Those Who Wait is six hundred pages of two women not saying the thing. Sutton Spencer is twenty-five and a literature grad student at NYU. Charlotte Thompson is twenty-eight, Deputy Mayor of New York City, and about to run for Congress. They start as an arrangement, become friends, and then spend an extraordinary amount of the book refusing to name what has actually happened. It holds a 4.35 average across more than twenty-seven thousand Goodreads ratings, which for a self-published sapphic romance is remarkable.
Two things are worth saying before the list, because they will change what you go looking for.
First: this is not really an age-gap romance. Sutton and Charlotte are three years apart. What readers respond to and remember as an age difference is a power difference — a graduate student and a woman who runs part of a city — and those are not the same thing. So this list splits the axis. Some books below give you that dynamic; a different set give you an actual, large numeric gap. Only Presidential and In the Long Run try to do both.
Second: sapphic political romance is not a subgenre. It is a shelf of maybe fifteen to twenty books, most of them small-press or self-published, and most with a few hundred ratings rather than a few thousand. Worse for our purposes, nearly all of them replace friendship with proximity — a Secret Service agent, a campaign consultant, a surgeon, a corporate fixer. No book combines politics, friends-first and an age gap the way Those Who Wait does. Nothing on this list will hand you all five axes. Pick the two or three you care about most and the table below will tell you where to go.
This post contains affiliate links to Amazon, Bookshop.org and Libro.fm. If you buy through them we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. It never changes which books make the list. We have a full review of Those Who Wait if you want ours before you go looking for the next one.
All 13 Books at a Glance
| Book | Slow burn | Friends first | Politics | Age gap | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Those Who Wait (the original) | 600+ pages of it | Yes | NYC deputy mayor, House run | 3 years | Explicit |
| Midnight Rain | Yes | Yes | Same world | 3 years | Explicit |
| Forever and a Day | No, already together | Yes | Background | 3 years | Moderate |
| On the Same Page | Yes | Purest on the list | No | No | Low, fade to black |
| In the Long Run | Yes | Childhood ties | City manager | 4 years | Moderate-high |
| The Senator’s Wife | Yes | No | Senator’s spouse, DC | No | Fade to black |
| Presidential | Moderate | No | A sitting President | Yes | Steamy |
| Barring Complications | Yes | Ex-lovers, law school | Supreme Court | No | Low |
| Courtship | Yes | No | SCOTUS confirmation | No | Low, one scene |
| The Fixer | Extreme | No | DC fixer firm | Yes | None in book one |
| And Playing the Role of Herself | Famously | No | No | No | Moderate-high |
| These Thin Lines | Yes | No | No | Large | Moderate-high |
| The Duet | Moderate | No | No | 25 years | High |
| The Candidate | Moderate | No | Presidential campaign | No | Moderate-high |
1. Midnight Rain by Haley Cass
An alternate-timeline companion to Those Who Wait: the same two women, a different set of early choices, and thirteen years of consequences. Five hundred pages of two people not saying the thing.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: It is the only book in existence that gives you more Charlotte and Sutton with the wanting still intact. Cass runs the same engine at greater length, and readers have rewarded it — a 4.62 Goodreads average across 6,416 ratings, higher than the original.
How it differs: It assumes you have read Those Who Wait; going in cold wastes the whole conceit. It is also long and interior, and the edition shipped with copy-editing problems a book this popular should not have. There is no Bookshop.org print edition.
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2. Forever and a Day by Haley Cass
Episodic snapshots that carry Sutton and Charlotte forward from the last page of Those Who Wait — career milestones, a wedding, a family, roughly two decades of a life built in public.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: It answers the question literally. If what you want is simply more of these two, this is the book, and it is unusually generous about handing over the domestic future the first book only gestures at.
How it differs: It is not a romance in structure. There is no slow burn because there is nothing left to burn and no tension left to resolve, and it does not stand alone. Read it as an epilogue, not as a next book.
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3. On the Same Page by Haley Cass
Riley Beckett produces digital news. Gianna Makinen is an influencer. They have been each other’s person since Boston University, and the book cuts between that decade of friendship and the holiday party where the arrangement stops being survivable.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: This is the closest structural match to Those Who Wait anywhere, including the rest of Cass’s own catalogue. Same voice, same patience, same specific ache of two people who know each other completely and will not say the one thing. The friends-first axis is purer here than in the source book.
