Good slow burn romance books are so hard to find! Most often, I find novels advertised as slow burn, get excited to read them, and then the main characters start kissing at 30%.
And I know everyone has their own definitions of what a slow burn is — to me, specifically, the main characters shouldn’t even admit their own feelings to themselves before 50%. And nothing should ideally happen (physically or emotionally) until 80% at least. Though tension is welcome!
So if you’re on the lookout for some new slow burn romances to enjoy, I bring you my list of favorites. Some are exactly my taste, some move a little faster (but not too fast), so I hope you find something to love as well. The list covers all subgenres of romance as well, from contemporary to fantasy, so no matter what you enjoy, you’ll find a book for you here (though I highly recommend trying different subgenres!).
And as always, here’s a quick overview of what you’ll find here, so you don’t have to scroll all the way through. If any of these books sparks your interest, just click on the link and it’ll take you there.
- Black Silk by Judith Ivory — My top slow burn romance; the characters are complex, as well as the plot, but the payoff is so worth it.
- The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy by Brigitte Knightley — The best fantasy romance slow burn, the love develops painfully slowly.
- You Deserve Each Other by Sarah Hogle — A bit different since the main couple is already engaged, but they have fallen out of love, and might find their way back via pranks?
- The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata — Marriage of convenience that turns into a real marriage very, very slowly.
- The Road of Bones by Demi Winters — One of the best slow burn fantasy romance series with Vikings, character growth and beautiful writing.
- Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh — If you need your characters more mature and experienced, this one has a widow and an older man whose mistress recently died.
- Whispers of The Deep by Emma Hamm — Fantasy romance where the hero is a merman and the main characters don’t speak each other’s language.
- Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale — This is not only slow burn, but will crush your heart as well. Be warned.
- North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell — If you enjoy Pride and Prejudice, but want more, here’s your perfect book.
- Radiance by Grace Draven — An arranged marriage slow burn between two different species, which starts out with friendship and ends somewhere else entirely.
- Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas — What happens when you marry your crush for convenience, but he loves someone else, and so you become his best friend?
- Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett — Academic rivals of faerie sciences travel to a distant land to research faeries.
- From Lukov with Love by Mariana Zapata — Another Mariana Zapata, this one with ice skater enemies who have to partner up!
- Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier — A lovely, enchanting fantasy with a very tender, gentle romance in it.
- The Queen’s Thief series by Megan Whalen Turner — If you want a slow burn, this one is the slowest of them all, stretched out over a series of books.
- The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski — The heroine buys the hero in this one, and there’s power imbalance, secrets, betrayal and more as they also fall in love.
- The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary — Another contemporary; Leon and Tilly share a flat but have never met, and then they start leaving notes for each other.
- Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones — If you loved the movie, try the book! The banter is better and it’s still the same enchanting story you know.
Black Silk
“She mourned what every human being mourns in the first moments of full adulthood—that even inside a friend’s arms one can be totally, absolutely alone.”
Ever since I read Black Silk, it has become my gold standard of slow burns. The main characters, Submit and Graham, don’t kiss, touch much or admit their feelings (even to themselves, to be honest), until 80% but the tension is so mesmerising throughout, and both of them grow and change. I have to warn you, though, that they’re not perfect people, so prepare yourself for some bad deeds and very noticeable character flaws (that aren’t just “I care too much” sort of deal most contemporary romances do).
So, Submit Channing Downes’ husband just died. It’s no surprise, he was over 60, but Submit cared for him a lot, even though she’s decades younger than him. This is also why she’s determined to find his ward and cousin, Graham Wessit, and deliver his part of the inheritance, which is just one box. But when she finally finds him, Graham won’t take the box and is determined to ignore her. So she sticks around and slowly but surely, these two get pulled into each other’s orbit.
There are many other things happening as well, but I recommend that you give this book a try and see for yourself!
The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy
“He looked at her as one who wished to worship, and one who wished to defile.”
If Black Silk is the best historical slow burn, then The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy is the best fantasy slow burn I’ve ever read. This is a duology, and for the majority of the first book, the two main characters hate each other with a burning passion. I won’t spoil anything, but I’ll just say, if you’re looking for some real, torturous slow burn, this is your best option.
Osric Mordaunt, assassin for the Fyren Order, and Aurienne Fairhrim, healer and general good egg for a rival order, are the two idiots at the center of this one. Osric gets sick with something even a professional killer can’t out-maneuver, so he bribes Aurienne into treating him and she agrees, mostly because she needs the funding and also because it’s not in her nature as a healer to let someone die.
As their research into his illness goes on, they spend more and more time together, even uncover a mystery, and slowly but surely grow to have very tender feelings for each other.
