Verdict: the best romance book of 2025 is Emily Henry's Great Big Beautiful Life. The year's loudest release was Onyx Storm, and it's the weakest book here as a romance. Both things can be true.
It's October 2026, so the launch-week noise has had a year to settle. What's left is a simpler question: which 2025 romances do people still press on friends? I only included books I'm sure came out in calendar 2025. Plenty of "2025" lists online are padded with late-2024 releases and reprints, and I've left those out rather than guess.
This is a look back at one year. For the books that have outlasted every year, see our best romance books of all time. If you'd rather pick by feeling than by date, great romance books sorted by mood does that. And if you want the new stuff, this year's reading list is already running.
🏆The six, ranked
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Great Big Beautiful Life, Emily Henry
Alice Scott, a relentlessly upbeat magazine writer, and Hayden Anderson, a Pulitzer-winning biographer, are both auditioning to write the life story of Margaret Ives, a reclusive heiress on a Georgia island. Margaret tells each of them different pieces and swears them to secrecy from each other. Her story, a whole family saga in flashback, is as much the book as the romance is, which is why it reads bigger than Henry's earlier novels.
Why it's #1: two love stories, decades apart, and both earn the ending. -
Atmosphere, Taylor Jenkins Reid
Joan Goodwin, an astronomy professor, is picked for the shuttle program and falls for Vanessa Ford, a fellow trainee, at a time when being found out would end both careers. The book opens in mission control during an emergency in orbit and keeps cutting back to it, so the whole romance plays out under a ticking clock you already know about. Content notes: period homophobia, peril. Not a guaranteed HEA, as the FAQ below explains.
Why it's #2: the most tense book on this list, and no one is shooting at anyone. -
Deep End, Ali Hazelwood
Scarlett, a Stanford diver coming back from an injury, and Lukas, a star swimmer with Olympic plans, set up a no-feelings arrangement so she can explore submission safely. It's Hazelwood's most explicit book by some distance, and the negotiation scenes (what's on the table, what isn't) are written with more care than most kink romance bothers with. If that's your lane, our spicy romance list keeps going.
Why it's #3: heat with actual consent talk, not just heat. -
Say You'll Remember Me, Abby Jimenez
Xavier, a Minnesota vet, and Samantha have one great date and then a real obstacle: they live on opposite sides of the country, and her family needs her right where she is. Jimenez does what she always does, which is make you laugh in one chapter and wreck you in the next, and the family illness storyline is handled with no melodrama. Content notes: a parent's illness and caregiving.
Why it's #4: the most grown-up problem of the six, solved like adults would. -
Problematic Summer Romance, Ali Hazelwood
Maya spends a wedding week in Sicily wanting her older brother's best friend, Conor, who is about a decade older and very aware that he shouldn't. It's lighter and sillier than Deep End, and the Italian setting does a lot of the work. Hazelwood's second appearance on the list is the one to read on a beach.
Why it's #5: pure summer fun that knows it's a fantasy. -
Onyx Storm, Rebecca Yarros
Violet and Xaden leave Navarre's borders hunting for allies while the war, and what's happening to Xaden, closes in. The dragon chapters and the world-building are the best in the series so far. The romance, though, mostly repeats the push-pull of Iron Flame, which is why it ranks last here as a love story. Content notes: war, death of major characters, torture. Read Fourth Wing and Iron Flame first. More dragons and fae: the romantasy reading list.
Why it's #6: a great fantasy sequel and an average romance.
Not sure which of these fits you? The read-next quiz asks five questions. Want a number for any title's heat? Try the spice level checker.
What I left off, and why
A lot of 2025 lists include books that were huge in 2025 but came out earlier, like the BookTok self-published hits that got tradpub reissues. They're great books from other years. If a publication date was the slightest bit fuzzy to me, the book stayed off this page.
📖Free to start tonight
These aren't 2025 books, and I won't pretend they are. They're indie serials on NanoReads that sit near the same shelves as the six above, and chapter one of each is free. Notes come from each book's own description.
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Free ch. 1Where the Ocean Ends, Tay Marais
A recently divorced actor hiding from attention meets an heiress and singing prodigy in a run-down LA bar on her birthday. Slow-burn celebrity romance, both of them carrying old trauma. For the Say You'll Remember Me reader.
Read chapter 1 free -
Free ch. 1The Starlight Thorn, Marlene Dawson
A cursed botanist finds a vine that only blooms during eclipses and wakes the immortal guardian bound to it, just as kingdoms go to war over its magic. Forbidden love, war. If Onyx Storm left you wanting a shorter fantasy fix.
Open the first chapter -
Free ch. 1Embrace, JK Livingstone
An island guy who has sold ganja treats since he was nine meets a 27-year-old woman stepping back from years of nonprofit dance work. Tagged slow burn, rom-com and forbidden love. Note: drug dealing is part of the setup.
Start reading Embrace -
Free ch. 1The Cote d' Azur Chronicles Book One: Girls Trip, J. Katherine Hayward
Three lifelong friends celebrate their 60th birthdays with a month on the French Riviera and get more than wine out of it. Second chances, women's fiction. The Problematic Summer Romance setting, a few decades further on.
Take the trip, chapter 1 free -
Free ch. 1The Bumbling Sheriff of Latrine City Kansas, Donald Williams
A clumsy western sheriff with a crush on the schoolteacher has to rescue her after she's kidnapped. Comic western adventure with a romance thread; kidnapping and old-western framing. Nothing like 2025's lists, which is the appeal.
Ride into chapter one
More free shelves sorted by trope live on the free romance novels hub. Curious how NanoReads compares to Galatea for paid chapters? There's an honest breakdown.
Questions about 2025's romance
Which 2025 romance should I read first?
Great Big Beautiful Life if you want the safest bet, Deep End if you want heat. Both stand alone, so you need no backlist.
Do I need to read Fourth Wing and Iron Flame before Onyx Storm?
Yes. Onyx Storm is book three of the Empyrean series and opens straight out of the end of Iron Flame. Starting here would spoil the first two books and confuse you.
Is Atmosphere actually a romance?
The love story between Joan and Vanessa is the centre of the book, but it is shelved as historical fiction, and Taylor Jenkins Reid does not write to the genre's happy-ending contract. Read it for the relationship, not for a guaranteed HEA.
Which 2025 romance is the spiciest?
Deep End, by a clear margin: its plot is a negotiated kink arrangement. Problematic Summer Romance and Onyx Storm are open door but less explicit. Great Big Beautiful Life and Atmosphere are the mildest on this list.