S08.10: The Best Romance Novels of 2025

It's that time of year! We're talking about the Best Romance Novels of 2025. We've chosen ten books that we love and that cover a range of historical, contemporary and paranormal, featuring romance with werewolves and cowboys, vaudeville actresses and vikings, Dukes and the actual Devil.

This year, you can buy the Fated Mates Best of 2025 Book Pack from our friends at Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, PA, and get eight of the books on the list! Scoundrel Take Me Away and Lazarus, Home from War (independently published) are not available. As always, you can add additional romances, or one of Sarah's books to your box.

We love the idea of you gifting yourself this box (you deserve it!), but maybe you’d like to slide into someone’s text messages with the link as a very excellent gift for you! Or…you can do what Sarah does, and buy the box and spread the love around—sending each of the books to someone on your list or wrapping them up and popping them in your local Little Free Library. Let us know what you end up doing with these fabulous books, and don’t forget to tag us on Instagram or Threads or Bluesky when you unbox!

Check out our “Best Romance Novels” lists from previous years: 2024, 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019. (We were 5 minutes old in 2018 and didn’t do a list that year), and please tell us what your favorite books of 2025 were!

If you want other people to discuss this list with, maybe you want to join our Patreon? You get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord! Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Our next read along will be KJ Charles's The Magpie Lord. Get it at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.

The Books

• Fan Service by Rosie Danan  
• Scoundrel, Take Me Away by Louisa Darling
• Son Of The Morning by Akwaeke Emezi 
• Tempest Of Desire by Lorraine Heath
• Into The Woods by Jenny Holiday  
• Lazarus, Home from the War by E.H. Lupton  
• A Showgirl’s Rules For Falling In Love by Alice Murphy  
• The Bone King And The Starling by Elisabeth Stephens  
• Some Kind Of Famous by Ava Wilder 
•  Cowboy It’s Cold Outside by Maisey Yates

Sponsors

• Lyx Books, publishers of Selina Mae's Lessons in Faking, available in print, ebook and audio at Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Apple Books or wherever you get your books.
• Lumi Gummies. Go to lumigummies.com and use code FATEDMATES for 30% off your order.
• Darcy Green, author of After the Siren, available in print or ebook at Amazon, Kobo, and Apple Books.
• Zara Doyle, author of Emma and Her Wolf, available in print, ebook and audio at Amazon, or with your monthly subscription to Kindle Unlimited.

The Rest

• For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2025/11/17/best-romance-novels-of-2025
• If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
• Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.
• If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.