I’ve been craving so much cozy fantasy romance lately – here are just a few of the ones I’ve been reading lately. What I love about all of these is that despite the sweetness of the romances take place in seriously troubling contexts, where greed, war, and prejudice put people, books, and even cats in danger, but love – romantic, family, and friend – still wins the day.
Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett. Read by Genevieve Cocke. Del Rey, 2026. 978-0593973257. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
In 1920s Montreal, Agnes Aubert is the determined owner of Les Amis des Chats, a busy charity that struggles to take care of the large unhoused cat population of the city. Unfortunately, their current building, where Agnes both lives and works, is falling apart due to a wizard battle on her street, so Agnes needs to find a new place before winter. When a beautiful building in a good neighborhood becomes available for an absurdly low rent, she has no choice but to take it, despite knowing she must be making a huge mistake. Because of the course – she eventually learns – the building is owned by a wizard, one believed to have been the cause of the great magical disaster that nearly destroyed the world. But even if the wizard has enemies, she will do anything to protect him if her cats are also safe.
Heather Fawcett is popular enough now that you’ve likely already read or at least heard of her other books – I’m very pleased that I discovered her back when she was mostly writing middle grade. This book is pure delight, filled with so many cats with distinct and delightful personalities, a stubborn heroine whose frequent tears do not interfere with her high levels of organization, frequent cups of tea, delicious pastries that magically appear in the over, a strong sister bond, a sweet, slow-burn romance, and themes of second chances and looking below the surface.
The Book Witch: A Novel by Meg Shaffer. Read by Mia Hutchinson-Shaw. Ballantine Books, 2026. ISBN 978-0593983584. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
Book witches have a serious job: to travel inside books that are threatened by book burners and save them from being destroyed completely. Rainy March learned her trade from her grandfather, since her mother, also a powerful book witch, died when she was an infant. Rainy knows how to use her black umbrella to turn a dot on a book page into a portal into the book; how to have her familiar help her safely get rid of intruders and get back out again; and all the rules to stay safe in a book. Unfortunately, knowing the rules did not help her when she had to save her long-time book crush, the Duke of Chicago, a detective from a 1930s noir mystery series. When your crush falls for you, how could you keep him in his own book and stay out of it yourself? Once caught, Rainy’s been doing her best to stay away – but when her grandfather goes missing, she needs the Duke and his infallible record to help find him again. Together, they will chase the clues in and out of classic books – and in and out of their own story.
Friends, I read my first Meg Shaffer book last year, The Lost Story, and absolutely adored it. I was thinking about it again so much this year that I was about to reread it when I discovered that she had a new book out and decided to read it instead. Although it felt quite different to me, I was pulled fully into it right away. While it’s written with echoes of classic series, deliberately filled with cliches, Rainy and Duke journey through multiple classic works of fiction, which made me want to explore them further. The adventures are fast, the romance sparkling and tender, but the underlying themes of the power of genre fiction to inspire and importance of letting people decide for themselves what books matter to them are ones that we desperately need in this book-banning times.
How to Lose a Goblin in 10 Days by Jessie Sylva. Narrated by Maggie Bain. Orbit, 2026. ISBN 978-0316585910. Listened to audiobook on Libby.
Pansy is a halfling who’s never quite been able to fit her village’s idea of what a good halfling young woman should be – and certainly isn’t interested in finding a strapping young halfling lad to settle down and make babies with. She’s finally worked up the courage to move to the cottage in the woods her grandmother left her – only to discover that the cottage already has an inhabitant. Ren is a goblin whose clan has been taking care of the cottage for the last 20 years, as it’s been empty while Pansy’s grandmother was in decline. Pansy doesn’t know that Ren’s clan is relying on the crops Ren can grow overland to add to what they can grow in their caves; Ren is sure that Pansy is as inconsiderate and wasteful as they’ve heard all halflings are. But since neither of them is willing to give up the cottage, they resolve to live together until one of them can’t take it anymore. Naturally, they fall for each other along the way – and find that there are bigger problems than getting halfling and goblin families to accept an interracial relationship.
Romance tropes that make an appearance include enemies to lovers (obviously) and only one bed. Deeper themes look at how the powerful divide and make enemies of groups of the less powerful to keep them in control. There were some small things in the book that I didn’t really quite buy, like goblins being able to grow regular food crops underground and an incident of other people not explaining a part of goblin culture to Pansy that she clearly wouldn’t have known. Overall, though, this is as sweet, cozy, and queer as one could want from a romance romance. If just the words “halfling,” “goblin,” and “cottage” together with romance sounds delightful to you, then I would say you probably are the right reader for this book.
When the Tides Held the Moon by Venessa Vida Kelley. Erewhon Books, 2025. ISBN 978-1645661535. Read from a library copy.
Benny Caldero immigrated to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico in the 1910s at the request of his dying guardian, Tití Luz. So far, though, his foundery work is destroying his lungs and leaving him bullied by his boss and co-workers. When he makes a large, ornate tank and is then recruited by the client to help fill it, he’s both desperate for work and gratified to find his artistry appreciated. Mr. Morgan is the owner of Luna Park, a formerly magnificent Coney Island attraction, who now needs a new way to bring in the crowds and leave his rival park in the dust. Boarding with the freaks of the Luna Park sideshow, Benny finds the closest thing to family he has since leaving Puerto Rico, even if some of them are more welcoming than others. But he’s horrified at being made part of entrapping a tritón, a merman, especially when he can see the humanity in his eyes. As they start to talk, they grow closer and closer, leaving Benny in even more of a quandry – keeping the merman is unthinkable, but freeing him would break Benny’s heart – not to mention, next to impossible, given the weight of the full tank.
While this is definitely a romantic story, we spend a lot of time with the members of the sideshow, from Sonya, the beautiful young contortionist who helps recruit Benny, to Igor the Russian giant who can’t forget the love he was never able to bring to America, the feisty twins Eli and Emmett, the book-loving Black strongman Matthias, Lulu the motherly fat lady and her terror of a young son, the regal midget Madam Navya, and the gruff fire-breathing lady Vera. Kelley clearly did their research into 1910s Brooklyn scenery and culture, as well as the complex bonds between social outcasts for whom performing is both a refuge and making themselves targets. Short, lyrical chapters also tell the story from the merman’s point of view, and the book includes beautiful chapter frames and full-age art drawn by the author. The spice level is low while the developing romance is strong and tender. It’s a beautiful story that I have been raving about to anyone who will listen.
