5 Romance Books With Characters Who Fall in Love Anonymously
People believe in love at first sight but do you believe that two people can also fall in love anonymously? This She Reads Romance Books podcast episode is inspired by the romcom, โYouโve Got Mail,โ where two people end up falling in love online anonymously.
If you love that movie as much as I do then youโll love this list of the best romance books where characters fall in love anonymously.
Episode #4: Romance Books With Characters Who Fall in Love Anonymously
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Books Mentioned in This Episode:
Check out my book review of The Flatshare.
Check out my book review of To Sir With Love.
Check out my book review of That Swoony Feeling.
Check out my book review of Divine Rivals.
Show Notes:
Hey readers, the other day I was flipping through channels on the TV and came across one of my favorite rom-coms featuring Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks, and that’s the movie โYou’ve Got Mail.โ
I absolutely love the idea behind this movie where two people could fall for each other, sight unseen, by simply writing back and forth to each other, because, if you think about it, in today’s world we are so focused on the images we portray on social media or how we agonize over what pictures to post on a dating app.
I find that now, reading romance books, it’s really refreshing to read a book where the characters fall for each other anonymously, like they do in โYou’ve Got Mail,โ and that’s what I’m talking about in today’s episode.
I’m going to share my top five books where characters fall in love anonymously. So here we go.
Book one that features characters who fall in love anonymously goes to The Flatshare by Beth O’Leary.
I absolutely loved this 2019 Goodreads nomination book and the setup of the romance, which is honestly one of the best slow burn romances that I’ve read in a really long time.
It features Tiffy, who is our heroine. She is a DIY book editor who accepts an offer to share a one-bedroom flat with Leon, who is a quiet hospice nurse who works the night shift.
So, the idea is that she will get the flat at night and then he will get it for the day. She accepts this offer, moves in without even meeting him and then they start leaving each other notes as their way of communicating with each other.
They don’t text, they don’t email, they just exchange notes and I loved how these notes changed as the book went on, not only in the depth of what each character shared, but the change in what they sort of started writing showed just how each was slowly changing and impacting the other.
It was just so sweet and a really cool way that Beth O’Leary used those notes to show her character development throughout the story.
It’s such a well-written book, really moving storyline, which I won’t really get into, but some things that sort of pack a punch if you will, but it’s the perfect book about characters falling in love anonymously, so I would definitely check it out.
Now, book two on my list of characters falling for each other anonymously goes to To Sir with Love by Lauren Layne, which only makes sense that I would add this book to the list because she based her book on the romcom I mentioned earlier, โYou’ve Got Mail,โ but of course she puts her own awesome spin on it.
But it’s an apparent enemies to lovers romance where two people end up falling for each other in person but also anonymously online, without knowing that they are the same people.
So Gracie, she’s our heroine. She’s forced to really forgo her own dreams when her father unexpectedly passes away, and so she has to take over his New York City champagne shop.
And while she’s struggling to keep it in the black, she meets Sebastian, who confronts her, comes up to her and says he wants to buy her out so he can turn her shop into a parking garage.
And she’s like heck, no, you’re not doing that to my father’s, you know legacy. So she’s devastated by her predicament, and she starts to confide in a person that she matches online through a blind dating app, who, of course, just happens to be Sebastian Dun dun dun.
I love that even though Gracie saw Sebastian as her enemy, he really was such a nice guy and had her best interests at heart, which you know, I loved about the story and could make it really easily to root for both of them.
Now, reading some of Lauren Layne’s books recently, I would say that she’s become a lot more closed-door in her romances than in her earlier works if you’ve ever read any of those.
This one, I would say, is definitely low on the steam factor, whether that influences you or not to read this book, but it was super cute and a really great option if you love the idea of people falling in love anonymously.
Now book three on my list goes to That Swoony Feeling by Megan Quinn. This is book four in her Getting Lucky series, but can easily be read as a standalone if you haven’t read any of the prior books in that series.
An adorable friends to lovers romance with this special anonymous twist to it, it features Brig, who is just the cutest. He’s the youngest of the Knightley brothers, who’s just again freaking adorable because he’s the sweetest romantic.
He’s pretty desperate to fall in love but hasn’t been lucky in that department and is pretty worried about the supposed Knightley brother curse in that department.
But then he decides to participate in the secret pen pal program in his small town and he starts falling for his pen pal partner.
