From our
Trendspotting Desk this week: Devotees of the paranormal romance subgenre may have noticed a pronounced shift in the category lately. What used to be primarily the domain of dark and gritty supernatural narratives, with the book covers featuring headless torsos with very ripped abs (and maybe a pair of wings) to match, now serves up a surprising number of lighthearted love stories and zany rom-coms.
You’ve still got your vampires and ghosts and werewolves (oh, my); it’s just that everything is maybe a bit more…cheerful than it used to be? Fewer "the world is at stake" stories and more "oh no, there's only one coffin"-style narratives. Nothing wrong with that. Lycanthropes need love, too.
This curated collection features the lighter side of paranormal romance. Each book below is relatively recent—published in the U.S. within the last few years—and the list has been sorted into the usual-suspect categories in terms of what creature is, ahem, featured. Don't worry, there's still plenty of variety here: We’ve got
queer romance and
fake-dating romance,
holiday romance and
medical romance,
tortured puns and
old-school book covers. Plus at least one sterling example of
clever ambiguous phrasing.
Scroll around to browse the collection, and click on the book cover images for more details about each title. You can also add any interesting leads to your
Want to Read list.
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