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Tell Us About Your Favorite Romances — It's The NPR Books Summer Of Love!

Mary McLain
/
NPR

We're bringing back our famous summer reader poll this year, and as the days get longer (and the nights get hotter), we think it's the perfect time to celebrate romance.

Whether you love historicals, paranormals, inspirationals, young adult, Amish, romantic suspense, contemporaries (or, like some people around here, you'd be perfectly happy never leaving the Regency), we want to hear about it! And with your help, we'll spend this summer putting together a great big bonbon box of 100 delicious love stories.

Based on your recommendations, our expert panel — made up of romance authors and reviewers — will curate the final list of 100 books. Before you start nominating, here are a few guidelines:

Limit yourself to five titles: But don't hesitate to nominate a book that you know someone else has already picked. We'll tally your nominations and take note of the most popular titles.

Don't limit yourself otherwise: It doesn't have to be a brand-new book, and it doesn't necessarily have to be on the library's Romance shelf. If it's got a HEA — that's a "Happily Ever After" for us non-experts — and it makes your heart beat faster, tell us about it! (But don't be too sad if your pick doesn't make the final list.)

Feel free to nominate a series: Shorter series like Courtney Milan's Brothers Sinister series or Nora Roberts' Bride Quartet, for example, will be considered as single, collective works — so don't bother listing the separate titles in the series. (To qualify as a collective work, the books in a series must be written by the same originating author or authors and must tell a more or less continuous story — usually about a consistent group of characters.) If it's a very large series — like Robyn Carr's Virgin River books, or Brenda Jackson's Madaris Family saga — feel free to nominate your favorite title as an individual work.

Submissions are now closed! Stay tuned for the final list — and in the meantime, check out some of our other romance coverage. Thanks for sharing the love!

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Petra Mayer (she/her) is an editor (and the resident nerd) at NPR Books, focusing on fiction, and particularly genre fiction. She brings to the job passion, speed-reading skills, and a truly impressive collection of Doctor Who doodads. You can also hear her on the air and on the occasional episode of Pop Culture Happy Hour.