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My favorite romance novels bring warm, comforting vibes, often through cozy settings, flirtatious banter, and a mouth-watering food description or two. But nothing tugs on my heartstrings more than an adorable pet. Pets make excellent additions to romance novels. They bring people together in unexpected ways, and they provide ample opportunities for comedic relief. You might even call them (ro)man(ce)’s best friend.

Pets brighten up our real lives, and they can be just as fun to encounter in a good romance novel. Below you’ll find some of my favorite romance novels with the best animal characters to wiggle their ways into my heart. Let’s hear it for the emotional support dogs/cats/rabbits/goldfish/whatever other animals that make our protagonists smile — and sometimes help bring about unforgettable meet-cutes.

The Re-Do List by Denise Williams

I’m a fan of Denise Williams and knew I’d love her newest book, but it’s that illustration of Gus on the cover that had me making heart eyes right from the start. In The Re-Do List, we meet recently-dumped-and-virally-embarrassed Willow, who’s dog-sitting her brother Cruz’s German shepherd while he’s deployed as a pararescue jumper. Cruz asked his best friend Deacon to keep an eye on — and his hands off — his baby sister. We spend much of the story with the lovable Gus, who’s so perfectly behaved that Deacon jokes he’s “pretty sure that dog is trained to do Cruz’s taxes and oversee a multilevel marketing operation.” Even better, we meet Deacon’s rescue pitbull Cupcake, who is best friends with Gus. What’s more romantic than dates at the dog park?

All access members continue below for more romance novels with animal characters.

Get a Life, Chloe Brown by Talia Hibbert

Talia Hibbert’s wildly popular Brown Sisters series is a total delight. But where would the first sister, Chloe Brown, have ended up if not for a well-timed encounter with a cat? Shortly after challenging herself to be more adventurous, Chloe spots a cat seemingly stuck in a tree. Scratch (as we come to know him) is “small, but wonderfully fat, with fur so gray as to seem almost black, and piercing eyes that seemed to say, Surely you won’t leave me here?” It turns out Smudge is actually quite athletic and capable of getting himself out of the tree. Perhaps he was really pushing Chloe to climb a tree and live a little. We love a Cat Distribution System success story.

Alice Rue Evades the Truth by Emily Zipps

This chaotic bisexual While You Were Sleeping retelling stole my heart in many ways, from its endearingly messy protagonist to its hot butch love interest and powerful representation of MS. But the character that lives rent-free in my head is Frank, the tall, lanky, slobbery, scene-stealing, very good boy. Frank is “all legs and elbows, with floppy ears, light brown speckles, and an enormous grin,” and I would give anything for one of his signature hugs. Frank is based on a real dog, who you can find on author Emily Zipps’ Instagram, and he’s described with the kind of loving enthusiasm that makes him leap right off the page and into your heart.

The Baby Dragon Café by A. T. Qureshi

This cozy romantasy series takes place in a world full of pet baby dragons. Picture the adorable feistiness of a kitten. Now add wings and fire. You can imagine why most restaurants won’t allow baby dragons inside. But Saphira opened her café with baby dragons in mind, serving coffee and snacks to humans and treats like charred naan to their pets. After a baby dragon accidentally sets her espresso maker on fire, Saphira worries her business won’t recover from the accident. Then handsome gardener Aiden realizes how good Saphira is with his unruly little dragon Sparky and offers to pay Saphira to train him. It’s a delightful story full of baby dragon chaos.

With Stars in Her Eyes by Andie Burke

Bookstores, both real and fictional, are sometimes home to adorable cats and dogs. Andie Burke’s secret-rockstar sapphic romance With Stars in Her Eyes features a bookstore that takes the animal love a step further. Menagerie Books, the bookstore where protagonist Courtney hides from the viral disaster that ended her music career, is known for fostering exotic pets. You’ll meet colorful characters like Baxter the potbellied piglet, Harry Styles the horny toad, and Lady Fruitcakes the ferret in this story that will make you wish you could take a trip to Menagerie Books in real life.

We hope you enjoyed these romance novels with the best animal characters! You might also enjoy:

Best Romance Books of the Century So Far

8 Romantasy Books with the Best Banter

15 Books with Pets on the Cover

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September 25, 2025, 2:51pm

In a recent review for The Baffler, Adrian Nathan West considered a pair of novels written as responses to existing classics. This got me thinking about literary reboots.

There are lots of novels adapted from myths (Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles, Chigozie Obioma’s An Orchestra of Minorities). The fairy tale has fans (Julia Phillips’ Bear). Even the Bible has borne adaptation, in novels by Maryse Condé and Colm Toibin. But what exactly draws an author back to the recent canon?

