23 Books With Love in the Title
With Valentine’s Day around the corner, we know the most common seasonal reading recommendation would be a romance novel. But, as much as we personally enjoy those, we also wanted to provide some options with more genre-variety. As we brainstormed ideas, we discovered that our book database includes over 125 different novels with the word love in the title.
From that list, we picked out 23 highly-rated options to share with you!

“I’ve decided to stick with love, hate is too great a burden to bear.” -Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr.
Best Books with Love in the Title
Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love
Book Summary
Eddie is 90 years old, and while he has lived a good life, he has never been kissed. Despite this, he remains a romantic at heart. He spends his days volunteering at a charity shop in his town of Birmingham, England, where he sorts through donations. He’s always careful to preserve letters and tokens of love that others may toss aside as not valuable.
At the shop, he meets 24-year-old Bella, who has just lost the love of her life. When Bella learns that Eddie is still waiting on his first kiss, it’s the perfect distraction from her own troubles. She resolves to help him find love, sparking an adventure that will take them to unexpected places. Their intergenerational friendship will make you wish the endearing Eddie was a real friend in your life.
The Book Girls Say…
Eddie Winston Is Looking for Love is said to be an uplifting, funny, and powerful story of friendship and finding love in unexpected places.
Author Marianne Cronin also wrote the much-loved novel The One Hundred Years of Lenni and Margot.
The Love Elixir of Augusta Stern
Book Summary
In the 1980s, Augusta was nearly 80 years old and finally retired from her career as a pharmacist. It’s the perfect opportunity to move to the Florida retirement community of Rallentando Springs. It’s there that she unexpectedly encounters the boy who broke her heart 60 years earlier, Irving Rivkin.
In 1920s Brooklyn, Augusta’s father was her role model. He owned the neighborhood pharmacy and was the expert on everything their neighbors needed. After Augusta’s mother died, her great aunt Ester moved in to help the family and brought her own unique healing remedies for the pharmacy’s customers.
As Augusta heads to pharmacy college to follow in her father’s footsteps, she is torn between the very different healing methodologies of her dad and great-aunt. She’s also in a new relationship with their delivery boy – Irving. One day, Augusta impulsively uses Esther’s most potent elixir, and that decision has disastrous consequences.
Sixty years later, Augusta is still haunted by the mistake.
The Book Girls Say…
Readers enjoy both the 1920s Brooklyn and 1980s Florida timelines, especially because of the many characters who appear in both decades of Augusta’s life.
The book is both historical fiction and mystery, but also has touches of romance and a very light incorporation of magical realism.

Love & Saffron
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
Fifty-something Imogen Fortier is a magazine columnist living on Camano Island outside of Seattle. When she receives a fan letter containing a gift of saffron from 27-year-old Joan Bergstrom in LA, she writes back. Thus begins an unlikely friendship between the two women.
As the years pass, their letters to one another help them through the ups and downs of the world – the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassination of President Kennedy – as well as the unexpected twists and turns in their own lives. From world events to romantic relationships, through their letters, they discover that food and a good life can’t be separated. Can anything shake the trust they’ve built over their years of correspondence?
This book is fully written in epistolary style, so you’ll be reading the letters back and forth between the women. The author kept the book on the shorter side, hoping it could be enjoyed in one sitting.
The Book Girls Say…
Melissa read this book as a Decades Challenge pick, and it exceeded her expectations! It was such a lovely story of friendship and the power of making a friend through writing first before ever meeting. As Melissa & Angela (the Book Girls) met through online communication, it was fun to be reminded that before computers, pen pals could become your dearest friends.
Don’t miss the author’s note at the end of the book, which shares details about the real-life women who inspired the story.
Also Featured on These Book Lists:
The Many Lives of Mama Love
Book Summary
Lara looked like a typical soccer mom in Santa Cruz, California, complete with a million-dollar home in a cul-de-sac. But one day, everything she had been hiding came tumbling down. Lara had been stealing her neighbors’ credit cards in order to support her heroin addiction.
She was convicted of 32 felons and had to learn the workings of prison politics and its class system. She earns the nickname “Mama Love” from other inmates and soon rises to become the “shot caller”.
