Ringing in the new year with your resolution to read more romance just got easier, thanks to January’s lineup of new releases.
Join us as we highlight notable romance book releases each month to add to your never-ending TBR pile. This month’s roster of rom-com reads include two sequels from authors that dabble in hockey romance, a cozy tale of a cafe, and the baby dragons that inhabit it.
In order of release date, here are five rom-com novels to read this January:
1. Into the Woods by Jenny Holiday — January 7
Jenny Holiday follows Canadian Boyfriend with a romance set in a summer arts camp. The novel observes two recluses looking to disappear into the woods for their own complicated reasons.
Teddy wants to write a revenge album to get back at the bandmate who broke up their band, while Gretchen wants to focus on teaching dance and leave the men in her rearview mirror.
Book Description:
Teddy Knight’s band has just broken up in spectacular fashion after his longtime bandmate and — he’d thought — closest friend decides to go solo. So when he’s offered a last-minute gig to fill in as an artist-in-residence at a summer arts camp — which comes with a lake cabin and lots of free time to work on a revenge album — he takes it. Gretchen Miller is having a mid-life crisis. Luckily, her summer job as the dance teacher at Wild Arts summer camp will allow her to drop out of society for a while. Having sworn off dating, she decides she’ll go into the woods and become a crone.
Teddy and Gretchen clash from the get-go when he mistakes her for a fan, and she relegates him to the “entitled jerk” ash heap. Despite their determination to dislike each other, a wary friendship blooms as the magic of the woods starts to unwind them, and they spend long hours by the campfire talking about art, being stuck, and the idea of starting over.
2. The Lodge by Kayla Olson — January 7
January is the perfect excuse to escape into a winter fantasy, and The Lodge delivers that in spades.
A ghostwriter is whisked away to a fancy resort in the Vermont mountains to hit the slopes and solve the mystery of a missing lead singer for the band on which she’s writing the memoir. Things grow complicated when she falls for the mysterious and handsome ski instructor.
Book Description:
Alix Morgan just got her big break as the ghostwriter of a memoir by Sebastian Green, a former member of the boy band True North. And when he offers her a penthouse at a luxurious resort in Vermont, she jumps at the chance to work far away from her noisy, cramped apartment.
Her career as an entertainment journalist has been building toward this dream job — after all, she used to cover True North and was one of the last people to interview former frontman Jett Beckett before he disappeared. As she combs through her client’s voice memos, the specter of the missing lead singer remains, and fans are desperate to know the full story.
But Alix also has time for some fun at this glamorous resort, where she begins ski lessons with a handsome instructor named Tyler. As Alix and Tyler fall in love on the slopes, Alix’s work takes a complicated turn — and the mystery of True North’s downfall may be hers to solve.
3. The Baby Dragon Café by Aamna Qureshi — January 16
The Baby Dragon Cafe promises a mixture of Pumpkin Spice Cafe and Legends and Lattes with a cozy romance set in a cafe full of rambunctious dragons.
Saphira owns this whimsical and struggling cafe. Desperate, she looks to the grumpy local gardener to solve her money troubles by offering to train his baby dragon if he can cough up enough money to keep the business from going under.
Book Description:
When Saphira opened up her café for baby dragons and their humans, she wasn’t expecting it to be so difficult to keep the fires burning. It turns out that young dragons are not the best magical animals to keep in a café, and replacing all that burnt furniture is costing Saphira more than she can afford from selling dragon-roasted coffee.
Aiden is a local gardener and heart-throb, more interested in his plants than actually spending time with his disobedient baby dragon. When Aiden walks into Saphira’s café, he has a genius idea – he’ll ask Saphira to train his baby dragon, and he’ll pay her enough to keep the café afloat.
4. The Rival by Emma Lord — January 21
Emma Lord, a queen of the YA novels, is back with The Rivals — an Enemies to Lovers novel featuring competing neighbors admitted into their dream school with aspirations of writing for the same zine.
However, the two academics will have to band together to expose the school’s flawed system without crushing each other, or, heaven forbid, crushing on each other.
Book Description:
At long last, Sadie has vanquished her lifelong academic rival — her irritatingly charming, whip-smart next-door neighbor, Seb — by getting the coveted, only spot in her dream college. Or at least, so she thinks. When Seb is unexpectedly pulled off the waitlist and admitted, Sadie has to compete with him all over again, this time to get a spot on the school’s famous zine. Now not only is she dealing with the mayhem of the lovable, chaotic family she hid her writing talents from, as well as her own self doubt, but she has to come to terms with some less-than-resentful feelings for Seb that are popping up along the way.
But the longer they compete, the more Sadie and Seb notice flaws in the school’s system that are much bigger than any competition between them. Somehow, the two of them have to band together even as they’re trying to crush each other, only to discover they may have met their match in more ways than one.
5. Spiral by Bal Khabra — January 28
The follow-up to Collide, this sequel looks to dance its way into our hearts. It features a hockey player struggling with his newfound fame and a ballerina desperate for a social media presence.
The only solution? Use each other with a fake dating ruse that is sure to stay purely monetary.
Book Description:
Elias Westbrook, a newly drafted hockey player for the Toronto Thunder, is facing the challenges of fame and media scrutiny. With a growing fan base and too many expectations on his shoulders, he’s struggling to make his first career goal. The tabloids are reporting on his every move, including which woman he was last seen with, but all he wants to do is escape the spotlight.
Enter from stage left Sage Beaumont, an aspiring ballerina with dreams of joining the Aurora Ballet Theatre, but her lack of popularity online leaves her at a major disadvantage for securing the lead role. When Sage finds herself with the perfect opportunity to make her dreams come true by fake dating Elias, she takes her shot.
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What will you be reading in January? Share your picks in the comments below!
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Alicia Gilstorf
Alicia is a writer from Canada. She credits her passion for TV and film to superheroes, workplace comedies, cheesy holiday movies, and coming-of-age stories.
