The 7 Best Contemporary Romance Novels to Read

If you’re looking for the best contemporary romance novels to binge, you’ve come to the right place. I adore the contemporary romance genre and all its sub-genres. From enemies-to-lovers to fake dating to BFFs/lovers, these books always hit me right in the feels. I love diving into a good romcom or a heartfelt romance novel that WILL make you cry. Check out my thoughts on the best contemporary romance books for you to read!

The Best Contemporary Romance Novels for You

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The Hating Game – Sally Thorne

I have to start off this list with the absolute classic, The Hating Game. It’s an enemies-to-lovers book that takes place in the publishing world, and it has all the flirty and tension-filled scenes you need. It’s also being turned into a movie starring Lucy Hale and Robbie Amell!

Lucy Hutton has always been certain that the nice girl can get the corner office. She’s charming and accommodating and prides herself on being loved by everyone at Bexley & Gamin. Everyone except for coldly efficient, impeccably attired, physically intimidating Joshua Templeman. And the feeling is mutual.

Trapped in a shared office together 40 (OK, 50 or 60) hours a week, they’ve become entrenched in an addictive, ridiculous never-ending game of one-upmanship. There’s the Staring Game. The Mirror Game. The HR Game. Lucy can’t let Joshua beat her at anything—especially when a huge new promotion goes up for the taking.

If Lucy wins this game, she’ll be Joshua’s boss. If she loses, she’ll resign. So why is she suddenly having steamy dreams about Joshua, and dressing for work like she’s got a hot date? After a perfectly innocent elevator ride ends with an earth-shattering kiss, Lucy starts to wonder whether she’s got Joshua Templeman all wrong.

Maybe Lucy Hutton doesn’t hate Joshua Templeman. And maybe, he doesn’t hate her either. Or maybe this is just another game.

Get a copy of The Hating Game!

My Favorite Half-Night Stand – Christina Lauren

This list would absolutely not be complete without a Christina Lauren book. The author duo runs the contemporary romance genre, and while any of their books could make it on here, I’m choosing My Favorite Half-Night Stand because it’s underrated and hilarious. It has such a perfect balance between humor, romance, & friendship—it’s also a super accurate take on modern dating (if you’ve ever downloaded a dating app, you know what I mean).

Millie Morris has always been one of the guys. A UC Santa Barbara professor, she’s a female-serial-killer expert who’s quick with a deflection joke and terrible at getting personal. And she, just like her four best guy friends and fellow professors, is perma-single.

So when a routine university function turns into a black tie gala, Mille and her circle make a pact that they’ll join an online dating service to find plus-ones for the event. There’s only one hitch: after making the pact, Millie and one of the guys, Reid Campbell, secretly spend the sexiest half-night of their lives together, but mutually decide the friendship would be better off strictly platonic.

But online dating isn’t for the faint of heart. While the guys are inundated with quality matches and potential dates, Millie’s first profile attempt garners nothing but dick pics and creepers. Enter “Catherine”—Millie’s fictional profile persona, in whose make-believe shoes she can be more vulnerable than she’s ever been in person. Soon “Catherine” and Reid strike up a digital pen-pal-ship…but Millie can’t resist temptation in real life, either. Soon, Millie will have to face her worst fear—intimacy—or risk losing her best friend, forever.

Get a copy of My Favorite Half-Night Stand!

The Flatshare – Beth O’Leary

First of all, I’m a sucker for British romances. The Flatshare is a contemporary romance book you need to read not only because of its completely original concept, but also because of how well it balances humor and deeper themes.

Tiffy and Leon share a flat
Tiffy and Leon share a bed
Tiffy and Leon have never met…

Tiffy Moore needs a cheap flat, and fast. Leon Twomey works nights and needs cash. Their friends think they’re crazy, but it’s the perfect solution: Leon occupies the one-bed flat while Tiffy’s at work in the day, and she has the run of the place the rest of the time.

But with obsessive ex-boyfriends, demanding clients at work, wrongly imprisoned brothers and, of course, the fact that they still haven’t met yet, they’re about to discover that if you want the perfect home you need to throw the rulebook out the window.

GET A COPY OF THE FLATSHARE

Get a Life, Chloe Brown – Talia Hibbert

Get a Life, Chloe Brown is one of those contemporary romances that was trending all over Bookstagram, especially since its sequel came out. I loved how easy it was to get lost in this story, and I really appreciated how Chloe wasn’t your typical “perfect” protagonist. She’s quirky, sassy and flawed, and a character you’ll end up rooting for.

Chloe Brown is a chronically ill computer geek with a goal, a plan, and a list. After almost—but not quite—dying, she’s come up with seven directives to help her “Get a Life”, and she’s already completed the first: finally moving out of her glamorous family’s mansion. The next items?