After her sentence, Lara reinvented herself again as a ghost-writer. She went from stealing identities for heroin to helping write hit novels in other people’s names. She was successful enough to meet Oprah, the Dalai Lama, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Through all this, the shame of her past haunted her. She must learn to forgive before she can truly move on.
The Book Girls Say…
This 2023 Memoir continues to receive incredibly high ratings, with many saying it reads like page-turning fiction.
In addition to becoming an author, Lara Love Hardin is also a prison reform advocate and co-founder of The Gemma Project, which serves incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women with integrity and compassion.
The Library of Lost Love
Book Summary
Now that she is in her upper seventies, Joan has grown a bit too comfortable staying inside her Notting Hill home alone. Her recently widowed neighbor and friend, Pamela, encourages Joan to take on a young lodger for some company.
Twenty-something Jess loves her job running an independent cinema, but sales are down, and she’s worried the theater may close. Worse, her ex-boyfriend just ran off with her savings. She’s temporarily staying with her married friends, but it’s time to find a new living arrangement. Joan’s room for rent might be perfect!
Despite being from different generations, Joan and Jess understand each other. Soon, they’re testing out adopting each lifestyle. Jess shows Joan how to use Facebook and email, while Joan helps Jess detach from the online world and look for love in real life.
The Book Girls Say…
Readers say this story is slow-paced and sentimental. It’s a good read when you need something sweet and a bit predictable. The heart of the story is friendship, but both characters are also trying to find love, so there are some romantic storylines for each of them.
A Love Song for Ricki Wilde
Book Summary
Ricki Wilde has many talents and is the impulsive, artistic daughter of a powerful Atlanta dynasty, yet she doesn’t fit in with her socialite sisters. She dreams of opening a flower shop and gets the opportunity when regal nonagenarian Ms. Della invites her to rent the bottom floor of her Harlem brownstone.
On leap day, February 29th, 2024, she encounters a handsome, deeply mysterious stranger who knocks her world off balance in the most unexpected way.
The Book Girls Say…
Readers say this is a steamy, sexy, genre-bending book with magical realism, mystery, and romance that takes you back to the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s in addition to sharing Ricki’s present-day life.
Book Summary
Julia thought her future was in the Italian B&B she was going to restore with her boyfriend, Luca. However, they broke up a year old and still live together in the dilapatated B&B, she’s broke, and her passport is expired.
She has to make some money in order to afford a flight home to Australia, and she knows she needs to get away from Luca in order to move forward in life. A job on an olive farm in Cividale del Friuli, the ancient Italian town on the banks of the gloriously blue Natisone River, seems like the perfect escape.
Julie has her walls up when she arrives, but then the community of farmers, neighbors, and locals generously welcome her into their lives. One of the locals, the broodingly handsome Alex, has also sworn off love for his own reasons, but maybe they need each other.
The Book Girls Say…
Readers say that while this novel includes a sweet romance with a little spice, it also includes some seriousness and grief as a good balance. Dog lovers will enjoy Julie’s exuberant pup, Arco, more than Attila, Alex’s Persian cat, does.
The Love Story of Missy Carmichael
Book Summary
Missy is 79 years old and lives in a stately London home alone. Her husband, Leo, passed away after a challenging illness, and her favorite child, son Allistair, broke her heart by moving to Australia. Daughter Melanie lives much closer in Cambridge, but they have a contentious relationship.
As Missy walks alone through a park, her primary mission is to experience something worthy of including in her next email to Allistair. While she prefers keeping to herself, she forces herself to interact with some interesting characters she encounters on her walk. When she faints, her new acquaintances not only help her in the moment, they invite her to a nearby coffee shop.
But is 79 too old for new friends and a new outlook on life?
The Book Girls Say…
While unexpected friendships are a common theme on this list, each one has something a little special. In this case, it includes a dog helping break down emotional barriers and flashbacks to Missy’s earlier years. Melissa found it to be a good reminder of how little we know about those we meet as adults, and especially how their personalities are impacted by things they survived in the past. But also, that it’s never too late to see things in a new way.
Also Featured on These Book Lists:
Must-Read Found Family Books
Books With Characters in Their 70s
Book Summary
Marine Biologist Emma and Obituary Writer Leo have been married for ten years and have a young daughter named Ruby. When Emma becomes seriously ill, Leo copes the only way he knows how- researching her life for her obituary.
