Valentine’s Day is nearly here, and most people will recommend romance novels with love stories to make you swoon. I’m here with an alternative for your day. These five books feature powerful love stories, but just not in the way you expect. Read on!
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This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
This is How You Lose the Time War is a love story for the ages. Literally, it takes place over an unfathomable amount of time. These star-crossed lovers don’t know that’s what they are at the start. Instead, Red and Blue initially meet as adversaries, time travelers on opposite sides of a millennia-old war. They exchange messages as taunts, following one another across time and space until they’re the only constant in each others’ lives.
Red and Blue are Romeo and Juliet, falling into a love for which their factions might kill them. They get increasingly creative with how they hide their words, leaving notes anywhere from the rings of a tree to inside an owl pellet to a lava flow. Their love story is full of yearning and 100 percent a romance for the ages.
The House in the Cerulean Sea by T.J. Klune
Lonely, buttoned-up Linus Baker is an inspector for DICOMY (Department in Charge of Magical Youth). He visits and investigates orphanages for magical children to determine whether or not they should remain open. One of these facilities is full of children the agency deems dangerous, but when Linus arrives, he isn’t sure that’s the case. Inside a home built with care and attention for the kids, Linus meets Arthur Parnassus, a man dedicated to their wellbeing. With the help of Arthur and the children, Linus slowly opens up and reexamines his role in the world.
The House in the Cerulean Sea is more of a “typical” romance, at least when compared to others on this list. Yet, it’s rare and refreshing to read a romance involving an older queer couple. This story is a slow-burn romance that feels well-earned.
The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir
At first glance, Gideon the Ninth doesn’t scream “romance.” The cover consists mainly of skulls and bones, the cast is primarily necromancers and there’s a lot of tragic dismemberment. Not to mention, Gideon and Harrow have hated each other since childhood. Still, it’s clear early on they would die for each other, reacting with excessive but increasing protectiveness whenever the other is in danger.
The Locked Tomb series has all the tropes in the best way possible: forced proximity, bathtub bonding, even a sort of damsel in distress. Gideon and Harrow don’t have to kiss for us to know their relationship is romantic. Instead, they can declare “one flesh, one blood,” and we’ll all know what it means.
The Seep by Chana Porter
After the gentlest alien invasion imaginable, an entity called the Seep connects everyone and everything. They infect their human hosts through the water, getting them high enough not to resist but at the same time giving them the ability to modify their bodies entirely. People can alter their ethnicities or genders, change themselves into animals and even take on the faces of people they once knew.
Our narrator, Trina Goldberg-Osaka, is a 50-year-old woman who once worked as a doctor. Now she’s languishing, but her post-alien invasion story truly begins when her wife Deeba decides to transform herself back into a baby. As a Native American transgender woman — a member of three marginalized groups — identity is focal to Trina’s experience. Her wife’s decision sets her spiraling, so she decides to fight back against the hive mind of the Seep.
While Trina and Deeba break up at the start of the book, Trina’s motivations throughout The Seep are primarily based on love. Their separation broke Trina. Still, she won’t give up her pain for anything. Even when the Seep offers to erase her memories of Deeba and give her a reprieve from suffering, Trina refuses. Her pain, past and love for her wife are what makes her human.
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I hope you like your love stories with a bit of the unexpected! These books and more prove you can find romance in all kinds of genres, even if you never see it coming. What are your favorite unexpected romances?
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