Best Books About Love - Contemporary & Classic Love Stories & Romance Novels

While most books about love end happily ever after, the most popular ones almost certainly never do. With the capacity to frighten, shock and dismay, these books are treasured not for the tragedy but for the resilience of love in spite of it all.

This collection of eight of the best contemporary and classic love stories come highly recommended throughout the years.Guaranteed to be irreplaceable, these books are priceless accounts of the dark and dangerous side of love.

Follow the journey of these characters through love that is tumultuous, passionate and sobering. Each novel is wholly insightful into the nature of love relationships and the twists and turns that love can take.

If by chance you arrived at this page looking for good, self help books on how to improve your relationships, rather than novels about love, then click the following link for my reviews of the best relationship books.

Although deemed a highly controversial novel at the time of its release, Tess of the D’Urbervilles is considered one of Thomas Hardy’s finestworks for challenging Victorian morals and beliefs.

This is a story about a naïve girl Tess Durbeyfield who, under the illusion of false nobility and dire circumstances placed upon by impoverishment, was led to the unfortunate loss of innocence through the exploitation of Alec D’Urberville. She finds love in gentleman Angel Clare who rejects her upon learning of her past. Extremely poignant and sincere, this book is riveting for its honest prose and dark and forbidding end.

Hester Wyatt is a free black woman and a conductor at Michigan’s Underground who helps runaways have a chance at freedom. She unwittingly takes Black Daniel under her wing, a freedom fighter with a price on his head.

Despite his arrogance, Hester finds herself attracted to the handsome stranger who is really Galen Vachon, a member of one of the wealthiest free Black families in New Orleans. What transpires is an unlikely courtship unfolding in the midst of a social revolution, and the liberating process of falling in love.

This Emily Bronte novel is another classic that has ruffled feathers upon its release. Set in the late 1700s, Wuthering Heights is a hauntingly beautiful tale of obsessive yet unrequited love between Heathcliff and Catherine Earnshaw.

Having grown up together in the charming estate of Wuthering Heights, Heathcliff and Catherine have come to realize that they are soul mates but the disparity in their social status renders their union unfulfilled. It is an unlikely book about love for its brutal and frightening narration, but the discord amongst the star-crossed characters is what makes this novel one of the finest pieces of literature of all time.

Inspired by a sensational murder trial in 1843 Canada, author Margaret Atwood brilliantly lays out the story of 16-year-old housemaidGrace Marks who was convicted of killing her employer and his mistress. Because of doubts on Grace’s participation in the murder, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment while her co-conspirator was hanged.

Alias Grace is a chilling reconstruction of the enigmatic Marks’ 30 years in different asylums and prisons in the 19^th century and the love story that manages to build with despite her imprisonment. With the use of a variety of writing forms, including correspondence of Dr. Jordan with friends and family, Atwood pulls the readers in by making them draw their own verdict on Grace Marks’ character and innocence.

Set in the midst of the Second World War, this award-winning novel is perhaps one of the most famous contemporary books about love ever written. The story is woven from four main characters who meet at an Italian monastery—Hana the nurse, Kip the Indian sapper, Caravaggio the thief and spy, and of course the mysterious burn patient with an English accent.

This is a book on the persistence of love at a time where it seemed impossible to grow. Filled with intrigue, passion and betrayal, this highly lyrical and beautifully rendered novel by Canadian author Michael Ondaatje has moved and captured hearts all over the world.

Stevens is the perfect English butler. Obsessed with the details and intricacies of running a proper English household, he often forgets to take step back and see the bigger picture. His blind devotion to his master Lord Darlington, maddening stoicism and narrow-mindedness leads him to discount emotions, making him alienate his dying fatherand miss a chance at love with the spirited housekeeper Miss Kenton.

The Remains of the Day may be as concise and reserved as its narrator but it brims with realizations and regrets one hopes not to have upon the reflection on his or her own life.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a masterful novelist but a true romantic, as evidenced by this captivating novel on the impediments of love. Once again, he employs magic realism in narrating the tempestuous triangle ofFerminaDaza, FlorentinoAriza and Juvenal Urbino that spans half a century.

With a good scattering of soul-searching and impassioned trysts, this novel believes that true love is like a sickness that cripples a person physically and emotionally. While other books show only the beautiful side of love, Marquez demonstrates the both wonderful and depraved faces of it—as if to discourage and seduce at the same time.

Dubbed the “greatest novel ever written”, Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is the perfect, final addition to this collection of books about love. Anna Karenina is in a comfortable but loveless marriage and lives a peaceful enough life until Count Vronsky enters the picture.

Enamoured, Vronsky actively pursues Anna and eventually convinces her to have an affair with him. Tumult rules their affair as it lengthens, but they are drawn to each other nonetheless. Four years in the making and even based on real events, this novel proves to be the genuine masterpiece.

Tragedy rules this collection and while that may seem uncanny for a list of books about love, they are beautiful depictions of love thwarted, love denied and love lost. People have and will experience this at some point and it is for this reason that these books are held in high esteem by readers all over. So do not be afraid to curl up with one of these page turners, they may show both the ups and downs of love in equal measure, but they are certainly worth your while.

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