2023 Queer Romcoms Sure to Make You Swoon

The cover alone is enough to make me fall in love with this new book from Camryn Garrett, author of Full Disclosure and Off the Record, but the idea of a coming out party a la a Sweet Sixteen or Quinceañera? I’m obsessed. And between trying to plan the coming out party of her dreams, flirting with cute new girl Siobhan, and trying to take a break from stressing about money and snide remarks from her white classmates, will Mahalia be able to juggle it all?

This YA debut from the author of Take a Hint, Dani Brown and The Princess Trap has been high on my list of anticipated 2023 releases ever since I heard about it last year. Ex-best friends Brad — who is bisexual — and Celine are thrown back together when they both sign up for the same survivalist course and are forced to work together to win the prize. But can this football player with OCD and this conspiracy-obsessed social media star work through their issues and win the competition all while surviving out in the woods? Well, maybe if they work together.

From the author of Love & Other Disasters comes another swoony romcom featuring two strangers falling in love as they trek along the Pacific Crest Trail. With 2,500-mile trail to go, it seems unlikely that Ben and Alexei paths will cross more than once — but then they do, over and over again. Maybe the biggest adventure of their lives could include a little romance. But will plans make in the wild survive the chaos of the real world?

Fake dating? How about fake engagement? When a quiet bookseller invents a fake girlfriend inspired by a romance cover model, she’s just trying to get her family off her back. But when her path crosses that of real-life heiress and model, Gemma van Dalen, who happens to need a marriage certificate in order to inherit her family’s publishing company, Gemma decides to take things one step further by announcing their engagement. Can Tansy and Gemma fool everyone into thinking this romance is real? Or are they only fooling themselves in pretending this marriage is all for show?

You had me at fake dating and sealed the deal with a cooking competition, a corgi, and comparisons to Heartstopper and Crazy Rich Asians. Dylan is just hoping to make his late mother proud and bring some much-needed publicity to his aunt’s Chinese restaurant in Brooklyn by entering a mooncake competition for teens. Then Theo enters the picture, distracting Dylan from his goals. But when Theo asks Dylan to pretend to be his boyfriend at a family wedding in the Hamptons, Dylan finds himself falling for real. Getting side-tracked with rich people problems might get in the way of winning the mooncake competition and saving his aunt’s restaurant, though. Will Dylan be able to have his mooncake and eat it too, or will trying to have it all just result in epic failure all around?

The author of Some Girls Do and sets her sights on adult romance with this 2023 queer romcom about a woman who drunkenly gives a pep talk to a stranger in the bathroom, only to later realize it was the bride-to-be she just convinced to leaver her fiancé on the eve of their wedding. Now, in order to ensure her bosses at the gym never realize it was Lizzie who convinced their daughter not to go through with her wedding, she’s stuck “entertaining” Cara. There’s no need for her to know it’s a setup. And there’s no chance Cara will really fall for someone like Lizzie — right?