Oh great. It’s Valentine’s Day soon. Better break out the ice cream, because it’s time to be lonely. For this accursed holiday, I’d like to share a list of some of my favorite cute, fluffy, M/M romances that you can project yourself onto to distract yourself from self-indulging in isolation and wine that usually comes with the holiday. Or, you could read them along with your isolation and wine. Whatever gets you through it.
Red White and Royal Blue, Casey McQuiston
This is my absolute #1 recommendation for anyone looking for some sweet, cute M/M romance. The romance is a little faster than most slow-burns, but I’m an absolute sucker for anything remotely “enemies-to-lovers” and it’s just enough to get me going. The premise, “the Son of the President of the United States falls in love with the prince of England” is a ridiculous concept, and absurd enough to work really well.
Bloom, Kevin Panetta
A cute little bakery story about the importance of family and gaining self-confidence. The art is absolutely gorgeous, and it’s definitely worth a read if you’re at all into bakeries, or cute little fluffy romances that are mostly just baking art and gorgeous landscape scenes. It’s mercilessly short and there’s not much in the way of substantial plot, but it’s a truly cathartic read that’s mostly cute without getting too complex.
Check, Please, Ngozi Ukazu
This is the slowest of all slow-burn romances featuring hockey, aggressively-Canadian culture, and lots of baking. The best part though? It doesn’t just drop off a cliff and end once the couple finally gets together. You actually get to see the two function as a stable pair for quite a while, and that’s something that’s sorely lacking. Show more healthy queer relationships AFTER they get together. Publishing, please, I’m begging you.
What if It’s Us, Becky Albertelli & Adam Silvera
Albertelli and Adam Silvera, the two giants of YA LGBT romance have come together and used their combined powers to bless us with a dual-perspective romance. It follows two young men destined to meet each other through improbable circumstances, as the universe itself wills them to be together and teaches them both how to love again. It’s not quite as fluffy as everything else on this list, but it’s definitely enough to keep me interested and distracted by the romance.
(Albertelli has my soul and will continue to fill my head with nothing but queer pining until the day I die.)
Heartstopper, Alice Oseman
An adorable pair of fools that cannot spit out their feelings and engage in some adolescent self-discovery along the way. Hope you like mutual pining because it’s…mostly several hundred pages of that. However, if you’re also masochist that loves mutual pining like I do, it’s phenomenal! That being said, the romance develops in a really realistic way and having two boys with wildly different personalities (an openly-gay theatre-type and a kindhearted but brutish rugby player) is a lovely dynamic. Also, it’s getting a Netflix series soon!