Leo Loves Aries is a slow burn friends-to-lovers romance about college roommates. It's low angst, especially for a New Adult romance.  Even though I don't think the word "bisexual" is used on page, Sunday has explicitly said Theo is bi and in the book he says he's up for whatever. The book sort of dances up to the Gay For You trope and then spins away. The bi rep could have been more overt, but I didn't feel it was hidden or erased as in so many other books.

The Stars We Steal, pitched as "The Bachelorette in Space," is not-so-secretly a futuristic sci-fi retelling of Jane Austen's Persuasion. Set 40 years prior to Alexa Donne's Brightly Burning (a Jane Eyre retelling in space), TSWS stands alone but tries to cram an awful lot of plot into one book. Leonie is a Princess in a stratified society that doesn't have kingdoms but clings to notions class and privilege. Instead of countries, there are ships. Many came from individual countries or areas, so for example, the Lady Liberty is the ship from what used to be the United States (Earth is not habitable) and Leonie's breaking-down ship is a private one called the Sofi. Leonie's family has a title and a ship, but they don't have money, so her father has ordered her to enter the Valg Season to find a wealthy husband and save the family.

We've been reading about characters who love reading for decades (centuries?), but it's fairly recent that the characters in romance novels have embraced their nerdy/geeky sides. Whether it's Annabeth Albert's Gaymers, Melissa Blue's #DirtySexyGeeks or Christina Lauren's Dark Wild Night, characters who love gaming, astronomy, science, superheroes and/or comics are on the rise in the last decade or so. We've even got some superhero romances, like Blaze, by Christa Tomlinson. And remember when Nadia Diament stopped by to talk about her own love affair with comics?

It won't surprise you that we here at Love in Panels are fans of both romance and geekiness, so we're pleased to welcome author Allie York today to talk about flying her nerd flag high and writing the geeky romance of her heart.

Her latest book releases on February 13, so if you want to read a comic shop romance don't miss more info at the end!

Today we're sharing a guest post about how queer individuals and communities function after breakups and how that may be different from straight relationships. Remember how everyone on The L Word dated each other? Yeah, that. (With less bananas soap shenanigans.)

Author Valentine Wheeler writes both contemporary and SFF queer romance. Her latest book is No Parking, a bisexual f/f romance set in small-town Massachusetts. Scroll down to the end of the post for more on the book, out on February 10th!

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There’s a punchline I’ve heard in the queer community for decades, though the joke varies: when women break up, they stay friends. I’ve seen variations about queer men, too, though less often. But it’s rare that that trope makes it into romance fiction. When it does, I for one am thrilled.

Am I allowed to write a review consisting of nothing other than hearts and exclamation points?

First off, you should know that I didn't finish Mermaid Inn. As far as I know, it's not a bad book. It just didn't work for me. If you want to know why, here are far too many words on the topic.

Mermaid Inn is the first in a new series about a quirky small town in Canada, Matchmaker Bay. As with most first-in-series novels, there's a lot of heavy lifting involved in building this setting and introducing characters and places. Sometimes this is clunky, but Jenny Holiday did a decent job. She had a short video in her Instagram stories about why she wrote a small town and mentioned the second-chance trope, which is apparently her least favorite. Since the story will be magically gone by the time you read this, here's the summary: Matchmaker Bay is a fictional blend of a few different small towns in Holiday's life. She wanted to write about how small towns are affected by suburban creep, urban sprawl, whatever you wish to call it. How towns on the periphery change as cities grow. All of this is fairly standard and expected.

It's February, which means we get to fend off terrible articles about romance novels all month. Never surprised, always disappointed.

But here are some books we want to read!

This post includes affiliate links.

Mini-reviews of The Bookworm Crush, Heart & Seoul, The Gravity of Us, and Prince of Air and Darkness, which means two contemporary YA romances (one m/m and one f/m), one adult f/mcontemporary, and one m/m fantasy (urban fantasy?) romance.

Tweet Cute is a wonderful You've Got Mail retelling for the age of Twitter brand wars, social apps and kids trying to decide whether or not to go into the family business.

We are SO excited to give you a chance to win an early print copy of Kit Rocha's upcoming Deal With the Devil courtesy of the authors!