Updated on October 9, 2026 Verdict: A tender, plain-spoken 1816 love story that gave lesbian fiction one of its first happy endings, held back by a sagging final third and a few elements that have aged badly. Best for: Readers who want a gentle, hopeful historical romance with a guaranteed happy ending, and who can … Read more
Updated on October 8, 2026 Verdict: A charming rich-girl/poor-girl gymnastics premise undercut by a romance that most readers agree happens too fast to earn its own happy ending. Best for: Readers who want a short, low-angst enemies-to-lovers sports romance and are fine treating the falling-in-love part as a given rather than something the book has … Read more
Updated on October 7, 2026 Verdict: A brisk, warm Regency novella in which a young lady and her modiste stumble on a plot to prolong the war with Napoleon and fall for each other while they foil it — charming and open-door, held back by a romance that moves faster than many readers wanted. Best … Read more
Updated on October 7, 2026 Verdict: A short forbidden romance between a colonel’s sheltered daughter and the most talked-about courtesan in a small Brazilian town — an inviting set-up, but with no written reader reviews yet we are not scoring it. Best for: Readers who want a quick, atmospheric historical with a class divide, secret … Read more
Updated on October 5, 2026 Verdict: A lyrical, devastating sapphic retelling of the Odyssey that gives Melantho and Penelope the love story Homer never did, held back by its length and by a princess-and-slave power imbalance that it never fully works through. Best for: Readers who loved The Song of Achilles and want the same … Read more
Verdict: A dual-timeline sapphic second-chance romance with two of the best-liked leads in the subgenre, held back by a flashback structure that keeps stalling the story readers came for. Best for: Readers who want first love and the reunion in one book, and will happily spend half the page count in a college romance they … Read more