However, nothing he finds is what he expects, and nothing he knows about his wife is real. Her name isn’t even Emma. Despite her entire past being a dark secret-filled lie, she loves Leo and Ruby. Can she convince him that the love is real?
The Book Girls Say…
Readers say this book is part contemporary fiction, part mystery, and part family drama.
Last Call for Love
Book Summary
Maeve lives in Chicago and never expected to inherit a famous pub on a remote Irish island from her estranged father. But, if she can sell it, she’ll finally be out of debt. When she arrives, she discovers that her new pub is in an old feud with a rival pub owner, Briggs Murphy.
Briggs was recently diagnosed with the same heart condition that killed his father, so falling in love is the furthest thing from his mind. But Maeve’s striking eyes are hard to resist, even though, according to familial legend, they’re enemies.
Love Song of W.E.B. Du Bois
Book Summary
This epic novel traces the journey of one American family from the colonial slave trade through the Civil War and up to the present day.
Ailey Pearl is named after two formidable Black Americans – a revered choreographer and her great grandmother, who is a descendant of enslaved Georgians. She grows up in the city, but spends her summers in the small Georgia town where her mother’s family has lived ever since their ancestors were brought over from Africa in bondage.
As Ailey fights to come to terms with her identity and find where she belongs, she carries with her the whispers of two centuries of women in her maternal line. When she embarks on a journey through her family’s history, she uncovers shocking revelations about her ancestors.
The Book Girls Say…
This highly rated historical literary novel received Goodreads Choice Awards nominations in 2021 for Best Historical Fiction and Best Debut Novel. It has been compared to such novels as Homegoing, The Water Dancer, and Sing, Unburied, Sing.
Clocking in at 816 pages, this novel is not for those looking for a quick read. If your schedule doesn’t allow for such a weighty pick this month, consider adding it to your TBR to tackle another time.
Also Featured on These Book Lists:
Varina Palladino’s Jersey Italian Love Story
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
Imagine a Jersey suburb that has remained largely in the 1960s for the past 60 years, and that’s Wyldale. Seventy-year-old widow Varina runs Palladino’s Italian Specialties grocery in between taking care of her 92-year-old mother, Sylvia, and the rest of her loud Italian family. Sylvia is very concerned that when she dies, Varina will be alone, so she’s determined to find her a new love.
Donatella, Varina’s daughter, comes up with an ill-conceived plan to help her mom find a man, and grandmother Sylvia joins the idea. Meanwhile, Varina is also ready to embrace life on her own. She’s booked a trip and has not told the family about it yet. On top of Varina’s life changes, her three adult sons are going through changes of their own.
The Book Girls Say…
This light multi-generational family drama/romance has been described as a Jersey combination of Moonstruck and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Each chapter begins with a bit of Jersey Italian slang, including the pronunciation, root word, and meaning. It’s a fun aspect of the book that will make you feel like you are in Jersey.
Earth’s the Right Place for Love
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
Sixteen-year-old Arthur is thrilled when he becomes friends with Nola, the most alluring girl in school. Unfortunately, Nola is more romantically interested in Arthur’s older brother, Frank. However, Frank has his eye on someone else.
Outside of dreaming of the perfect girl, the boys stay busy avoiding their father, who drinks too much after returning from war. And the drinking always leads to their father fighting with Frank. When a tragedy strikes, Arthur struggles with his grief and turns to nature to help him understand how the world will go on.
Once he’s begun to understand grief, will he be able to get Nola to realize that they should be more than friends?
The Book Girls Say…
Readers say that while this book does have sad moments and grief as a theme, it’s also an incredibly sweet story and will make your eyes tear up with joy from the kindness and compassion shown by the characters.
If you’ve read and enjoyed The Story of Arthur Truluv, you’ll want to pick up this prequel, which was released in 2023. It takes us back to Arthur’s teen years in Mason to show us how he became who he was as an older man.
The Story of Arthur Truluv is on our list of Main Characters in Their 80s in the Lifetime Challenge, and received an average of 4.5 out of 5 stars from our readers in 2022.
Book Summary
When London Parker is selected as one of the contestants on a popular cooking show, they become the first openly non-binary contestant and are determined to prove their worth to all the trolls.