• Enjoy a drunken night out.
• Ride a motorcycle.
• Go camping.
• Have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
• Travel the world with nothing but hand luggage.
• And… do something bad.

But it’s not easy being bad, even when you’ve written step-by-step guidelines on how to do it correctly. What Chloe needs is a teacher, and she knows just the man for the job.

Redford ‘Red’ Morgan is a handyman with tattoos, a motorcycle, and more sex appeal than ten-thousand Hollywood heartthrobs. He’s also an artist who paints at night and hides his work in the light of day, which Chloe knows because she spies on him occasionally. Just the teeniest, tiniest bit.

But when she enlists Red in her mission to rebel, she learns things about him that no spy session could teach her. Like why he clearly resents Chloe’s wealthy background. And why he never shows his art to anyone. And what really lies beneath his rough exterior.

GET A COPY OF GET A LIFE, CHLOE BROWN

One Day in December – Josie Silver

If you’re looking for a holiday romance to put you in the mood, definitely read One Day in December by Josie Silver. It’s a surprising contemporary romance with a good amount of depth, and it takes place in London! I loved the relatable characters and lengthy storyline, as it takes place over the course of ten years.

Laurie is pretty sure love at first sight doesn’t exist anywhere but the movies. But then, through a misted-up bus window one snowy December day, she sees a man who she knows instantly is the one. Their eyes meet, there’s a moment of pure magic… and then her bus drives away.

Certain they’re fated to find each other again, Laurie spends a year scanning every bus stop and cafe in London for him. But she doesn’t find him, not when it matters anyway. Instead they “reunite” at a Christmas party, when her best friend Sarah giddily introduces her new boyfriend to Laurie. It’s Jack, the man from the bus. It would be.

What follows for Laurie, Sarah and Jack is ten years of friendship, heartbreak, missed opportunities, roads not taken, and destinies reconsidered. One Day in December is a joyous, heartwarming and immensely moving love story to escape into and a reminder that fate takes inexplicable turns along the route to happiness.

GET A COPY OF ONE DAY IN DECEMBER

The Kiss Quotient – Helen Hoang

The Kiss Quotient made my best contemporary romance books list, and it’s probably on every other list you’ve looked at as well. It made a huge impact on Bookstagram and paved the way for other #OwnVoices romcoms to become bestsellers. It’s definitely a steamy read, but aside from that, I loved how it features a neurodivergent protagonist (and it takes place in my hometown).

Stella Lane thinks math is the only thing that unites the universe. She comes up with algorithms to predict customer purchases — a job that has given her more money than she knows what to do with, and way less experience in the dating department than the average thirty-year-old.

It doesn’t help that Stella has Asperger’s and French kissing reminds her of a shark getting its teeth cleaned by pilot fish. Her conclusion: she needs lots of practice — with a professional. Which is why she hires escort Michael Phan. The Vietnamese and Swedish stunner can’t afford to turn down Stella’s offer, and agrees to help her check off all the boxes on her lesson plan — from foreplay to more-than-missionary position.

Before long, Stella not only learns to appreciate his kisses, but to crave all the other things he’s making her feel. Soon, their no-nonsense partnership starts making a strange kind of sense. And the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic.

GET A COPY OF THE KISS QUOTIENT

Emergency Contact – Mary H.K. Choi

YA romances deserve recognition, too! This one is definitely geared toward a slightly older audience, but its characters are in college and I loved how relatable this book is. Emergency Contact also hits modern dating on the nose, and actually utilizes flirty texting properly. (I’m really over characters using text to say things like “thx 4 the d8. wd luv 2 c u again.”)

For Penny Lee high school was a total nonevent. Her friends were okay, her grades were fine, and while she somehow managed to land a boyfriend, he doesn’t actually know anything about her. When Penny heads to college in Austin, Texas, to learn how to become a writer, it’s seventy-nine miles and a zillion light years away from everything she can’t wait to leave behind.

Sam’s stuck. Literally, figuratively, emotionally, financially. He works at a café and sleeps there too, on a mattress on the floor of an empty storage room upstairs. He knows that this is the god-awful chapter of his life that will serve as inspiration for when he’s a famous movie director but right this second the seventeen bucks in his checking account and his dying laptop are really testing him.

When Sam and Penny cross paths it’s less meet-cute and more a collision of unbearable awkwardness. Still, they swap numbers and stay in touch—via text—and soon become digitally inseparable, sharing their deepest anxieties and secret dreams without the humiliating weirdness of having to see each other.

GET A COPY OF EMERGENCY CONTACT

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What are your favorite contemporary romance novels? Give me all the recommendations!