MCs: A 73 year old widow with plenty of money and a Terrible Nephew and a 69-year-old rooming house manager who has just lost her livelihood and is in need of fast cash Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan (f/f) Tropes/Themes/Secondary Plots: A friends to lovers romance, forced proximity, and MCs fighting against their families’ desire to see them both happily married MCs: A young woman with no interest in marriage and her cousin’s widow, who is also her estranged best friend Rep: Anglo-Indian multiracial bisexual MC A Lady’s Desire by Lily Maxton (f/f) Tropes/Themes/Secondary Plots: A second chance romance, loads of hilarious banter, two MCs dealing with racism, sexism, and classism who learn a lot from each other MCs: A determined young woman who enters a charity contest in order to win the funds she needs to open a shop and her old flame, a man who doesn’t care what society thinks about his less-than-respectable upbringing but does know how to swagger Rep: trans man MC, bisexual woman MC Her Every Wish by Courtney Milan (m/f) Tropes/Themes/Secondary Plots: A meet-cute involving a quilt making project, a gentle and thoughtful courtship, lots of rich details about craftspeople

MCs: A silversmith running a shop with his brother-in-law and a politically active quilt maker Rep: bisexual trans woman MC, bisexual trans man MC The Craft of Love by E.E. Tropes/Themes/Secondary Plots: Fascinating magic that fits beautifully into the time and place, an MC dealing with the death of her beloved, MCs coming together under traumatic and stressful circumstances Setting: the American West in the late 1800s The bottom line: these are short queer romances with happy queer endings, and all of them are perfect for when the world is a dumpster fire and you just need to spend an hour immersed in a queer love story (and not stay up till 3am). Technically some of them might be novelettes, and a few might be very short novels, but who cares, this isn’t academia. These books range in length from 40ish to 150ish pages. Whether you’re looking for holiday stories, meet-cutes, vampires, shifters, chosen family, rock stars, friends-to-lovers, or historical shenanigans–these queer romance novellas have got it all.

These stories range from 100% fluffy (we’re talking rainbow unicorns sprouting glitter from their horns, folks) to all-the-angst-that’s-fit-to-print-in-150-pages-or-less, and everything in between. But sometimes all I want is a simple dose of queer comfort, and there’s no better reading pick-me-up than queer romance novellas. When it comes to romance, I usually gravitate toward long, angsty novels with multiple side plots.

Smoke Signals by Meredith Katz