Dahlia is also a contestant, and she joined the show in an attempt to reinvent herself. She is determined to win the prize money. However, she’s off to a klutzy start and sends fish tacos flying in the first episode. While London & Dahlia are focused competitors in the kitchen, things begin heating up behind the scenes.
For the Love of Friends
Book Summary
Lily is a great writer, has a reliable job, and has great friends. But she’s also 32 and single… which is all her mom can seem to focus on. It’s especially hard to ignore her relationship status when everyone else around her is getting married – she’s scheduled to be a bridesmaid in five weddings in six weeks.
Lily will go to any length for the love of her friends, but she also needs a place to vent. So, she started an anonymous blog called Bridesmania. She dishes on mom-zillas, wicked bridesmaids, body-shaming dress clerks, and even her 88-year-old Granny (who she’s recently been deemed the guardian of), who prefers to enjoy her morning mimosas in the nude. Of course, we all know that secrets are hard to keep on the internet…
Love at First Flight
Book Summary
Pippa is a neurodivergent air traffic controller and loves her job and the voices she speaks to from the planes. She does not love repeating patterns, tight clothes, or people asking why she’s single at school reunions.
Pilot Andrew is also single, and his parents won’t let him forget it. They have good intentions but are making him crazy. While he’s talked to Pippa over the radio for six months, they’ve never met and don’t even know they’re based at the same airport.
After Pippa and Andrew have an unexpected meet-cute moment and begin talking, they realize they can help each other. Andrew will attend Pippa’s ten-year reunion, and Pippa will be Andrew’s girlfriend at a family wedding. Their fake dates take them around South Africa until sparks fly, and things don’t feel so fake anymore.
The Book Girls Say…
Reviews praise the way that Pippa’s character helped them step into her mind and have a deeper understanding of one person’s experience with Autism, even though the overall book is light and fun.
The author shared some background information about Pippa in a Goodreads review that we wanted to pass on in her own words:
“When I set out to write this book, I had no intention of writing a character who was on the autism spectrum. But very early on in the book I received my autism diagnosis. In writing the character of Pippa, I gave her many of my specific traits, but I also added ones that I know to be true of others on the spectrum. We all exist on a very large and diverse spectrum, my experience is very different to other’s experiences of having autism. I can only write from my perspective, so my experience may not necessarily represent yours, but everyones experience is just as true and valid.” – Jo Watson
NOTE: This book was originally released in South Africa in 2024, the US release date is 3/18/25.
Recipes for Love and Murder
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
Fifty-something Tannie Maria loves to cook and write – which is why she’s the perfect person to write a recipe column for her local paper, the Klein Karoo Gazette. However, when the powers insist that the paper must also feature an advice section, Tannie’s column has to meet the requirement by becoming a joint advice and recipe column.
When her column receives a letter from a woman whose husband beats her, Tannie’s best advice appears not to be good enough when a woman matching that description turns up dead. She and her Gazette colleagues decide to help the police find the murderer. But things are not so simple, and soon there’s another murder – a suspected poisoning – as well as a kidnapping or two.
This is the first book in a murder mystery series that’s packed with humor (ranging from slapstick to understated).
The Book Girls Say…
This book includes over 20 pages of recipes and a helpful glossary of the Afrikaans and Dutch references in the book. Some readers found that they understood the context without flipping to the glossary, while others found themselves regularly using the glossary, which slowed down the pace of the reading.
Book Summary
They say that behind every great love song is a great love story, but this is the story of song that winds its way around the world, telling more than one love story.
Concert pianist Diana has long been engaged to Arie. The two are finally ready to marry, but not until Diana returns home to Australia from her world tour. While on tour, she composes a love song for Arie.
Late one night, her love song is overheard. Tragedy strikes before Diana can play it for Arie, but the song is already on its own journey across the world.
In Scotland, Evie has been drifting for years since leaving Australia with a dream of becoming a poet. Now, she spends her days making coffee and her nights serving beer, and she questions her relationship with her boyfriend.
Then one day, through a twist of fate, she hears an exquisite love song… Diana’s love song that has been passed from musician to musician. Will this song ultimately bring two lost souls together?