See my full review of The Irresistible Urge to Fall For Your Enemy here!
You Deserve Each Other
“But you still haven’t said you love me.”
“That’s not true.”
“You haven’t.”
“I say it all the time, I just say it very, very quietly. I tell you when you’re in another room, or right after we hang up the phone. I tell you when you’ve got headphones on. I say it after you shut the door behind you. I say it in my head every time you look at me.”
This one’s a little different because Naomi and Nicholas aren’t strangers falling for each other for the first time. They’re actually already engaged, already miserable, and both plotting to make the other one call off the wedding first (whoever backs out has to pay the non-refundable costs, so neither of them will budge).
What starts as petty revenge pranks slowly turns into something else entirely, as they’re forced to actually see each other again instead of the exhausted, resentful shells they’d both become. It’s technically lovers-to-enemies-to-lovers rather than a classic slow burn, but the tension of two people falling back in love while still pretending to hate each other scratches the exact same itch.
It takes them quite a while to get there, and their true feelings aren’t revealed until the very end, so while technically they are together, the emotional and physical payoff takes a long time to come.
See my full review of You Deserve Each Other here!
The Wall of Winnipeg and Me
“I don’t know,” I stuttered, “Do you love me?”
His gaze was so intent the entire world seemed to stop. “You tell me. I never stop thinking about you. I worry about you all the time. Every beautiful thing I see reminds me of you. I can’t finish my practices in Colorado with out wishing you were around,” he said in a steady tone. “You tell me what I feel.”
Mariana Zapata is the queen of slow burn, and you could close your eyes, pick any of her books, and it would be like 600 pages long and the MCs would get together on page 599. Mind you, I’m not always a fan of how slowly things move in these books (or how long they are, the prose, etc.) but they’re really fun if that’s what you’re after.
Vanessa Mazur spends two years as personal assistant, housekeeper, and unofficial keeper of Aiden Graves, a pro football player so shut-down and monosyllabic his nickname is literally “The Wall.” She finally quits and he shows up at her door asking her to come back, then proposes a marriage of convenience instead. Vanessa obviously agrees, and things move forward from there.
If you expect this to be a typical fake-dating scenario where one public appearance later, they’re head over heels for each other — think again. This book will drag it on and out and in the end, you’ll beg for something to happen. Don’t expect grand gestures or drama, this is also a very… non-toxic sort of book.
The Road of Bones
“If you wish to rest, I will shield you from harm. If you want to fight, I will draw my sword beside you. If you want a hundred chickens, I will build you a hen-fortress.”
Silla is on the run after her father (who is not really her father) is murdered and the queen puts a target on her back, and her only shot at survival is talking her way onto the wagon of the Bloodaxe Crew for the journey down the brutal, thousand-mile Road of Bones.
And I really don’t want to spoil anything because this is just that good (and you should read it), but the burn is extra slow, kind of similar to The Irresistible Urge to Fall for Your Enemy, if that tells you anything. Besides that, this book is brilliantly written and well-paced, and it develops its characters so well. You can see all of my thoughts here, in my full review.
See my full review of Road of Bones here!
Slightly Dangerous by Mary Balogh
“And infatuated be damned. He was near to being blinded by his attraction to her. He was in love, damn it all. He disliked her, he resented her, he disapproved of almost everything about her, yet he was head over ears in love with her, like a foolish schoolboy.
He wondered grimly what he was going to do about it.
He was not amused.
Or in any way pleased.”
Mary Balogh is a must if you love Regency-era slow burns with real emotional depth, and this one’s my favorite of her Bedwyn series. Wulfric Bedwyn, Duke of Bewcastle, is the coldest, most controlled of the Bedwyn siblings — the kind of man who communicates mostly through a raised eyebrow and a quizzing glass — and Christine Derrick, a warm, accident-prone widow and part-time schoolteacher, is about the last person anyone expects to catch his eye at a house party.
They needle each other from the start, right up until Wulfric does something spectacularly ill-advised: he offers her a position as his mistress. She refuses, flees, and spends the rest of the book being pursued by a duke slowly, stubbornly realizing that the icy detachment he’s built his whole identity around doesn’t hold up against her. It’s a proper slow burn where the walls come down brick by brick, and one of the most satisfying redemption arcs in the genre.
Whispers of the Deep by Emma Hamm
“You are a gift from the sea, Mira. A rare pearl I am so lucky to have found. I do love you, you know. More than anything else in this world. You hold my soul in your chest. Wherever you go, I will never be far from you.”
If you’re new to monster/creature romance, maybe give this one a go? It’s not too bad in that sense, not any weirder than fae or werewolf books, so you won’t be grossed out. And it’s really romantic!
