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Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

S07:11 Best Romance Novels of 2024

Fated Mates - Romance Books for Novel People

Fated Mates

Documentary, Society & Culture, Books, Arts

4.9 • 965 Ratings

🗓️ 19 November 2024

⏱️ 90 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Best Romance Novels of 2024! This is our favorite episode of the year, where we get to shout at you about the terrific books we read this year, and tell you all the ways romance continues to excite us.

It's the best and worst job, because we get to shout about books we love, but we are limited to only ten! And choosing ten favorites is very difficult! That said, we persevered, and here they are: Ten books we loved, books that delivered all the things we love in romance: bold heroines, big heroes, banter, complexity, conflict, impossible situations, and stories that swing for the fences. You're going to love these books.

This year, you can buy the Fated Mates Best of 2024 Book Pack from our friends at Pocket Books Shop in Lancaster, PA, and get eight of the traditionally published books on the list and a Fated Mates sticker! A Love Song For Ricki Wilde (hardcover) and Lips Like Sugar (independently published) can be added to the box for an extra fee. As always, you can add other 2024 books by some of our favorite people (or a signed Sarah MacLean book!) to the box if you’d like.

We love the idea of you gifting yourself this box (you deserve it!), but maybe you’d like to slide into someone’s text messages with the link as a very excellent gift for you! Or…you can do what Sarah does, and buy the box and spread the love around—sending each of the books to someone on your list. Let us know what you end up doing with these fabulous books, and don’t forget to tag us on Instagram or Threads or Bluesky when you unbox!

Check out our “Best Romance Novels” lists from previous years: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2020, and 2019. (We were 5 minutes old in 2018 and didn’t do a list that year), and please tell us what your favorite books of 2024 were!

If you want other people to discuss this list with, maybe you want to join our Patreon? You get an extra monthly episode from us and access to the incredible readers and brilliant people on the Fated Mates Discord! Support us and learn more at fatedmates.net/patreon.

Our next read along is Judith Ivory's The Proposition, a terrific Pygmalion retelling and one of Sarah's favorites. Find it at your local independent bookseller, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple Books or Amazon.

The Books


The Sponsors


The Rest

  • For even more info about this episode, and to explore everything Fated Mates has to offer, visit: https://fatedmates.net/episodes/2024/11/17/0711-the-best-romance-novels-of-2024
  • If you wish you had six more days in a week of people talking about romance, may we suggest joining our Patreon? Aside from an additional episode every month you get access to our Discord, where other romance readers are talking about books they love (and many other things!) all the time. It’s so fun! Learn more about the Patreon and go join those cool people who love romance as much as you do at patreon.com/fatedmates.
  • Beyond your favorite podcast app, you can find us on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky, Tumblr, and probably some other places, too, if you look hard enough.
  • If you've never listened to our Stop Book Banning episode, there's no better time than now.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Best of the year. Can you believe it? We survived.

0:05.7

Well, barely.

0:09.1

Everybody, this is an episode that, like, as soon as we are done recording, I start stressing about the next one.

0:15.3

You've already put a book on next year's last year's last year. I did. I'm proud. I have not done that, but I am very proud of you.

0:22.6

You know, we're recording this on November 13th, and so it could be, like this year, for example,

0:28.1

there is a book on the list that was actually published in December of 2023 because it came out

0:34.5

after we recorded. Yeah, we don't operate the way other places operate where they like are sticklers about the calendar. And part of the reason why we don't is because we like for you to be able to get the books. And so if you can't get the books, then they can't be on the list. So, and I might have a book for next year already on

0:55.9

the list too, but I just haven't, I haven't pulled the trigger yet. I mean, it feels very like

0:59.8

prematurely ejaculating to like put a book on the list in November a year before. I need to be hopeful of

1:05.6

2025, Sarah. And so, so does everybody else. Everybody else is like, good job, Jen. I mean, I am still

1:12.8

very impressed. And when you told me what book it was, I was like, oh, yes, I approve. So there it is.

1:17.4

It worked out great. All right. We'll come back to that in a year.

1:20.8

Welcome, everyone, to Fated Mates. I'm Sarah McLean. I read romance novels and I write them and this might be my favorite episode of the

1:28.3

of the year. Yeah, I'm Jennifer Pro Cop, a romance reader and editor and I am also very excited.

1:35.9

It feels like a, you know, with great, like it feels, this is the episode where I feel the greatest

1:40.9

sense of like responsibility. Yes, because we, so let's talk about that.

1:45.8

Let's talk about the like responsive, because I feel the same exact way. And I don't think that

1:51.7

is always the case with people who make best of the year lists. Oh, God, no. I sometimes think,

1:57.6

listen, I know some of the people out there who make these lists for, like, very important places.

2:03.6

And, like, sometimes I feel like you people just like, it's just, you know, you're like raw dog in it.

2:11.9

Oh, boy.

2:13.0

Listen, if Miriam Webster does not make raw dogging, the word of 2024.

...

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