Despite my feelings and worries about current events that have so often bled into my reading this year, making me crave a certain kind of book or hyper-aware of problematic conventions and tropes in old faves, this was a fabulous reading year. I read lots of books by new-to-me authors that I can’t wait to read more from including Austin Chant, Holley Trent, Talia Hibbert, EE Ottoman, and Ada Harper. As always, there are even more books and authors whose books I didn’t get time to read, which makes writing a Best Of list so fraught.

These are the books that came out this year, that I would press into the hands of another reader without hesitation because I loved them so much.

Editor's Note: You can find the rest of Ana's Best Of lists at her website, and be sure to check out the #ReadRChat awards later this month!

The post title pretty much says it all, but yeah! We're on Patreon!

Veronica Scott shares her top picks in Sci-Fi Romance for the month of December! A pregnant heroine with two men fighting for her affection, a fairy tale retelling, and a cyborg-human romance on a desolate planet.

I am afraid that this review will be in two parts. First, I need it to be known that I was both excited and nervous about The Shape of You. No matter what genre, books are more often bad when it comes to fat representation, and I hoped for an outlier. Instead, I got more of the usual. I made it to 45% before I became enraged. The first part will be about the story, the second will be about fat representation.

Full disclosure, I hate “Best of” lists because I spend 95% of the time disagreeing with them. And then I feel guilty about all the books I didn’t read. However, here is my Best of 2018 Romance (conflicts of interest removed), which is only valid for what I can remember reading as I write this and is really a list of my favorite books this year.

This book was recommended to me by one of Harlequin's publicists when I inquired about another title, so I was skeptical. It's the third in a series about Dallas Billionaires and by an author I'd never tried, so I wasn't sure how jumping into the series with this book would go.

It's been a little over a year since I converted Love in Panels from a comics-only site to an all-things-romance site. It's been a tumultuous year in the world of romance publishing, with publishers and major blogs closing, trademark battles, and the ever-present issues of marginalization and cruddy rep. It's also been a year full of amazing books, new friendships, and a community that gives me hope and laughs when it feels like my country is burning down around me.

You may have noticed that we've become rather fond of Jae's books here at Love in Panels. Margrethe reviewed Perfect Rhythm, and I've covered Just for Show and her latest, Paper Love. Naturally, I had some questions! Jae was gracious enough to answer them for us.

In a way, Between the Lines had a lot to live up to for me, which it totally did. I loved the first book in the series, Perfect Day, and because the genuine emotion behind the book was what caught me then, I knew there wasn’t a great risk this time. This is Malcolm’s strong suit: she lingers in the emotions in a genuine and heartfelt way that is also unflinching and I love it.

The latest volume of Cleis's Best Women's Erotica of the Year series is big and bold and immensely satisfying. This collection is as diverse as it is exciting - familiar and new, kinky and sweet, fierce and tender - and filled with women from across the spectrum of life's experiences. It's a good thing the book is long, because each story leaves you hungry for more.