RA for All: Booklist's September 2025 Issue is a Spotlight on Romance and a Great Resource For You to Help Your Readers

Tuesday, September 9, 2025

Booklist's September 2025 Issue is a Spotlight on Romance and a Great Resource For You to Help Your Readers

From Berry Parker Doesn’t Catch Crushes, by Tanita S. Davis and published by Harper. Berry Parker Doesn’t Catch Crushes is reviewed in this issue. Illustration © 2025 by Brittany “Bea” Jackson. Used by permission of the publisher.

This month's Booklist magazine is chock full of Romance which is great because our readers cannot get enough of it right now and quite frankly always.

Taken together, these spotlight lists are a great overview of the best Romance for library patrons released in the last year. And when you look at the past 5 years of lists alongside the current ones, together they also proved a snapshot of the genre's trends. You can watch authors, tropes, and trends as they emerge into the mainstream. You can see how readers' tastes and preferences morph. And you can also observe how the more things change, often, the more they stay the same.

Use these lists for suggestions, displays, and especially as conversations starters. For more by me on how to ask patrons (in person, from the holds shelf, and online) what their favorite Romance books are and then turn the answers into a display, click here.

Even if you are not a romance reader, this post has EVERYTHING you need to help any reader interested in romance. From the hard core fans to those interested in giving the popular genre a try, you have all the resources you need to help them right here in this post.

And now, on to these amazing and useful lists courtesy of Booklist with my added backlist links going back to 2021.

2025: Top 10 Romance Debuts