Heart To Heart: Our Top Rom-Com Picks

By Ink@84 Books

When it comes to Romantic Comedies, who best to choose but those who've authored some of the finest themselves? Here are top picks from Curtis Sittenfeld, David Nicholls, Stanley Tucci, Monica Heisey, Ore Agbaje-Williams, Jenny Colgan, Naoise Dolan, Katherine Heiny, Beth O'Leary, Meg Rosoff and Rebecca Wait. Courtesy of Guardian Books.

Curtis Sittenfeld: Divorced 40-year-old art gallery owner meets 20-year-old Harry Styles-esque pop star: 'The glamorous settings are perfectly described, the celebrity details are magnificent, the dialogue sparkles, and the sex scenes are scorching hot...But the book also contains real emotional depth and nuance.'

Heartburn: 40th Anniversary Edition – with a Foreword by Stanley Tucci

Nora Ephron

£9.99 £9.49

Stanley Tucci: 'First published 40 years ago...a book very ahead of its time. It speaks volumes about love and angst, with piercing insight softly camouflaged by dexterous wit, and is peppered with recipes. Very few people, other than Nora Ephron, would be capable of writing so brilliantly, or even daring to write almost joyfully, about the pains of a marriage collapsing because of a husband’s infidelity.'

Excellent Women: 'I'm a huge fan of Barbara Pym' Richard Osman

Barbara Pym

£9.99 £9.49

Rebecca Wait: 'Pym’s wry humour brings her new fans with every generation...a brilliant, funny, poignant novel about the expectations placed on women in postwar England, and the minute absurdities of everyday life.'

A Room with a View

E M Forster

£8.99 £8.54

David Nicholls: 'Like the best romantic comedies, A Room With a View is all about opposites; England and Italy, town and country, the conventional and the eccentric, rooms and views. In this it resembles not just Austen but the great Hollywood golden age romcoms... And like the best romcoms, it’s not just about the lovers...the supporting cast are wonderful, too'

Love in a Cold Climate

Nancy Mitford

£9.99 £9.49

Meg Rosoff: 'With its hilariously tragic collection of bored aristocrats and their ill-matched, ill-fated affairs, it’s as much a warning as a paean to romance. First published in 1949 as a sequel to The Pursuit of Love (if you’re a fast reader, you can get through both in the time it takes to have a one-night stand)... Mitford’s satirical take on U and non-U society is as exotic now as it was in my permanently lovelorn 20s in 1980s New York City. But the spectacle of young women looking for love in all the wrong places never really grows old.'

Pride and Prejudice

Jane Austen

£7.99 £7.59

Naoise Dolan: 'I’ve never had a bad time with Austen...Romance, comedy, some permutation of the two, and everything else under the sun: she’s got it all.'

High Fidelity

Nick Hornby

£8.99 £8.54

Katherine Heiny: 'May not fit the formal definition of a romantic comedy: true love overcoming any obstacle. The only obstacle true love has to conquer in Nick Hornby’s comic novel is the main character’s fear of commitment. But it's classic nonetheless...It will make you examine your life more closely and challenge your beliefs about friendship, marriage, career, monogamy and favourite movies. It will change you. And that’s the definition of a great book.'

The Spanish Love Deception: TikTok made me buy it! The Goodreads Choice Awards Debut of the Year

ELENA ARMAS

£9.99 £9.49

Ore Agbaje-Williams: 'Who doesn’t love an enemies-to-lovers, I-need-a-date-to-prove-I’m-OK-with-my-ex-being-at-my-sister’s-wedding trope?...Armas creates a wholly addictive will-they-won’t-they story...you know what’s going to happen, you just don’t know how it’s going to happen, or when. And Armas’s ability to keep you guessing, to make you ridiculously impatient and to show the growth of her characters is what has made me recommend this book to everyone.'

Angus, thongs and full-frontal snogging

Louise Rennison

£7.99 £7.59

Monica Heisey: 'No book has affected me like the Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series affected my teenage self. Most YA books available at that time were about drug use and dystopia, very high drama but not particularly relatable, and certainly not funny. Louise Rennison’s series, which starts with Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging, was a revelation. I was thrilled to find books about a group of girls behaving in ways I recognised.'

The Undomestic Goddess

Sophie Kinsella

£9.99 £9.49

Beth O'Leary: 'Romantic comedies tend to lean more towards either “rom” or “com”, and this is partly because it’s challenging to blend sexiness with slapstick. Kinsella does it with aplomb here. This novel taps into something deeply tempting (who hasn’t wanted to walk out of their office job and pretend to be someone else for a while?) and this makes it perfect escapism. But it also has a warm lesson at its heart about slowing down, learning new things and asking ourselves what really matters in life... Truly, it’s a classic of the genre.'

In at the Deep End

Kate Davies

£9.99 £9.49

Laura Kay: 'It’s so rare to find a book that makes you laugh out loud, blush when reading in public and then, totally surprisingly, burst into tears. I’ve returned to it when I’m looking for a comfort read, and when I want to live vicariously through someone experiencing queerness and sex and lust for the first time.'