How it differs: No politics, no age gap, and it is the least explicit of Cass’s novels — considerably more fade-to-black than Those Who Wait readers will expect. No Bookshop.org print edition.
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4. In the Long Run by Haley Cass
Taylor Vandenberg, 44, is a travel blogger with no fixed address. Brooke Watson, 40, is the city manager of Faircombe, Tennessee, and someone Taylor knew growing up. A one-night stand in San Diego becomes an extended stay in Brooke’s town.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: Of the Cass books this carries the most axes at once: childhood history standing in for friendship, a genuine slow burn, a four-year gap the book actually uses, and a heroine whose entire life is local government. It was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award.
How it differs: The politics is municipal — budgets and zoning, not campaigns and cameras. And both leads are settled adults in their forties, so the mentor-and-student charge between Sutton and Charlotte is completely absent.
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5. The Senator’s Wife by Jen Lyon
Alex Grey, a professional soccer player, pulls a drowning woman out of the water on a South Carolina holiday. The woman is Catharine Cleveland, a shipping-company CEO and the wife of a sitting US Senator. The story moves between San Francisco, Portland and Washington.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: The most widely read modern book on the political axis. The closet, the press, the arithmetic about what a career can survive — that is the part of Charlotte Thompson’s story this book takes seriously.
How it differs: It opens on a rescue, not a friendship, and there is no age gap. It is also fade-to-black, a real step down in heat. Content note: domestic violence and homophobia are both on the page. There is no Libro.fm edition.
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6. Presidential by Lola Keeley
Emily Lawrence is a paediatric surgeon newly arrived in Washington. In her first week she collides with President Constance Calvin — first term, turbulent, running for re-election, and raising a twelve-year-old son alone since her husband died.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: A sitting President is as far up the political axis as this genre goes, and Keeley writes the machinery as the actual obstacle: the staff, the press, the impossibility of a private hour. It is also one of very few books that gets politics and an age gap into the same story.
How it differs: Not friends first. The single-parent thread gives it a domestic warmth Those Who Wait does not have, and reviewers describe it as low-angst — the tension comes from logistics and a homophobic opponent rather than from two people refusing to speak.
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7. Barring Complications by Blythe Rippon
Victoria Willoughby is the newest justice on the US Supreme Court, widely assumed to be gay and saying nothing about it. The marriage-equality case in front of her is being argued by Genevieve Fornier, her Harvard Law classmate and the woman she was involved with then. The book alternates between the case and the years that produced it.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: The dual timeline does exactly what Cass’s does, and this is one of very few sapphic romances where politics is the substance rather than the backdrop. The shared history gives it the friends-first texture almost every other political title lacks.
How it differs: No age gap, both leads are established professionals, and the heat is low. The readership is small — a few hundred ratings against Those Who Wait‘s twenty-seven thousand, so there is very little conversation around it.
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8. Courtship by Carsen Taite
Addison Riley, a law school dean, is nominated for Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Julia Scott is the political consultant running her confirmation. Every hour they spend together is a professional liability, and there are people working to sink the nomination.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: The tension is procedural in the same way Those Who Wait‘s is: two extremely competent women managing an enormous public process while quietly failing to manage themselves. The Washington machinery is convincingly drawn.
How it differs: No friendship, no age gap, and reviewers consistently report essentially one intimate scene in the whole book. There is no Libro.fm edition.
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9. The Fixer by Lee Winter
Michelle Hastings runs a Washington firm that makes problems disappear for people who can afford it. Eden Lawless is an activist who takes a job without fully understanding who she is working for, pointed at a corrupt small-town mayor.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: The longest slow burn on this list by a distance, a real age gap, and political machinery treated as an actual subject rather than set dressing. Winter writes restraint better than almost anyone working in the genre.
How it differs: Read this part before you buy. Book one contains no romantic resolution at all — not a kiss. The payoff is spread across a series, so a reader who came here for Those Who Wait‘s release will be furious if they do not know that going in. There is also no friendship; the engine is deception.
