Must-Read Spicy Romance Novels

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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 an 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. Before long, the pattern that emerges will convince Stella that love is the best kind of logic…

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️
Connell and Marianne grew up in the same small town, but the similarities end there. At school, Connell is popular and well-liked, while Marianne is a loner. But when the two strike up a conversation— awkward but electrifying — something life-changing begins. A year later, they’re both studying at Trinity College in Dublin. Marianne has found her feet in a new social world while Connell hangs at the sidelines, shy and uncertain. Throughout their years at university, Marianne and Connell circle one another, straying toward other people and possibilities but always magnetically, irresistibly drawn back together. As she veers into self-destruction and he begins to search for meaning elsewhere, each must confront how far they are willing to go to save the other.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
Billie Burke is smart, endlessly driven, and fabulous — it’s no accident she landed a job as the beauty editor at the world’s leading fashion magazine. Caught in a whirlwind of long office hours and fashion industry party-hopping, she hasn’t had time to focus on her nonexistent love life. Instead, she’s been living vicariously through her friends. Then she meets Jay Lane, a gorgeous up-and-coming Brooklyn writer who knocks her right out of her stilettos. Soon Billie finds herself doing things with Jay in broad daylight that she’s never even dared to think about in the privacy of her head. In no time at all she’s addicted to an affair that’s as crazy and seductive as New York itself. But there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Jay, whose rough past seems determined to start creeping back into their present…

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
In fifth grade, Misha’s teacher set him and his classmates up with pen pals from a different school. For the next seven years, Ryen was his everything. She kept Misha on track and accepted him as he was. They only had three rules: No social media, no phone numbers, no pictures. There was no reason to ruin the good thing they had going … until Misha ran across a photo of a girl online named Ryen. He knows he has to meet her. Ryen has gone three months without a letter from Misha. She needs to know someone is listening to her. But really, Ryen knows this is her fault. She should’ve gotten his phone number, or picture, or something. As a mysterious vandal leaves messages in Ryen’s school, she’s possessed by the handsome new student who knows just how to hurt and heal her.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️
At 12 years old, Azere promised her dying father she would marry a Nigerian man and preserve her culture, even after immigrating to Canada. Her mother has been vigilant about helping — well forcing — to stay within the Nigerian dating pool ever since. But when another match-made-by-mom goes wrong, Azere ends up at a bar, enjoying the company and later sharing the bed of Rafael Castellano, a man who is tall, handsome, and … white. When their one-night stand unexpectedly evolves into something serious, Azere is caught between her feelings for Rafael and the compulsive need to please her mother.

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Agreeing to go to a wedding with a guy she gets stuck with in an elevator is something Alexa Monroe wouldn’t normally do. But there’s something about Drew Nichols that’s too hard to resist. On the eve of his ex’s wedding festivities, Drew is minus a plus one. Until a power outage strands him with the perfect candidate for a fake girlfriend… After Alexa and Drew have more fun than they ever thought possible, Drew has to fly back to Los Angeles and his job as a pediatric surgeon, and Alexa heads home to Berkeley, where she’s the mayor’s chief of staff. Too bad they can’t stop thinking about the other… They’re just two high-powered professionals on a collision course toward the long-distance dating disaster of the century or closing the gap between what they think they need and what they truly want…

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
From #1 New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Day comes the first novel in the Crossfire series — a provocative masterstroke of abandon and obsession that redefined the meaning of desire and became a global phenomenon. Gideon Cross came into my life like lightning in the darkness… He was beautiful and brilliant, jagged and white-hot. I was drawn to him as I’d never been to anything or anyone in my life. I craved his touch like a drug, even knowing it would weaken me. I was flawed and damaged, and he opened those cracks in me so easily… Gideon knew. He had demons of his own. And we would become the mirrors that reflected each other’s most private wounds… and desires. The bonds of his love transformed me, even as I prayed that the torment of our pasts didn’t tear us apart…

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️
A couple who broke up months ago pretend to still be together for their annual weeklong vacation with their best friends in this glittering and wise new novel from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry. Harriet and Wyn have been the perfect couple since they met in college — they go together like salt and pepper, honey and tea, lobster and rolls. Except, now — for reasons they’re still not discussing — they don’t. They broke up five months ago. And still haven’t told their best friends. After years of being in love, how hard can it be to fake it for one week… in front of those who know you best?

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️
House Rules: Do your own dishes, knock before entering the bathroom, never look up your roommate online. The Wheatons are infamous among the East Coast elite for their lack of impulse control, except for their daughter Clara. She’s the consummate socialite: over-achieving, well-mannered, predictable. But every Wheaton has their weakness. After a bait-and-switch, Clara finds herself sharing a lease with a charming stranger. Josh might be a bit too perceptive — not to mention handsome — for comfort, but there’s a good chance he and Clara could have survived sharing a summer sublet if she hadn’t looked him up on the Internet… Once she learns how Josh has made a name for himself, Clara realizes living with him might make her the Wheaton’s most scandalous story yet.

Spice level: 🌶️🌶️
Fern Brookbanks has wasted far too much of her adult life thinking about Will Baxter. She spent just 24 hours in her early twenties with the aggravatingly attractive, idealistic artist, a chance encounter that spiraled into a daylong adventure in the city. The timing was wrong, but their connection was undeniable, and they made a pact to meet one year later. Fern showed up. Will didn’t. At thirty-two, Fern’s life doesn’t look at all how she once imagined it would. Instead of living in the city, Fern’s back home, running her mother’s lakeside resort. The place is in disarray, her ex-boyfriend’s the manager, and Fern doesn’t know where to begin. She needs a plan. To her surprise, it comes in the form of Will, who arrives nine years too late, with a suitcase in tow and an offer to help on his lips. But how could she possibly trust this expensive suit-wearing mirage who seems nothing like the young man she met all those years ago. Will is hiding something, and Fern’s not sure she wants to know what it is.