Guest post written by Sweeten The Deal author Katie Shepard
Katie is, in no particular order, a fangirl, a gamer, a bankruptcy lawyer, and a romance author, most recently of SWEETEN THE DEAL, which Publisher’s Weekly called a “a clever gender-swapped twist on Pretty Woman.”
She’s lonely, rich, and ten years too young for him—but she’s also his “sugar daddy,” and they couldn’t have less in common. Opposites attract in Sweeten The Deal, a charming new romance by Katie Shepard.
Dukes fall in love. Werewolves fall in love, and so do small town bakers and big city billionaires and farmers and firefighters. Neurodivergent people also fall in love in some of my favorite romance novels, and it’s even sweeter watching how the same beloved tropes play out when the full range of human diversity is represented on the page.
Chloe Liese’s Two Wrongs Make a Right
Liese has long promoted her philosophy that “everyone deserves a love story,” and many of her books feature main characters with physical or mental disabilities. In Two Wrongs Make a Right, autistic free-spirit Bea falls for uptight Jamie, an anxious pediatrician with daddy issues. Liese’s characters’ disabilities are never portrayed as the obstacles they’re overcoming to find true love—instead she focuses on their relationships, communication, and steamy moments.
Mazey Eddings’ Lizzie Blake’s Best Mistake
The titular Lizzie is a joyful, movable disaster with poorly managed ADHD. She’s always late, can’t keep a job, and just got knocked up by her two-night stand. But instead of seeing her life as a tragedy, Lizzie is a drop of sunshine throughout the steamy romp to happily ever after with the bemused and lovestruck Australian who only thinks he can manage to platonically coparent with the roommate he can’t keep his hands off.
Talia Hibbert’s Act Your Age, Eve Brown
This grumpy/sunshine romcom in which both main characters are autistic hits a lot of pleasure centers in my brain. I love an awkward meet cute—Eve literally hits Jacob with a car!—I love forced proximity—Eve takes over Jacob’s B&B!—and I love that these two characters portray different parts of the autism spectrum, with white, male, analytical Jacob’s more stereotypical presentation and his sweet, feminine and Black love interest Eve illustrating a less-depicted experience.
Lisa Kleypas’ Love in the Afternoon
The first time I ever read romance novels that featured main characters with mental illness or conditions like alcoholism, it was in historicals. It’s often more subtle, because Regency England did not exactly have a robust mental health system, but characters like Captain Phelan deal with the same challenges as contemporary love interests, just using different language. This book has a heart wrenching mistaken identity plot complicated by what modern readers will realize is PTSD arising out of Phelan’s service in the Crimean War. Kleypas deftly contrasts the lovers’ points of view, demonstrating that Phelan’s mental illness isn’t the problem—it’s his fear of it.
Helen Hoang’s The Heart Principle
Hoang doesn’t shy away from showing the pain of unaccommodated autism and untreated mental illness in the middle of a tender love story. This romance has a lovely steamy slow burn but also makes brilliant points about a character trying to push herself into a role her brain will simply not let her perform. Raw and beautiful.