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10. And Playing the Role of Herself by K.E. Lane
Caidence Harris and Robyn Ward act on connected Los Angeles cop shows. Caid has been quietly in love with Robyn for two years when the writers decide to put their characters together on screen.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: If what you want is the slow burn and the payoff and nothing else, this is the genre’s reference point — the book people mean when they say a romance earned its ending. The public-figure problem rhymes, too: Robyn’s visibility is why nothing can be simple, the way Charlotte’s is.
How it differs: No politics, no age gap, and they are colleagues rather than friends when it starts. It is also nearly twenty years old and shows it in places, particularly in how the industry around them is drawn.
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11. These Thin Lines by Milena McKay
Chiara Conti is the creative director of a fashion house and married to a man she does not love. Vi Courtenay is twenty-five, an intern, and has admired Chiara from a distance for years. Paris and New York.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: The age gap here is load-bearing rather than incidental, and the payoff is the largest on this list — the entire book is built around delayed release, which is the thing Those Who Wait readers are usually chasing.
How it differs: No politics and no friendship. Content note: Chiara is married for a large part of the book, so this is an infidelity plot. For a lot of romance readers that is a hard line, and it is better to know now than at forty percent.
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12. The Duet by Harper Bliss
Lana Lynch is fifty-four, fronts The Lady Kings, is widowed, and is back on tour after a decade away. Cleo Palmer is twenty-nine, fronts the opening act, and grew up on Lana’s records. They sing together every night.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: The largest numeric age gap on this list at twenty-five years, and unlike most gap romances it takes the gap seriously — the grief, the difference in career stage, the difference in what each of them still has to prove.
How it differs: No politics and no friends-first. The structure is a tour rather than a slow build in one place, so the burn is shorter and hotter than Those Who Wait‘s.
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13. The Candidate by Tracey Richardson
Jane Kincaid is running for President of the United States. Alex Warner is the Secret Service agent assigned to protect her. The campaign trail does the rest.
Why a Those Who Wait reader wants it: It is the only book here that is purely and entirely a campaign romance — the thing most readers are actually picturing when they ask for something like Those Who Wait and mean the politics part.
How it differs: I am including this with a caveat rather than a recommendation. It holds a 3.80 Goodreads average, comfortably the lowest here, and the most repeated complaint is that the intimacy is pitched louder than the rest of the book has earned. It is also from 2008. Take it as the completist’s option — though its audiobook is narrated by Lori Prince, who also narrates Those Who Wait.
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If You Only Read One
For more of Charlotte and Sutton: Midnight Rain. Same two women, different choices, the wanting fully intact.
For the friendship and the ache: On the Same Page. The closest structural match anywhere, at the cost of the heat.
For the politics: Presidential if you want the highest office and some heat with it; Barring Complications if you want the politics to be the actual subject.
For a real age gap: The Duet, at twenty-five years, or These Thin Lines if you can live with an infidelity plot.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there a sequel to Those Who Wait?
Two, of different kinds. Forever and a Day is a straight epilogue that carries Sutton and Charlotte forward about twenty years. Midnight Rain is an alternate-timeline companion — the same women making different early choices — and it is the better book of the two, with a higher Goodreads average than the original. Neither works as a first read.
How many sapphic political romances actually exist?
Fewer than you would hope. Stripping duplicates and non-romance titles out of the reader-curated lists leaves roughly fifteen to twenty books, and only three of them — The Senator’s Wife, Presidential and The Fixer — are from the last few years. If you have read those plus Barring Complications and Courtship, you have read most of the shelf. This is a genuine gap in the genre rather than something we failed to find.
Which of these has the biggest age gap?
The Duet, at twenty-five years — fifty-four and twenty-nine. These Thin Lines, The Fixer and Presidential all have substantial gaps that the books use deliberately. Everything else here is either four years or nothing.
Are these all open door?
No, and this is the axis most likely to disappoint. The Fixer has no romantic resolution at all in book one. Courtship has roughly one scene. The Senator’s Wife, Barring Complications and On the Same Page all sit well below Those Who Wait. The ones that match it for heat are Midnight Rain, The Duet and These Thin Lines, with Presidential not far behind.
What if none of these is quite right?
Tell us the book, not the trope. Our Books Like directory takes a title and routes you to the closest read-alike list we have — and if we have not written that one yet, it points you at the trope pages that get nearest and records what you searched for, so it gets built next.
Looking for read-alikes for a different book? Browse the full Books Like directory — search any sapphic title and we will point you at the closest match we have.