Star Shipped follows television actor Simon Devereaux who’s attempting to depart from the popular long-running TV-show Out There whose simplistic and limited acting opportunities have left him feeling uninspired and artistically constrained. It doesn’t help that he’s spent the last seven years co-starring against Charlie Blake, a built and handsome man who has less impressive acting and an unprofessional history on set. With the impending end of his contract…

Fandom culture, celebrity woes, teen heartthrob shows, and nerd-inspired paranormal romance, Fan Service by Rose Danan is a romance novel that’s both light-heartedly fun and relatably honest. Featuring a great premise and a very likable and wholesome FMC, this book is an easy and enjoyable read that smartly incorporates many popular romance tropes while also striving to do more through great queer representation and light socio-political commentary. Despite some reservations with its less impressive portrayal of its MMC and perhaps failing to do more with its compelling story, Fan Service is an otherwise safe and easy romance read with a nice geeky and quirky spin. I will be the first to admit that I’m quite an inexperienced reader when it comes to paranormal romance, this being one of my few forays into the genre and adjacent stories. That said, Fan Service initially caught my eye thanks to its premise of a former teen heartthrob actor teaming up with a jaded yet hardcore life-long fan set around an original tv-show that’s not so subtly inspired by the CW/MTV shows of the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This book is perfectly pitched for millennial readers who grew up during the community forums,…