So, in a future where humans live in underwater cities after the surface becomes unlivable, engineer Mira gets kidnapped by Arges, an undine (merman) who’s spent his whole life plotting to wipe out the humans encroaching on his people’s territory.
Then she saves his life instead of running, and he has absolutely no idea what to do with that, so he keeps her in a cave where he feeds her and tries very hard to keep her alive, while trying to get information out of her. There’s a language barrier, a whole lot of mutual suspicion, and some funny miscommunication before either of them will admit what’s happening between them.
See my full review of Whispers of The Deep here!
Flowers From the Storm by Laura Kinsale
“The flowers were opulent, full-blown, topple shower petals at a touch. He thought that she might topple that way, falling all at once into his hand, a soft drift of blossom between his fingers. The roses bowed their extravagant heads, nodding, but she was all stiff prim and black, back in her bonnet, so that he could not see her face unless she looked directly at him.”
This is one of the most acclaimed historical romances ever written, and it earns the reputation. Christian, Duke of Jervaulx, is a brilliant, arrogant mathematician who suffers a devastating stroke and loses his speech and much of his independence.
Maddy Timms, a devout Quaker with no romantic interest in dukes whatsoever, ends up caring for him and slowly, painstakingly, helping him find his way back to himself.
It’s not a comfortable read, his vulnerability is raw and often difficult to sit with, and the book gets really dark, but the slow burn here is two completely incompatible people discovering just how compatible they actually are.
North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell
“He shrank from hearing Margaret’s very name mentioned; he, while he blamed her – while he was jealous of her – while he renounced her – he loved her sorely, in spite of himself.”
Margaret Hale moves from the gentle south of England to the industrial north and immediately clashes with John Thornton, a mill owner she decides is arrogant, cold, and everything wrong with the world he represents.
He, naturally, falls for her almost immediately and has to watch her think the worst of him for most of the book. It’s a slow burn in the truest sense, most of their relationship happens through misunderstanding, pride, and both of them being spectacularly bad at communicating what they actually feel.
If Pride and Prejudice is a little too tidy for you, this one has more grit, more class conflict, and an ending that’s worth every ounce of the wait.
Radiance by Grace Draven
“This should never have happened, Brishen. We were unimportant, you and I. We weren’t supposed to mean anything to anyone.”
“Woman of day,” he said slowly. “You mean everything to me.”
This book is proof that slow burn doesn’t require enemies or hatred to work. Ildiko and Brishen are both the spare, unimportant royals of their respective kingdoms, married off to each other to seal a political alliance between two very different species. She’s human, he’s Kai, with grey skin, fangs, and eyes built for the dark.
They’re both convinced the other is hideous, and neither pretends otherwise (there’s a funny bit where they insult each other’s appearance before either knows who the other actually is). What follows is a friendship that grows slowly into something more, built on mutual respect instead of forced proximity or animosity. If you want a fantasy slow burn that’s gentle instead of tortured, this is it.
Ravishing the Heiress by Sherry Thomas
“He looked at her as if he hadn’t seen her in a very long time. Or perhaps, as if he might never see her again, and must memorize her features one by one.”
In Ravishing the Heiress, Millie and Earl Fitzhugh marry for convenience. She’ll get to be a countess, he gets to save his family from bankruptcy. On top of that, they agree not to consummate their marriage for eight years because Millie is so young, and even then, it would be just to have an heir, after which they’d lead separate lives.
But over the years, they become best friends to each other, and worst of all, Millie falls for her husband. The unfortunate thing is, he can’t wait for their arrangement to end in order to be with his childhood sweetheart.
Based on all of that, you know you can expect angst and longing, so all I have to say is: go read it!
See my full review of Ravishing the Heiress here!
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
“I prefer your company, Em.”
He said it as if it were obvious. I snorted again, assuming he was teasing me. “Over the company of a tavern filled with a rapt and grateful audience? I’m sure you do.”
“Over anyone else’s company.”
If you want your slow burn wrapped in cozy academia and a healthy dose of banter, this is a fun one. Emily Wilde is a prickly, socially awkward professor of dryadology (the study of faeries) who travels to a remote village to finish her encyclopaedia, only to be joined by her insufferably charming and mysterious colleague, Wendell Bambleby.
Emily can’t stand how effortlessly likable he is, and Wendell seems determined to make himself impossible to ignore. It’s slower on the romance front than most fantasy romance these days, more about the two of them circling each other through faerie politics and academic rivalry, but the chemistry is there from page one even as Emily insists it very much is not.
From Lukov with Love by Mariana Zapata
“I love you so much I spend all day with you, and it still isn’t enough for me,” he kept going. I stopped breathing. “I love you so much, if I can’t skate with you, I don’t want to skate with anyone else.”
