Best of 2024, belated.

First, an administrative note: I have migrated this newsletter from Substack over to beehiiv, and I hope you’ll stay with me here. My intention, as we get past the first few months of 2025, is send this newsletter more regularly.

At the end of 2024, I posted a quick graphic on Instagram to highlight some of my favorite romance releases of the year.

These six books were all five-star reads for me, but more than that, they all stuck with me in some way. These are the books that jumped out at me when I went through my Goodreads at the end of December, and seeing each cover again provoked a strong reaction from me maybe even months after I read them. For me, they all have amazing character development, and, while some experimented with structure and voice, others executed the hell out of clever premises.

At First Spite, Olivia Dade

Olivia Dade is so good and so smart—she aims higher than most other writers, and never fails. This book has a funny premise (that the FMC has purchased a spite house that results in her living between her ex and the MMC—the ex’s brother who she believes broke up their wedding), but also it’s a really serious book that takes on complicated, amorphous themes and then knocks them out of the park with a great deal of empathy, warmth, and humor.

Home Ice Advantage, Ari Baran

This book is the third in a series full of strong personalities—Baran excels at writing characters who jump off the page at you, and at putting you in the heads of those characters as they feel all their feelings. It’s hockey romance, to be sure, but it’s some of the best hockey romance out there.

Right Where We Left Us, Jen Devon

Devon’s previous book, Bend Toward The Sun, might just be one of my favorite books, period. I’ve read it twice, I’ve bought copies for friends, and when I had a chance to meet her I probably made a fool of myself telling her how much I loved it. So to say I was excited for the sequel might be an understatement! And the fact that it didn’t disappoint was wonderful! It’s a tricky book, a second chance romance where the timeline overlaps with the first book and some heartbreaking circumstances keeping them apart, but it’s worth it.

Marriage & Masti, Nisha Sharma

This book is the third in the series of Shakespeare-meets-New Jersey South Asian culture, and it’s maybe even the best. Sharma does such a good job at incorporating cultural traditions and values into a book that feels 100% modern—these characters remind me of people I went to college with, but of course, they get into many more shenanigans. And it is so, so funny along the way! It’s a rom-com, but with substantive in both parts of the word.

The Pairing, Casey McQuiston

The reviews for this book were wild! Wild enough that I started to second-guess if I felt as strongly about it as I did, if I only really loved it because it was the book I was reading each night on my front porch during the days-long power outage we had in August of this past year. But then again, I’m pretty sure that, if you still sometimes think about a book months later, it probably really was that good. Perhaps the most interesting thing about this book, structurally speaking and without spoilers, is when and how McQuiston switches between point-of-view characters. For me, it was unexpected, and a masterful way of releasing information bit by little bit until we really understand the full deal of what’s between Theo and Kit.

How to End a Love Story, Yulin Kuang

Last, but certainly not least, this one is a debut and in an unusual tense, but it begins with a wrecking ball. The FMC is an author who is going to work in the writing room of a TV adaptation of her books. The MMC, hired to lead that writing room based on his many years of accolades and experience, is responsible for a tragic accident that irreparably changed both their lives. Somehow, Kuang entirely avoids cliches, and makes all of this make sense to us, the reader, sitting jaw-dropped watching as these two miserable people fall in love and heal. Not for the faint of heart, but worth it.

What I’m Reading Now:

After social media went a few rounds of debating if the historical romance is dead, and why and how, I resolved to try to read more historical romances in 2025. That means that what truly delayed this newsletter, besides the move to beehiiv, is that I am now on my eleventh (!!) Lorraine Heath book of the year (The Last Wicked Scoundrel). They are deeply unputdownable, and a good distraction.

Until next time,

Sylvie