But then he also starts spending more time with a Ruth who is this you know small town business owner where he lives in, since she starts sparking feelings for him as well. So he finds himself falling in love with two different women, or does he?
I honestly adored Brig and his frustration at not finding love when it was honestly right in front of the man. And Ruth was just this really sweet heroine to root for.
She was super sweet but also really strong and, would you know, put herself first, which I really loved. It’s one of my favorite Megan Quinn books, so definitely check out That Swoony Feeling for another great book about falling in love anonymously.
Book four on my list goes out to The Casanova by TL Swan. This is book three in Swan’s Miles High Club series and, as a total aside, I’m so glad that I started with book two of the series, which is The Takeover, and then continued on to The Casanova as book three because I circled back to book one and what’s it called The Stopover, I think, but I really didn’t care for it at all.
So if I had read that one first, I probably wouldn’t have continued on with the series, which would have been such a shame, because book two and book three were honestly epic five-star reads for me. I loved them.
So back to The Casanova and why I loved it so much.
It’s the perfect office romance and enemies to lover story where love is found between boss and employee.
Kate, our heroine, is the IT manager of Miles Media, where Elliot is the CEO, and boy do they love to push each other’s buttons. So if you love a good banter, this is the book for you.
But Kate decides to join a dating app under a fake name and connects with this man named Edgar, who she develops, you know, a friendship with and starts to confide in.
But after chatting with Edgar for a bit, Elliot starts to act differently towards her and so she starts to connect the dots.
I absolutely loved the push-pull between these two and the side story that developed was actually really interesting and had me totally hooked until the end of the book and, I would say in book two, and in this one too, Swan has this ability to create, you know, that moment of conflict for the characters where I was just like huh, I can totally see both sides of the story on this one.
I really understand both the hero and heroine’s dilemma on this and I really don’t know how it’s going to go. But it was a really great ending, such a good book.
It is book four on my list of romance books where love is found anonymously and I highly, highly recommend it.
But moving on to book five, book five is one that I have read recently and it is Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross. This was my first Rebecca Ross book. Totally won’t be my last, because I was instantly captivated by this new fantasy romance where I felt like I was transported back to like the 1940s or some or some similar time period.
It’s this great, academic rivals to lovers book where 18-year-old Iris Winnow competes with her fellow reporter Roman Kitt for the open, coveted columnist position.
But while they’re both sort of competitors in the office you can see that there’s this obvious spark between the two.
But out of the office Iris begins writing letters on her typewriter to her older brother who is off fighting in the battle between the gods, and these letters disappear under her wardrobe mysteriously. And then it’s the same wardrobe where some letters return back to her from someone with his own magical typewriter.
Now I kind of forgot how young these two were in this book. But I mean, Iris is young and I won’t go into you know everything that she’s dealing with, but Iris is lonely and I loved how she began to confide in and fall for her mysterious pen pal person, but while also developing these conflicting feelings for Roman.
So even if you’re I would say, even if you’re not like a fantasy romance reader, I would not overlook this book. It was phenomenal. I loved the characters, such a really cool story and it does end on a cliffhanger.
But she’s coming out with book two in the Divine Rivals series and I cannot wait to read it. It was such a great book about two people falling in love anonymously and I highly, highly recommend it. So that book wraps up my list.
I hope you pick one of these. If you do, let me know, and share what you think of it. But I’ll leave you with a quick note about what I am currently reading, which is A Soul of Ash and Blood by Jennifer L. Armentrout.
If you have not read the From Blood in Ash series, oh my gosh, pick it up, start reading it. It’s awesome. This was one of those first fantasy romance series that I totally binge-read because I just fell in love with Poppy and Casteel.
But this is book five in the series where Casteel is talking to Poppy, who is in a deep sleep and revisiting the beginning of their relationship. So, it’s pretty much rehashing events that happened in book one, From Blood in Ash, but told from his point of view, which I think is really cool and I’m definitely enjoying it.
And these books are not in Kindle Unlimited, but I got it from my local library. Total shout out to the library system. Oh my gosh, I love the library. I’m constantly on the library app putting books on my hold list, so hopefully your library has this book in the entire From Blood of Ash series too. If it does, definitely check it out, I love it. So that’s it, folks.
Thanks for tuning in and happy reading.
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