What Is Speculative Romance? The New Book Trend for Fans of Magical Realism

When Joey Vasquez arrives at the very couple-y dinner party hosted by Elijah Aarons, the best friend she’s secretly pined after for 14 years, she’s dismayed to find that the last person on earth she’d ever want to see again is also there: Alex Aquino. The night couldn’t possibly get worse—and then she dies. When Joey is given a second chance at life, she finds herself 18 again, the year she first met both Elijah and Alex. Armed with memories from her first life, Joey is certain she’s come back to finally convince the one man she ever loved to love her back—so why does she find herself strangely drawn to the man she thought she hated?

15-year-old Lauren Olamina lives inside a gated community with her preacher father, family, and neighbors, sheltered from the surrounding social chaos and anarchy caused by climate change and economic crisis. In a society where any vulnerability is a risk, she suffers from hyperempathy—a debilitating sensitivity to others’ emotions. Lauren must make her voice heard in order to protect her loved ones from the imminent disasters. But what begins as a fight for survival soon leads to something much more: the birth of a new faith . . . and a startling vision of human destiny.

When Landon receives a letter from Rose—the woman he once planned forever with—he learns their love story is over. She’s undergone a radical memory-erasing treatment, leaving behind her grief, her past… and him. But Landon can’t bear to lose the love of his life. If she fell for him once, couldn’t she fall for him again? When Landon reenters her life as a stranger, they become fast friends, their lives entwining once more. But when Rose starts exhibiting strange symptoms, it becomes clear their history isn’t gone—it’s just buried. And remembering could come at a devastating cost.

Annie MacLeod always knew she was different, growing up on a sailboat in the Pacific Northwest. But when a tsunami shatters her world, Annie is forced to confront just how unconventional she is. In the wreckage, she rescues a wordless man named Walker, who emits a hum only she can hear. Their connection is instant, elemental. When Walker disappears—along with any explanation he might hold about who she really is—Annie is forced to decide between evacuating with her childhood sweetheart, Evan, or staying to unlock a secret that feels vital to her survival. Six years later, Annie has buried the past. But when Walker’s otherworldly sound returns, it forces a reckoning with the wild life she’s left behind.

In the near future, a recently established government ministry is gathering “expats” from across history to establish whether time travel is feasible. A civil servant is tasked with working as a “bridge”: living with and monitoring the expat known as Commander Graham Gore. Over the next year, what the bridge initially thought would be a horrifically uncomfortable roommate dynamic, evolves into something much deeper. By the time the true shape of the Ministry’s project comes to light, the bridge has fallen in love, with consequences she never could have imagined.

Dominic Salt and his three children are caretakers of Shearwater, a tiny island not far from Antarctica. Home to the world’s largest seed bank, Shearwater was once full of researchers, but with sea levels rising, the Salts are now its final inhabitants. Until, during the worst storm the island has ever seen, a woman mysteriously washes ashore. Isolation has taken its toll on the Salts, but as they nurse the woman, Rowan, back to strength, it begins to feel like she might just be what they need. That is, until uncovered island secrets blur the lines of who they can trust.

When Lauren returns home to her flat in London late one night, she is greeted at the door by her husband, Michael. There’s only one problem—she’s not married. She’s never seen this man before in her life. But according to her friends, her much-improved decor, and the photos on her phone, they’ve been together for years. As Lauren tries to puzzle out how she could be married to someone she can’t remember meeting, Michael goes to the attic to change a lightbulb and abruptly disappears. In his place, a new man emerges, and a new, slightly altered life re-forms around her.

Among the ashes of a dying world, an agent of the Commandment finds a letter. It reads: Burn before reading. Thus begins an unlikely correspondence between two rival agents hellbent on securing the best possible future for their warring factions. Now, what began as a taunt, a battlefield boast, becomes something more. Except the discovery of their bond would mean the death of each of them. There’s still a war going on, after all. And someone has to win.

Cleo and her friends really, truly didn’t mean to steal this spaceship. They just wanted to know why, 20 years ago, the entire Providence crew vanished without a trace. But then the stupid dark matter engine started all on its own, and now they’re en route to Proxima Centauri, unable to turn around. As the ship gets deeper into space, the laws of physics start twisting, old mysteries come crawling back to life, and Cleo’s initially combative relationship with a snarky hologram that has the face and attitude of the ship’s missing captain, Billie, turns into something deeper and more desperate than either woman was prepared for.

The night Clay Lockhart’s wife dies, a violent storm tears their home—and the eight hectares of land beneath it—away from the Scottish coast, sending it adrift into the Atlantic. Thirty years later, twelve-year-old Ellie Mills discovers the fabled floating island off the coast of Nova Scotia and finds Clay still living in the weatherworn farmhouse perched on its highest hill. When the island vanishes overnight, Ellie is left questioning whether it ever existed at all. But decades later, the island resurfaces—and Ellie, now in her thirties, returns, determined to uncover the truth. What she finds is even stranger: Clay hasn’t aged a single day.