Rom-com — short for romantic comedy — is romance played for laughs. The stakes are real, the chemistry is real, the HEA is guaranteed. What makes it rom-com is the tone: sharp banter, absurd situations, a sense that the characters are laughing at themselves while they fall. It's the romance subgenre you reach for when you want to feel better by the end of the book. Here are the writers doing it best.
The Modern Rom-Com Leaders
Beach Read — Emily Henry
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Enemies-to-lovers, writers, forced proximity.
Emily Henry is the most critically-respected rom-com author publishing right now. Beach Read is where almost every new Henry reader starts — a romance writer and a literary-fiction author, enemies since college, end up as neighbours with writer's block. They make a bet to swap genres. Funny, sharp, deeply felt.
Book Lovers — Emily Henry
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Rival literary agents, small-town-vs-city.
Henry's sharpest book. Nora Stephens is a cutthroat NYC literary agent; Charlie Lastra is an editor who keeps rejecting her books. When they end up in the same small North Carolina town for a month, something has to give. The banter is the best in her catalogue.
People We Meet on Vacation — Emily Henry
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Friends-to-lovers, travel romance, second chance.
Poppy and Alex have taken the same summer vacation together for a decade — even though everything else in their lives has pulled them apart. Until two years ago, when something broke them. This is one summer to fix it, or let the friendship go. The book that made Emily Henry a household name on BookTok.
STEM & Academia Rom-Com
The Love Hypothesis — Ali Hazelwood
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Fake dating, grumpy-sunshine, STEM academia.
Olive Smith, a PhD candidate, kisses the first man she sees in a hallway to convince her friend she's dating. That man turns out to be Dr. Adam Carlsen — a brilliant, notoriously grumpy professor. The fake-dating-in-academia rom-com that launched Hazelwood's career. Widely beloved for a reason.
Love, Theoretically — Ali Hazelwood
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Academic rivalry, fake dating, enemies-to-lovers.
Elsie Hannaway is a theoretical physicist who moonlights as a fake girlfriend to pay rent. Her newest client's brother is Jack Smith — the experimental physicist who torpedoed her mentor's career. Hazelwood's second-best book and the one to read after The Love Hypothesis.
Small-Town & Cozy Rom-Com
The Flatshare — Beth O'Leary
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Strangers-to-lovers, forced proximity (literally sharing a bed without meeting).
Tiffy and Leon share a flat and a bed — but never at the same time. She works days, he works nights. They communicate entirely through sticky notes for months before they actually meet. The setup is charming, the execution is sharper than it has any right to be.
Yours Truly — Abby Jimenez
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Letter-writing, fake dating, workplace.
Abby Jimenez writes rom-coms with genuine emotional weight underneath the jokes. Yours Truly — two ER doctors exchanging letters to combat loneliness — is probably her funniest, but Part of Your World (mayor/ER doctor secret) and Just for the Summer (breakup curse) are equally strong.
It Happened One Summer — Tessa Bailey
Heat: Spicy. Tropes: Grumpy-sunshine, small-town, opposites attract.
Piper Bellinger, LA socialite, is exiled to a small fishing town in Washington to learn responsibility. Brendan Taggart is the stoic sea captain who wants nothing to do with her. Tessa Bailey's most-loved small-town rom-com. Higher on the spice meter than Emily Henry, but the rom-com energy is genuine.
Sports Rom-Com
Mister McHottie — Pippa Grant
Heat: Spicy. Tropes: Fake dating, hockey, comedy.
Pippa Grant writes sports rom-coms that take the formula less seriously than anyone in the subgenre. If you want your hockey romance with laugh-out-loud absurd situations rather than emotional heaviness, she's your author.
The Cheat Sheet — Sarah Adams
Heat: Sweet. Tropes: Friends-to-lovers, fake dating, NFL quarterback.
Sarah Adams writes sweet, low-heat rom-coms with serious charm. The Cheat Sheet pairs a kindergarten teacher with her lifelong best friend — who happens to be an NFL quarterback. Closed-door romance, all the feel-good warmth.
Classic & Crossover Favourites
The Unhoneymooners — Christina Lauren
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Enemies-to-lovers, fake dating, tropical-vacation.
Olive hates her sister's new brother-in-law Ethan. Then the entire wedding party gets food poisoning and the unaffected bride and groom can't go on their honeymoon. Olive and Ethan are the only ones healthy enough to take the non-refundable trip. They share one villa. You see where this goes.
Red, White & Royal Blue — Casey McQuiston
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Enemies-to-lovers, forbidden, MM romance.
The First Son of the United States and a British prince loathe each other publicly. A viral incident forces them into a fake friendship. Feelings follow. Adapted by Amazon Prime in 2023. One of the most-loved MM rom-coms of the modern era.
Act Your Age, Eve Brown — Talia Hibbert
Heat: Steamy. Tropes: Opposites attract, autistic hero, small-town B&B.
Eve Brown, disaster of a person, accidentally hits the proprietor of a countryside B&B with her car and then has to work there as penance. Jacob Wayne is methodical, autistic, and annoyed. Talia Hibbert writes neurodivergent characters with unusual specificity and grace. Act Your Age is the third of the Brown Sisters trilogy but works as a standalone.
What Makes a Good Rom-Com
The best rom-coms share a few structural features. The banter has to actually be funny — lines that would make you laugh if you read them aloud. The romantic leads have to feel like real people with actual flaws rather than tropes wearing human skin. The comedy comes from character friction, not from silly external plots. And the emotional stakes have to be genuine, even when the tone is light — otherwise the HEA doesn't land.
Authors like Emily Henry and Abby Jimenez get this right by grounding their rom-coms in real pain — grief, career failure, broken families — and letting the humour work as coping. Authors like Ali Hazelwood and Tessa Bailey get it right by leaning into the absurdity of the setup and letting the chemistry do the heavy lifting. Both approaches work; most readers have a preference.
Where to Start
If you've never read the subgenre: Emily Henry's Beach Read. The most universally-loved entry.
If you want academic nerdery: The Love Hypothesis by Ali Hazelwood.
If you want small-town cosy: It Happened One Summer by Tessa Bailey.
If you want MM rom-com: Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston.
If you want something that makes you laugh out loud: The Flatshare by Beth O'Leary.
If you want laughs plus emotional depth: Abby Jimenez's entire catalogue. Start with Part of Your World.