The Book Girls Say…
This book is recommended for fans of Jojo Moyes and Josie Silver. Reviewers say it has a Love Actually quality.
The Love of My Afterlife
Book Summary
Delphie is recently deceased, having choked on a microwavable burger. Finding herself in the afterlife waiting room wearing her “sparkle and shine” nightie is embarrassing enough to start with, but to make matters worse, she comes face to face with the hottest man she’s ever seen.
He smiles… they chat… there seems to be a spark… But then someone runs in, shouting about a huge mistake, and sends the dreamy man back down to Earth.
When Delphie is offered an opportunity to return to Earth for 10 days to reconnect with her mystery man, she jumps at the chance to find her possible soulmate. But finding him in a city of millions won’t be easy.
The Book Girls Say…
Some readers find Delphie hard to like at first, but her growth throughout the novel is an important part of the story. Melissa did not share that first impression and enjoyed the book from the beginning.
Also Featured on These Book Lists:
14 Ghost Romance Books & Rom Coms
23 Irresistible Meet Cute Romance Books
One True Loves
Book Summary
In this story of love and loss, Emma married her high school sweetheart, Jesse. The two are building a life of adventure together on the West Coast, far from the expectations of their families back east. But on their first wedding anniversary, Jesse’s helicopter crashes over the Pacific Ocean, and he is assumed dead.
Just like that, the fairy tale life that Emma thought would be her happily ever after is over. She moves back home to Massachusettes to rebuild her life. Years later, now in her thirties, Emma finally found love again after reuniting with an old friend, Sam. But when Jesse is found alive after more than four years, Emma will be forced to choose between her husband and her fiance.
Also Featured on These Book Lists:
29 Fabulous Books Like The Midnight Library
20 Books Like It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover
Love & Gelato
Book Girls’ Readers Rate This Book
Book Summary
This YA novel is an excellent option if you’re looking for a coming-of-age story with mystery, adventure, and a sweet romance that will transport you to an Italy filled with – you guessed it – love and gelato. The descriptions of Italy in this book will have you immediately planning your next vacation, but this story also brings much more depth than you might expect at first glance.
Lina’s mother had one dying wish – that her daughter get to know the father she’d never met. Lina isn’t thrilled to be spending the summer in Tuscany with this man she just learned about, but when she is given the journal that her mom kept when she lived in Italy, everything begins to change. As she follows in her mother’s footsteps, she is able to process her grief while discovering art, hidden bakeries, and even romance.
The Book Girls Say…
If you enjoy this young adult novel about Italy, you might also want to check out Love & Luck (set in Ireland) and Love & Olives (set in Santorini, Greece).
How to Find Love in a Bookshop
Book Summary
In any small bookshop, the shoppers are as varied as the books on the shelves.
After her father’s death, Emilia Nightingale is tempted to sell her shop to developers. However, her customers, like Manor owner Sarah, shy Thomasina, and separated father Jackson, need her advice and her book recommendations. As the relationships develop, you’ll find romance and long-held secrets among Emilia’s regular customers.
Book Summary
Macy and her dad spend their weekends at a house in the charming town of Healdsburg, where they are able to escape their daily life in San Francisco. While it starts as a place to process their grief, they gain even more than they expected. The large family across the street, starting with son Elliot, quickly becomes more than just casual neighbors.
Elliot and Macy soon bond over their love of books and their favorite words. Over time, their teenage friendship grows into romance.
The book is told in a split timeline as you watch their relationship develop as teens, but then also see Macy eleven years later working on her pediatrics residency in San Francisco. She’s engaged to someone else when she unexpectedly runs into Elliot at a coffee shop.
Upon seeing him, her long-repressed emotions come rushing back. Something happened in the past to tear them apart, but their chemistry is as strong as ever. For a shot at a future, they’ll be forced to come to terms with both the past and the present.
The Book Girls Say…
We tend to love everything by the writing duo of Christina Lauren, but this ranks among our favorites. Love & Other Words leans more toward romantic drama than comedy and has a classic coming-of-age feel in the earlier timeline. You’ll want to keep the tissues handy when all is finally revealed – don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Also Featured on These Book Lists:
Printable Version of this List
Our Inner Circle Members have access to a single-page printable version of this book list, along with other fun perks. Join now for instant access to the printable!


