We’re nearly halfway through the 2020s, and romance has never been bigger—or harder to pin down. It dominates bestseller lists, fuels the publishing industry, and inspires endless debate over what even counts as romance anymore. The genre is evolving in real-time, which makes naming the author who defines it tricky. But if we’re talking about the writers setting the tone for what romance looks like right now, a few names come up again and again.
It feels as if Emily Henry is the decade’s breakout star, the writer who made romance palatable to people who once turned up their noses at it. Since Beach Read, her books have lived at the intersection of literary fiction and romance, balancing self-aware humor with introspection and sharp-edged longing. Her characters don’t just fall in love; they untangle themselves first. Whether that’s deepening romance or watering it down depends on whom you ask, but the fact remains—no one has done more to drag contemporary romance into the mainstream.
Ali Hazelwood, on the other hand, doesn’t just embrace romance tropes—she wields them like weapons. Her STEM romances (The Love Hypothesis, Love on the Brain, Love, Theoretically just to name a few) lean into the genre’s biggest, most exaggerated beats, proving that readers don’t just tolerate tropes; they devour them. And then there’s Bride, her 2024 pivot into paranormal romance, which is both a hilarious send-up of the genre and an unironically fantastic love story. If anyone thought she could only write nerdy academia romances, they weren’t paying attention.
Many would argue KJ Charles is writing the best historical romances of the decade. Her books aren’t historical themed; they are historical. Instead of ballrooms and dukes who mysteriously support women’s rights, she delivers working-class heroes, political stakes, and rich, fully realized queer love stories that could only exist in their time periods. The Gentle Art of Fortune Hunting and A Nobleman’s Guide to Seducing a Scoundrel aren’t just some of the best romances of the decade—they’re some of the best historical novels, period.
Julie Anne Long remains the master of slow-burn devastation, her Palace of Rogues series delivers some of the most elegant, aching, precisely written love stories in the genre. She understands that romance is about yearning—not just chemistry, not just conflict, but the exquisite tension of knowing, this could ruin me, but I want it anyway. If her characters had the vocabulary for it, they’d all be quoting Jane Eyre at each other before finally giving in.
Rebecca Yarros, meanwhile, set the industry on fire with Fourth Wing. While she had a solid career in contemporary romance before 2023, Fourth Wing turned her into a publishing juggernaut. Does it belong in the romance aisle? Does it matter? Readers are inhaling every page, and at the heart of it—beneath the dragons and the war and the high-stakes fantasy world—is a love story that drives everything. It’s proof that romance can lead the conversation, even when it’s not being marketed as such.
I’d be remiss to mention Kennedy Ryan, who writes with depth and emotional intelligence. Before I Let Go is certainly one of the best second-chance romance of the decade—grown-up, messy, and heartbreakingly real. Ryan doesn’t deal in simple love stories; she writes about love as something fought for, something that bends under pressure but doesn’t break. Her books (Reel, The Kingmaker) are as smart as they are sweeping, proving that romance doesn’t have to choose between emotional depth and pure swoon.
So, who’s the greatest romance author of the decade so far? The one selling the most books? The one elevating the genre? The one whose stories crack your heart open and put it back together? And what about longevity? Will these be the names we’re still citing in 2035? And, most importantly, what do YOU think? For you, who is the greatest romance author of this era? Why?
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