58 Feel Good Romance Novellas

Apr 26, 2020

I asked Shelf Love's Twitter and Instagram followers what their favorite Romance Novellas were for a quick hit of hope, and they delivered! You can find the full list of 58 Novellas on the Goodreads list I created (and while you're there, go ahead and friend or follow me!).

I'll highlight a few from my personal list of favorite authors:

Layover by Katrina Jackson

"Lena Ward is an unhappy travel blogger with a less than 24 hour layover in her hometown. She spends the day with Tony Dembélé, a podcaster she's been flirting with for a few months online. In their brief time together Lena confronts some hard truths about her life and her past and the two test the waters of their connection."

Katrina Jackson continuously blows my mind with the nuance she brings to interpreting romance - you can listen to her brilliance on multiple episodes of Shelf Love. Charlotte from Close Reading Romance also wrote a fantastic post on Layover.

Mrs. Martin's Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan

"Mrs. Bertrice Martin—a widow, some seventy-three years young—has kept her youthful-ish appearance with the most powerful of home remedies: daily doses of spite, regular baths in man-tears, and refusing to give so much as a single damn about her Terrible Nephew.

Then proper, correct Miss Violetta Beauchamps, a sprightly young thing of nine and sixty, crashes into her life. The Terrible Nephew is living in her rooming house, and Violetta wants him gone.

Mrs. Martin isn’t about to start giving damns, not even for someone as intriguing as Miss Violetta. But she hatches another plan—to make her nephew sorry, to make Miss Violetta smile, and to have the finest adventure of all time.

If she makes Terrible Men angry and wins the hand of a lovely lady in the process? Those are just added bonuses."

Why read this one? I mean...that description, for one. Courtney Milan, who can write no wrong, for two. And, for three, older women loving women? (Perishes from delight.)

Hamilton's Battalion: A Trio of Romances by Rose Lerner, Courtney Milan, and Alyssa Cole

"On October 14, 1781, Alexander Hamilton led a daring assault on Yorktown's defenses and won a decisive victory in America's fight for independence. Decades later, when Eliza Hamilton collected his soldiers' stories, she discovered that while the war was won at Yorktown, the battle for love took place on many fronts..."

I'm tempted to just wave my hand at the authors in an "enough said" type gesture. But also, that hook! Even if you didn't catch the Hamilton bug, you're going to love this.

View the full list of 58 Novellas: https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/101133651-andrea-martucci?shelf=novellas

Recommendations from the web:

• Corey's Book Corner has a list of Corey's favorite novellas and novellettes that they read in 2019. Corey's site has a particular focus on queer, fat, trans, and disability representation!
• Novella Length audiobooks: Eline pointed me in the direction of their fantastic round-up of novella-length audio books. Even better: they're all available in Audible's "Audible Escape" collection - if you have a subscription, you don't have to pay per listen.