At a glance, many response novels are interested in the revisionist or reparative read. In a sharp piece for Lux, Natalie Adler recently considered a spate of “queer and trans novels that complicate the Lolita plot.” Books like Geraldine Brooks’ March or Sandra Newman’s Julia re-tell a story from the vantage of an NPC. Such books offer fun lessons in craft possibilities. What changes in a story when the POV does? And, can you fill a hole even as you pay homage?

In case you also feel like riding the train backward into the stacks, here are a few book “remakes” for your radar.

Zoe Dubno’s Happiness and Love nods to Thomas Bernhard’s Woodcutters. 

As West reports, Dubno’s update puts us in the head of an unnamed twentysomething who judges her peers at a cocktail party. This frame borrows from Bernhard’s tailspin of a novel, set entirely in a narcissist’s armchair.

The adaptation here is quite direct, plot-wise. As West notes, “Vienna is transposed into Manhattan, the Graben into the Bowery, Eugene and Nicole are the Auersbergers, Rebecca is the ‘movement artist’ Joana, and the actress is the actor from the Burgtheater returning from a performance of Ibsen’s The Wild Duck.”

Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is a postcolonial response to Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre.

Rhys’ 1966 novel concerns Mr. Rochester’s first wife, the notorious Madwoman in the Attic. Rather than that scrappy little orphan, this “landmark of feminist and postcolonial fiction” centers Antoinette, a Creole woman whose “madness” is situated in the context of a racist, patriarchal society.

When asked about her motivations for writing the book, Rhys said, “she seemed such a poor ghost, I thought I’d like to write her a life.”

Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection is inspired by Georges Perec’s Things.

West observed that Vincenzo Latronico’s Perfection “draws on” Georges Perec’s Things. And the former, a close look at a drifty PMC couple trying to live their values and enjoy their privilege, “is not so much a remake as one of those sequels released decades later, situating the same protagonists in a changed world.”

Like Perec’s, Latronico’s novel is interested in categorizing a consumerist milieu. Both novels take on the spiritual hollowness that can accompany a life built on material aspirations.

Zadie Smith’s On Beauty nods to E.M. Forster’s Howard’s End. 

Smith’s “sly and inventive recasting of E.M. Forster’s masterpiece” is one of those vibier response books. Certain plot furniture has been airlifted into a present day context, while some has been left behind. In Forster’s Howard’s End, a legacy dispute draws two families together around an estate. On Beauty, on the other hand, brings its players together on a college campus.

Bohemianism in the first text is made into multiculturalism in the second. And though Smith makes open reference to the language in Forster’s classic, she also invents a plenty.

Percival Everett’s Pulitzer prizewinner James is a response to Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Everett’s much-feted novel is, as you may have heard, a revisionist response to Huck Finn. But in the update, we find Jim in the driver’s seat and Huck mostly offstage. This is a classic revisioniste= reading, centering the character who was denied agency and voice in the original.

But as Everett told the Booker Prize, the intention here isn’t to punish. “I hope that I have written the novel that Twain did not and also could not have written. I do not view the work as a corrective, but rather I see myself in conversation with Twain.”

Cervantes’ Don Quixote got the modern treatment in Salman Rushdie’s Quichotte.

Rushdie’s spin on the epic is most interested in borrowing Cervantes’ structure and form. As Johanna Thomas-Corr wrote in The Guardian, in Quichotte “We’re not in La Mancha any more but Trumpland. Our knight errant is a dapper old duffer named Ismail Smile who loses his job as a pharmaceutical salesman and sets off across America with a teenage son he has dreamed up named Sancho.”

This remake is most curious for the contrast—Cervantes’ novel is thought to be the first realist piece of literature, where Rushdie’s update is decidedly absurd. But the times, they are a changing. Maybe every generation of readers get the spins they deserve.

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Kendra Winchester is a Contributing Editor for Book Riot where she writes about audiobooks and disability literature. She is also the Founder of Read Appalachia, which celebrates Appalachian literature and writing. Previously, Kendra co-founded and served as Executive Director for Reading Women, a podcast that gained an international following over its six-season run. In her off hours, you can find her writing on her Substack, Winchester Ave, and posting photos of her Corgis on Instagram and Twitter @kdwinchester.

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As a teenager, I remember reading my first novel in verse. I never expected to like poetry. But just a few pages in, I found myself engrossed in the story. More than that, I became fascinated by the language, the use of space on the page, how beautiful everything sounded when read aloud. I’d never enjoyed reading poetry like this before. I was smitten.

