by Heidi Thorsen
“I’m coming to the cottage,” Ilya Rozanov declares. These short words, spoken in a deep Russian accent over the phone to Shane Hollander, are the water that breaks the dam in a pent-up romance between rival hockey players in Heated Rivalry, the book-turned-tv series.
When the tv series aired last fall, Heated Rivalry spawned another wave of converts to the genre of romance literature, with fans flocking to libraries to read the Game Changer book series by Rachel Reid. Each book in the series features a queer romance set against the backdrop of professional North American ice hockey. There are many points in the series where it seems impossible for the characters to arrive at a happy ending—for context, the North American Hockey League (in real life) is the only sport without any openly gay players in its 100 year history. This is the beauty and power of romance: the genre stubbornly insists on happy endings— for example, a remote Canadian cottage where two male hockey players can love each other completely, and dream concretely of a future together.
If it doesn’t have a happy ending, it isn’t a romance novel. This is the pact that romance writers make with their readers: there will always be a happy ever after (HEA), or at the very least a happy for now (HFN). There are happy endings for just about every preference within the genre—whether you fancy a historic English countryside, contemporary Afro-futurist kingdoms, or interspecies connections on remote ice planets. Because of the breadth of romance literature, I’ve curated this list by choosing romance novels I have read with particularly surprising or unlikely endings.
At its best, romance is about so much more than escapism. These are books that make a way out of no way. Books that invert our expectations. Books that dream up new possibilities beyond the limits we put on ourselves, and limits imposed by society. These books remind me of the theological import of romance literature. Our Christian faith has a teleology of happy ever after: it is Jesus’ vision of a world transformed into the kingdom of heaven. As a 2023 conference at Yale University aptly claimed, romance as a genre is “the literature of hope.” In a way, reading romance novels can cultivate our own stubborn hope and sacred imagination.
This list is limited by my own reading habits. Nevertheless, I hope this list will inspire you to cultivate your sacred imagination this summer, and read a romance novel!
Heated Rivalry, by Rachel Reid – The inspiration for this book list, Heated Rivalry imagines a happy ending for two rivals in arguably one of the most homophobic sports, a feat that is as satisfying as it is surprising. Reid continues their story in a novel much later in the series, The Long Game, underscoring how happy every after is almost always actually happy for now. In other words: love is a work in progress.
An Unconditional Freedom, by Alyssa Cole – Any of the books in Cole’s Loyal League series could qualify as surprising, given that she weaves happy endings for spies, soldiers and formerly enslaved people in the context of the American Civil War. The third and final book in the series, a love story between a Black spy and a Cuban woman with her own political directives, is a tenacious exploration of what happy for now can look like—as Cole reflects on more deeply in a thought-provoking epilogue about justice deferred.
Daring and the Duke, by Sarah MacLean – Another third book in a series, Daring and the Duke offers all the drama of a regency romance, with a window into London’s underprivileged classes (Bridgerton fans, this one’s for you). MacLean’s grasp of happy ever after in this fireball of a finale recognizes that the foundations of privilege that many an HEA is built upon are fundamentally flawed.
The Companion, by E.E. Ottoman – While E. E. Ottoman’s The Companion is by no means the only polyamorous romance out there, its cozy cottage vibes and late 1940s setting in New York are a beautiful reminder that queer happy ever after’s do not necessarily have to feel like rowing upstream against the current.
Rosalind Palmer Takes the Cake, by Alexis Hall – Romance novels have a formula: meet, fall in love, live happily ever after. Hall’s Great British Bake Off-inspired contemporary romance plays with this formula from the very beginning, showing how drastically our expectations can shape what a happy ever after looks like.
The Countess Conspiracy, by Courtney Milan – Another traditional convention of happy ever after’s is the Epilogue, in which people generally marry and procreate. In The Countess Conspiracy, that reproductive HEA is not a possibility. This historical novel about a Victorian botanist and her long-pining friend subverts that romance trope, while imagining a more empowering reality for female scientists.
You Made A Fool of Death with your Beauty, by Akwaeke Emezi – Every novel has some obstacles to a happy ending, but You Made a Fool of Death with your Beauty has obstacles in spades: love after grieving a loved one, a significant age gap, and a love triangle that pits father against son. Nevertheless this romance about a visual artist and a chef with parallel experiences of grief lands a quiet, tentative happy for now.
