Pine o’ The Times: 12 of the Best Romances With Mutual Pining

This historical sapphic romance follows the relationship between radical printer Agatha and Penelope, the beekeeper called in to help with the swarm in Agatha’s warehouse. It’s a slow burn between these two characters, with longing glances and an epistolary component. But when fully ignited, it’s definitely incendiary. This is the second entry in Waite’s Feminine Pursuits series, all of which feature historical women with truly fascinating skills and knowledge. I heartily recommend all of them if you love lots of detail in your historical romance.

Treasure is a great pick if you want a dash of mutual pining that turns into requited feelings before too long. Alexis meets Trisha, a stripper who goes by Treasure on stage, at her sister’s bachelorette party. They share a moment during a private dance that leaves them both with unexpected feelings. It’s the kind of mutual pining that stems from a meaningful encounter that ended before it had a chance to truly begin. But then Alexis and Trisha meet again in their university computer science class. Uh-oh, time to face those feelings! This novella is both sweet and hot, a satisfying and fully realized romance.

If the premise of a romance between Peter Pan and Captain Hook intrigues you at all, here is the book for you. Peter Darling is a reimagined sequel to the classic tale, set ten years after the events of Peter Pan, when Peter, a trans man, returns to Neverland because it always felt like his true home. And the one person who cares the most is Peter’s old rival, Captain Hook. Their relationship, fraught with longing, undergoes an enchanting transformation into something new and heartwarming.

This is a contemporary Harlem-set romance with mutual pining, and I also adore its depiction of the kind of community knitting can foster. As a knitter myself, I’m a huge sucker for knitting romances. This one pairs Jesse Strong, who wants to keep his late foster mother’s knitting shop going, with Kerry Fuller, who has the know-how to turn the business into a success. Jesse and Kerry have a lot of history together, and I appreciated the lived-in nature of their relationship and the rich world it’s set in.

There are a number of Cat Sebastian novels that I could have picked for this list. Honestly if you love romances with mutual pining, read her entire catalog. Still, Two Rogues Make a Right has so much mutual pining and also fantastic explorations of some of the realest stuff that doesn’t often get much attention in romance. In it, Will Sedgwick essentially kidnaps his oldest friend Martin Easterbrook to care for him while he’s sick. This romance shows how mortifying it is to be known. How there’s an inherent element of pain to love. And how beautiful it is that we fragile and flawed humans choose it anyway.

Love can sometimes take its sweet time. No one knows that more than Candace, who met Ezra and fell in love when she was 18. A clumsy New Year’s Eve kiss kicked off literal decades of fleeting romantic moments for the duo. Then their lives finally line up properly at the end of 2019. This romance shows that life can push two people in lots of directions, but they can’t deny it when it also keeps pushing them at each other. It’s also a book that proves that the one honest conversation that should blow everything open is not as easy to have as people think!

Set in a lush fantasy world that is unusual and enchanting, this third entry in The Sacred Dark series introduces us to Violetta Benedetti, a trans woman and a witch. She’s pining for her best friend Tibario Gianbellicci. Tibario, brought back from the dead, has powers his mother is exploiting in order to take down the rival Benedetti house. Tibario and Violetta’s stars may be crossed, but they have the power to carve out a better world for themselves if only they can open up to each other.