Years later, post-college and grad school, I found my way back to novels in verse via middle grade. One of my favorite authors, Jacqueline Woodson, had a new book out, a memoir in verse that followed her childhood in Greenville, South Carolina. She possessed such control over her poetry, using each page to progress the story while still remaining true to the lyrical quality of her beautiful writing. Reading Brown Girl Dreaming—the language, imagery, and storytelling—took me back to my childhood. I’ve been in love with poetry novels in verse ever since.

Now, I’m an adult and not the target audience for middle grade. But like the child me, middle graders love novels in verse too. They encourage younger readers with their playful use of language. There’s a lot of space on the page, making them accessible to struggling readers. The writing is so lyrical and beautiful to the ear. What’s more, novels in verse often tackle difficult topics in an age-appropriate way, giving adults an opportunity to talk to kids about big ideas. So, here are a few of my favorite novels in verse, perfect for adults and kids alike.

Kareem Between by Shifa Saltagi Safadi

Kareem loves football more than anything else. He dreams of becoming the quarterback for his school’s team, so much so that he’s willing to break the rules to do it. But when the president enacts the “Muslim ban,” Kareem’s mom is in Syria visiting family, and she isn’t able to come home.

Other Words for Home by Jasmine Warga

When Jude and her mother go to stay with family in Cincinnati, they leave her father and brother back in Syria. What starts out as a short trip turns into a longer and longer stay. Everything in America is too loud and too fast. Jude desperately misses home. But the longer she spends in America, the more she comes to see this otherworldly place as home.

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Louder Than Hunger by John Schu

Jake has a voice in his head that tells him he’s not supposed to eat. He’s not worth it. While everything else feels out of his control, if he limits what he eats, that will prevent the worst from happening. He’s confident he doesn’t have an issue with food. But after his mother and grandmother send him to a residential program for anorexia, Jake begins to think he may have a problem after all. Through talking with his therapist and receiving the other help he needs, Jake begins to develop a healthier relationship with food and to work through the underlying issues that made him start restricting food in the first place.

Inside Out and Back Again by Thanhhà Lại

When Hà is just ten years old, she and her family flee Vietnam at the end of the war and make their way to America. In Alabama, Hà and her brothers attend a new school. At first, Hà struggles with the language, but slowly and surely, she begins learning English and better understanding the new world she calls home.

Red, White, and Whole by Rajani LaRocca

Reha feels caught between worlds: at home, she’s surrounded by Indian food and culture. At school, she just wants to be like the other kids. But when her mother becomes seriously ill, her entire life feels as if it’s been turned upside down. All she wants is to make her mother well again. Maybe if she’s the perfect daughter and does everything her parents want her to do, her Amma won’t be sick anymore.

Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson

This is the book that started the revival of my love for novels in verse. In Brown Girl Dreaming, Woodson shares the story of her childhood and adolescence growing up as a young Black girl in South Carolina and New York in the 1960s and 1970s. As we move through her memoir, we see young Woodson come into her own and begin to make a place for herself in the world.

The post 6 Must-Read Middle Grade Novels in Verse appeared first on Our Story Insight.

Eileen’s primary literary love is comic books, but she’s always on the lookout for her next literary adventure no matter what form it takes. She has a Bachelor’s in media studies, a Master’s in digital communication, a smattering of published short stories, and a seriously cute dog. Follow her on Bluesky.

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You made it to May! Got any fun plans? Maybe a barbecue, a vacation, or just some time off from the regular grind? Whatever your plans, why not take one of these new graphic novels along with you? They’re the perfect addition to a blissful afternoon at the park or a good way to unwind after a hectic day of travel.

Aside from offering lots of intriguing suggestions for what you could be reading over the next thirty days, these new release lists are also a reminder of just how versatile comic books are. It doesn’t matter what kind of story you want to tell—short, long, funny, serious, scary, fiction, nonfiction—comics are a fantastic medium for bringing that story to the public eye. Below, you’ll find everything from tales of supernatural horror to fun, kid-friendly titles. Most are works of fiction, as usual, but there are also a couple of nonfiction titles for people wanting to learn history or new skills. One even draws inspiration from real life to create an entertaining story with an important message.

As usual, each entry includes a handy-dandy buy link and the publication date, accurate as of the time of writing. Happy reading!

Creaky Acres by Calista Brill and Nilah Magruder (May 6)

When Nora’s family—including her beloved horse—have to move to a new, rural community, she’s afraid she won’t fit in or be able to achieve her goals. Can Nora use her love of horseback riding to make new friends and find her place?