Jasmine Santos is a figure skater who’s spent years watching every other partnership succeed while hers fall apart. Ivan Lukov is another skater that she hates. He’s cold, judgmental, and brilliant. When Jasmine gets a shot at a partnership with him, professional necessity forces them together despite years of mutual dislike.
These two take a very, very long time to warm to each other, and then even longer to fall in love, but I have to say that this is one of the more satisfying and “faster” burn of Mariana Zapata’s work, so if The Wall of Winnipeg and Me didn’t work for you — or you just want a more verbal hero, this is it!
Daughter of the Forest by Juliet Marillier
“He would have told her – he would have said, it matters not if you are here or there, for I see you before me every moment. I see you in the light of the water, in the swaying of the young trees in the spring wind. I see you in the shadows of the great oaks, I hear your voice in the cry of the owl at night. You are the blood in my veins, and the beating of my heart. You are my first waking thought, and my last sigh before sleeping. You are – you are bone of my bone, and breath of my breath.”
This one’s less a straightforward romance and more a gorgeous fantasy that happens to have one of the most beautifully slow-building love stories I’ve read. Sorcha is the only daughter among six brothers, and when her father’s new wife curses them into swans, Sorcha’s only way to save them is to stay completely silent while she completes an impossible task.
She’s eventually taken in by Red (actually Lord Hugh), a Briton who nurses her back to health without knowing anything about her, her mission, or why she can’t speak. Their bond grows in near-total silence, which, in my opinion, makes the whole thing more magical.
The Queen’s Thief (Series) by Megan Whalen Turner
“He could tell her he loved her. He ached to shout it out loud for the gods and everyone to hear. Little good it would do. Better to trust in the moon’s promises than in the word of the Thief of Eddis. He was famous in three countries for his lies.”
This is a series rather than a single book, but the slow burn plays out across multiple installments, which makes it even more of a commitment (and, in my opinion, even more rewarding). Eugenides is a cocky, self-assured thief who gets captured by the ruthless Queen of Attolia in book two, and what happens between them afterward is not what either of them, or the reader, expects going in.
I won’t say more because a huge part of the fun here is how little Turner tells you upfront; these books are built on reveals, and romance is no exception. If you like your slow burns tangled up with political intrigue and a genuinely brilliant unreliable narrator, start with The Thief and don’t skip ahead.
The Winner’s Curse by Marie Rutkoski
“He lifted her up onto the table so that her face was level with his, and as they kissed it seemed that words were hiding in the air around them, that they were invisible creatures that feathered against her and Arin, then nudged, and buzzed, and tugged.
Speak, they said.
Speak, the kiss answered.”
Kestrel is the daughter of a general in an empire that’s conquered and enslaved Arin’s people, and when she impulsively buys him at auction, neither of them expects to become anything to each other beyond mistress and property.
That power imbalance is the whole point, and Rutkoski doesn’t let either of them, or the reader, forget it. This is not a soft, easy slow burn. Kestrel and Arin’s relationship builds through games of strategy, secrets, and eventually outright betrayal, with both of them hiding entire identities from each other for most of the book. If you want tension with real political stakes attached, rather than just romantic ones, this delivers.
The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary
“It’s weird how easily you can get to know someone from the traces they leave behind when they go.”
I find it very hard to find true slow burn setups in contemporary romance, mostly because there’s little reason these days for there to be a slow burn. We’re all attached to our phones, there are almost no social pressures preventing people from being together. This book manages it, somehow.
Tiffy and Leon share a flat but never actually meet: he works nights, she works days, and the only sign either of them exists is the note they leave for each other on the kitchen counter. Naturally, those notes turn into something more, and by the time they finally meet in person, they already know each other better than most couples do after months of dating.
Howl’s Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
“I think we ought to live happily ever after,” and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would be a good deal more hair-raising than any storybook made it sound, though she was determined to try. “It should be hair-raising,” added Howl.
“And you’ll exploit me,” Sophie said.
“And then you’ll cut up all my suits to teach me.”
You might have seen the movie, but the book is just as great, if not even better. So, you know the story — Sophie Hatter gets cursed into the body of an old woman and ends up cleaning house for Howl, a vain, dramatic, and thoroughly unreliable wizard with a reputation for eating girls’ hearts (he doesn’t, for the record).
What starts as Sophie bossing her way into his life slowly turns into real affection, though neither of them says so directly for most of the book. Sophie’s stuck in an old woman’s body and deep in denial, and Howl is emotionally unavailable in the most theatrical way possible. It’s whimsical and funny rather than angsty, but the slow burn is real, and watching these two prickly, self-sabotaging people fall for each other anyway is half the charm.
