6 Romance Books That Are a Masterclass in Yearning
No matter what tropes you prefer, there will be a number of romance books out there that meet the criteria of what you’re looking for. From older romance books to modern ones, there are so many excellent romance books across subgenres. The best romance books have strong characters that readers can get attached to. Both of the lead characters are well-written and have their own lives and wants outside each other, but their scenes together are the heart of the book.
One thing that most romance readers tend to look for is an element of yearning. It is especially exciting to see one or both leads pine after the other for a long time, even when – and especially when – they don’t know they’re doing it. Romance books with excellent yearning might see the characters fighting to be together despite impossibly high stakes, or secretly harbor feelings for each other for years. These are amazing romance books that are a masterclass in yearning.
‘People We Meet on Vacation’ (2021)
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Image via Berkley</figure>
Before it was a hit Netflix rom-com, People We Meet on Vacation was an amazing romance novel by Emily Henry. The book follows Poppy Wright and Alex Nilsen, two polar opposites who have been best friends ever since they roadtripped back to their shared hometown together for a college break. Ever since, Poppy and Alex have gotten together once a year for a week-long summer vacation, where they visit a different place together every time. The book moves back and forth through time to tell this story. In the present day, Poppy and Alex haven’t spoken in two years after a mysterious falling out. As a professional travel writer, Poppy goes on vacation for work now, and she decides to invite Alex with her this time to try to start their old tradition back up. She’ll also be going with Alex as his date to his brother’s wedding that same summer.
In the past, People We Meet on Vacation follows Poppy and Alex’s other trips together, showing how their feelings for each other have been building up since the very beginning of their friendship. Every time their friendship starts to become something more, an obstacle gets in the way, from work to other people. The past timeline builds up to their final trip where their friendship ended, while they avoid talking about their falling out and just try to rebuild their friendship on their present-day trip. People We Meet on Vacation has amazing yearning from both Poppy and Alex, especially because Poppy doesn’t fully understand what she’s feeling for most of the book. Over the course of their past vacations, Poppy and Alex’s feelings build for each other while they both try to ignore them and prioritize the friendship. In the present, there’s an even deeper aspect to the yearning, as the two long for their old friendship while still harboring hopes of something more.
‘Atmosphere’ (2025)
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Image via Ballantine Books</figure>
Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid is a historical fiction romance novel set in the 1980s. The book starts with a flash-forward to December 1984, where astronaut Joan Goodwin is working from the ground to navigate a malfunctioning NASA space shuttle back to safety. Three of the astronauts on the shuttle have already died, one is unconscious, and only astronaut Vanessa Ford is left to work with Joan to get the shuttle home. The story then rewinds all the way back to 1980, where Joan joins NASA’s Space Shuttle program and meets the rest of her class, shortly after the program started to include women. Joan’s class is made up of the astronauts who will later be on that shuttle four years later, including Vanessa, with whom she strikes an instant connection.
Joan has never been in love before, but about a year into the program, she realizes that that’s what she feels for Vanessa. The two would lose their jobs if anyone found out that they were lesbians, though, so they have to keep their relationship a secret from everyone in their lives. Atmosphere features a different depiction of yearning, because Joan and Vanessa are together for most of the book. All the while, they long to be able to be together publicly, and to get to experience everything that the straight couple in their class gets to. In the present day, Joan is stuck on the ground trying to get the woman she loves to safety, all while the two have to hide their love for each other during their monitored communication. Atmosphere is a beautiful, heartbreaking novel that sees Joan and Vanessa risk everything to be together, all while trying to still find a way for both of them to continue to pursue their dreams of going to space.
‘Red, White & Royal Blue’ (2019)
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Image via St. Martin's Griffin</figure>
Red, White & Royal Blue, the extremely popular romance novel that was adapted into a hit rom-com for Prime Video, is one of the best depictions of yearning of any romance book. The book follows Alex Claremont-Diaz, the college-age son of the first female President of the United States, Ellen Claremont. Ellen is nearing the end of her first term, and tensions are high as she runs for re-election. Alex has a passion for politics and wants to help, especially because he’s now in his final year of college. At a wedding thrown by the British royal family, though, Alex makes his mother look bad when he gets into a public altercation with his longtime rival, Prince Henry.