Epitaphs From the Abyss Volume One by Various Creators (May 6)

A bevy of renowned creators—including Jason Aaron, Stephanie Phillips, Brian Azzarello, and many more—help bring EC’s notorious horror comics back from the grave in this gory collection, which includes the first four issues of the series.

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J vs. K by Kwame Alexander and Jerry Craft (May 6)

J is an amazing artist, while K’s poetry is second to none. So what happens when these creative, competitive kids enter the same contest? Will they learn to work together or just bring the whole school down with them?

The Manga Guide to Organic Vegetable Gardening by Hideki Yoda (May 13)

‘Tis the season to get your garden in order. This chipper guide uses a combination of photos, illustrations, and text to tell you everything you need to know. The Kindle edition is out this month, but if you want the paperback, you have to wait until June.

Saga Volume Twelve by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples (May 13)

The acclaimed series returns! Marko and Alana may be lovers from feuding planets who face daunting political challenges on a daily basis, but raising their daughter Hazel is a whole other story…

Snow Angel Volume One by Haruka Chizu (May 13)

For too long, Muku has lived her life for other people, unable to develop and pursue her own path. Can an unexpected reunion with a childhood friend give her the strength to break free?

Trans History: A Graphic Novel: From Ancient Times to the Present Day by Alex L. Combs and Andrew Eakett

The title says it all: this book highlights trans people from throughout history, exploring the contributions they have made and society’s reaction to them in different times and places.

Thunderbolts Epic Collection: Targeted for Death by Various Creators (May 27)

Want more Thunderbolts? Here’s over 450 pages’ worth! This collection features some of the group’s earliest adventures. Roster shifts and returning villains are sure to keep them on their toes!

And check out the New Release Index for even more exciting new titles!

The following comes to you from the Editorial Desk.

This week, we’re highlighting a post about the literary events that should be on your calendar for the rest of 2025. From awards announcements to famous authors’ birthdays to Banned Books Week, these are the dates readers should have on their radars. Read on for an excerpt and become an All Access member to unlock the full post.

The Most Anticipated Literary Events of (the Rest of) 2025

For some, the major literary events of the year come as a pleasant or interesting surprise—something to enjoy in the moment, rather than to anticipate. For others, there’s big appeal in bookmarking these occasions in advance to plan, predict, and build around. I and the rest of the editorial team are in the business of thinking ahead about what the year has in store for book lovers, publishers, industry experts, and the like, which is why we all got together toward the end of 2024 to plot out everything from birthdays of literary greats, to anniversaries of books that have made a deep cultural impact, to literary awards and events coming up this year. We’ve been marking these events as they happen on the site for what’s shaping up to be a very busy year in books, but there are still so many big, exciting literary events of 2025 to anticipate.

Whether you’re a book-focused or -adjacent content creator, someone who beefs up their TBR with literary awards honorees, or a book lover who appreciates being in the know, I’m here with a starting place for calendaring out the rest of this storied year…

Sign up to become an All Access member for only $6/month and then click here to read the full, unlocked article. Level up your reading life with All Access membership and explore a full library of exclusive bonus content, including must-reads, deep dives, and reading challenge recommendations.

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January 23, 2025, 1:50pm

Perhaps predictably, the men-aren’t-reading discourse has made the jump into 2025. The perennial conversation has taken on new weight this year, though, as we begin to be governed by the worst of men, the putrid avatars of a hatefully reactionary masculinity. Increasingly, what’s wrong with men is what’s wrong with America. Would a reading list of novels enlighten them?

The problem with the “dudes don’t read” argument is that the numbers don’t really seem to back the point up. Vox dug into the data behind the chatter in a piece titled “Are men’s reading habits truly a national crisis?” which casts doubt on the statistics most often being cited, and poses some reasons why we might still be assuming men don’t read anyway.

The Pew Research Center compiled findings from 2011 to 2021 that Americans read an average of 14 books and a median of 5 books annually. Younger people read more than over-65s, and more women read than men, but only by a little:

Pew’s 2021 study says 73 percent of men say they’ve read a book in the past year, compared to 78 percent of women. Those numbers are up a tad from 2016, when 68 percent of men said they’d read a book compared to 77 percent of women. Overall, we’re looking at pretty consistent stats over the course of the last decade: Roughly 70-ish percent of men read at least one book a year, and roughly 80-ish percent of women do. Meanwhile, according to the Department of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey of 2023, women spend on average 0.32 hours on leisure reading per day (about 19 minutes), while men’s daily reading time averages out to about 0.2 hours (12 minutes).

It’s not a huge gap. Constance Grady, the Vox writer, followed up on the stats with the researchers, and the new information she found brings us back to much the same place: the gender gap isn’t that stark, nor does it seem to be moving much.

So statistically speaking, no one is really reading. But it’s a problem for men because men seem to be doing more and more poorly, and reading is seen as a possible antidote. Vox again:

Reading fiction has assumed the same role as therapy in public discourse: something good for one’s mental and emotional health that we should all do in order to be better citizens, and something that men — particularly straight men — are simply choosing not to do, to the detriment of society.

This last phrase is the weight behind the panic — broadly speaking, men seem to have fallen through some very rotten floorboards and into a much worse place. Which is to say, women could stand to read more too, but women aren’t endangering as many people as men are — especially straight and white men, who I’m mostly talking about here.

For all the wonderful men that we all might know personally, the ascendent American male archetype is horrible — the hog-men of the political right in this country are wrecking and upturning everything. We’ve all felt the hot breath of these unwell and wicked men on the back of our necks this week.

Part of the identity of this fratty and crass man involves turning your back on books and everything they represent. This man reaches for force and bluster to hide “a bright seam of fear,” as Rebecca Traister puts it. This man prizes business school efficiency and has no time for anything beyond grinding and maxing everything. This man is gleefully rude, unapologetically loud, aggressively in-motion, and perpetually in-the-way.

This man, of course, doesn’t read. The worst of them, Andrew Tate, once said that “Reading books is for losers who are afraid to learn from life. So they try and learn from the life OTHERS have lived.” Zoë Hu published a sharp exploration of Tate’s brutality in Dissent, which highlights not just the violence, but the loneliness of his lifestyle:

For him, power is a vehicle to admiration, and admiration is at variance with intimacy. To be admired by someone is to forever be at a distance from them, and this is where Tate prefers his women.

This aversion to closeness, which is an act of care which takes time and attention, would certainly cause a man to look at fiction with revulsion. Why fill your head with other people’s voices? It’s too close, and could be a slippery slope to empathy.

And there aren’t a lot of business tips in your average novel, either. Hu identifies Tate’s mission as a perverse extreme of a dynamic seen elsewhere in the hustle-verse: “The worst excesses of masculinity find common cause in the dollar — it’s all a business hustle.” Seeing the people around you as exploitable ready-to-hand objects is not just cruel, but also lonely: “What men and boys learn from Tate, in other words, is how to optimize a life bereft of love or friendship.” Reading a novel has no place in this matrix of domination.

But what is the case for reading, beyond that it differentiates you from the worst people around? Even considering the “value” of a novel seems to be ceding ground to a false way of thinking, putting novels in competition, to be ranked and rated and graded.

Reading is wonderful, but I’d have a hard time making the case that it’s an unsinkable, objectively good thing that each and every person must do. And even people who I agree with sometimes treat books as a symbol of values they want to communicate, or as objects with rich veins of knowledge to be extracted. This turns a book into something to be consumed or summarized, implying that they’re good, sure, but not always worth your time.

Novels can be hard too — how often have you been heartbroken that someone didn’t connect with a book you recommended? In the wake of David Lynch’s death, I’ve been wondering about how to make the case for strange and challenging art. I don’t think I could put it better than Michelle Dean did in her essay on Twin Peaks: The Return in Harper’s, : “There is no point, there is no conventional reason to watch, other than for the sheer enjoyment of the lurid but beautiful mind of David Lynch.”

To me, this is the point: a novel may be difficult, but it’s also a chance to experience something that is unique and unclassifiable. Reading novels is a singular way of approaching and understanding the world. This uniqueness means that novels can’t be a one-size-fits-all solution, nor are books the only way to get closer to humanity, or imagine a better world, or to feel empathy for someone you may never meet. A book could fix a man, but it’s not the only way to, and it’s not a sure thing.

There is part of me that is inclined to quietly allow people to enjoy what they enjoy, as long as it’s not hurting anyone. You don’t have to read. But there is another, larger part of me that is a hater: if you’re a grown-up, you should be able to read a book. You should at least try! You shouldn’t turn your back to the world — go to a museum, see a live show, meet your neighbor, help a friend, and call your parent.

All of these things are a chance to step outside of yourself and consider others. We like to imagine men reading because it’s a vision of a man who is patient, sensitive, and restrained. A man reading is a man pausing and thinking, not a man acting or reacting. It’s seductive to extrapolate this image: a nation of men reading might be a place that is more considerate, a place that lifts up everyone, with bread for all, and roses too.

Above all else, a man reading is silent. In short, and even though it won’t solve everything, my advice to my fellow American men is to shut the fuck up and read a novel.

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