For the sakes of both their families and countries, Alex and Henry then have to do damage control by pretending to be friends. They start meeting up over the course of the following months for staged hangouts where they know they will be photographed. Along the way, though, Alex and Henry start to really get to know each other, and they realize they were wrong about each other. They start talking to and messaging each other all the time, and they soon become best friends, which turns romantic at a New Year’s Eve party. Alex and Henry cannot actually be together, though, because of their respective titles. As such, they try to compartmentalize their feelings for each other, but they ultimately can’t help but fall in love with each other. Red, White & Royal Blue is full of intense yearning throughout the book, and Alex and Henry also just have phenomenal chemistry and banter. It’s easy to root for them no matter the odds stacked against them, and their pining for each other jumps off the page through every one of their conversations and emails.
Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.
You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.
- When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening. - You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers. - The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it. - You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.
You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.
- This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
them equally seriously. - You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
rival, and that never entirely goes away. - It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
other, but whose turn it is this year. - You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.
The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.
- Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned. - You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
more real than public ones. - The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
it would cost either one to say it out loud. - Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
stop hiding.
You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.
- Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
days, which is precisely the point of it. - You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
decades of something merely comfortable. - The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
enormous life afterwards because of it. - You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
same way.
‘I’ve Got Your Number’ (2011)
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Image via The Dial Press</figure>
I’ve Got Your Number by Sophie Kinsella follows an unlikely romance that develops between two polar opposites who get temporarily stuck with each other for the sake of convenience. Poppy Wyatt is happily engaged to be married, but she finds herself in a messy situation when she loses both her cellphone and her engagement ring on the same day. Luckily, Poppy finds a discarded cellphone in the trash, so she gives out the number in case anyone finds the ring. The only problem is, the phone is actually the work cell of Sam Roxton, a no-nonsense business executive who is frustrated by this inconvenience.
Still, Sam agrees to share the phone with Poppy until she finds her ring. Through sharing the cellphone, Poppy and Sam get daily glimpses into each other’s lives. They also start to become friends by talking to each other all the time in order to coordinate their shared usage of the phone. Poppy and Sam start to get used to their arrangement and even depend on each other, but it’s just temporary. Eventually, Poppy will find her ring and get married to her fiancé, Magnus, and Sam will get his phone back to himself. While Poppy spends most of the novel in denial of her growing feelings for Sam, Sam’s yearning for her is apparent from early on. Each of their interactions is charged, as the two long to be more than what they are, relegated mostly to virtual interactions while still becoming involved in nearly every aspect of each other’s lives.
‘The Flatshare’ (2019)
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The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary, which was adapted into the romance miniseries of the same name, follows the growing romance of two people who have never met. After a bad breakup, Tiffy Moore is in a rush to find a new place to live that she can afford, so she winds up in an unconventional arrangement. Leon Twomey is a hospice nurse who works nights and sleeps during the day, so he rents the apartment to Tiffy half the time. They share the space and its single bed, but their hours never overlap, so they become roommates who have never met each other.
Tiffy and Leon use post-it notes to communicate with one another, starting out with practical back-and-forth about their living arrangement and slowly getting to know each other through these notes. Over the course of The Flatshare, Tiffy and Leon fall in love through their post-it notes, while still working vastly different hours and never meeting in person. The yearning between them is beautiful as they both become more reliant on their post-it note system over time, while trying to determine whether what they have is worth risking by finally meeting each other.
‘Heated Rivalry’ (2023)
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Before it was a massively popular TV show, Heated Rivalry was the second book in Rachel Reid‘s Game Changers series. The romance novel tells the love story of rival NHL players Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov over the course of about a decade. The novel starts with a flash-forward that shows Shane and Ilya carrying on a secret fling, before then going back in time to show them meeting in their rookie year. For years, the two regularly hook up in secret, compartmentalizing their feelings for each other because they know that they could never actually be together.
Shane and Ilya’s careers are everything to them, and they would likely lose it all if anyone every found out about them, due to both rampant homophobia in the NHL and their status as professional rivals. Still, they can’t fight their growing feelings for each other. No matter how many times either one of them tries to end things, they just keep finding their way back to one another. Both Shane and Ilya’s yearning for one another is very clear throughout the book, even as neither of them knows just how deep their own feelings run, until they ultimately have to face these feelings and decide what to do about them.
Heated Rivalry centers on two hockey stars whose fierce competition transforms into a complex relationship as they navigate conflicting feelings and the sport’s demands. As they attempt to balance personal emotions with professional ambitions, their unexpected bond challenges traditional expectations in the world of competitive hockey.
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