Top Ten Tuesday

#TopTenTuesday: BIPOC Romances

Dini @ dinipandareads72 Comments

We’re back with another Top Ten Tuesday, a weekly meme hosted by Jana @ That Artsy Reader Girl.

This week’s topic is a Love Freebie!

Today’s romance freebie is giving me the chance to highlight some of my favourite romances written by BIPOC authors also featuring BIPOC characters! I admit many of the romances I read are not the most diverse but I hope to continue changing that over the years. I especially hope to find more romances written by Asian authors so if you have any recommendations, please let me know down in the comments!

Seven Days in June by Tia Williams
The Kiss Quotient Series by Helen Hoang
The Brown Sisters Series by Talia Hibbert
The Singles Table by Sara Desai
The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna

Indigo by Beverly Jenkins
Role Playing by Cathy Yardley
Church Girl by Naima Simone
Fake It Till You Bake It by Jamie Wesley
Office Hours by Katrina Jackson
Thirsty by Mia Hopkins

Have you read any of these romances? What are some of your favourite romances by BIPOC authors? I’d love your recommendations!

72 thoughts on “#TopTenTuesday: BIPOC Romances”

  4. Nice list Dini. I read the full series from Helen Hoang. I tried Talia Hibbert, but it was too full of profanity for me. Not sure if all her books are like that, but I never tried another. I am enjoying Jamie Wesley’s series. If I can think of any romances by Asian Authors I will let you know.

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    • Oh, yes… Hibbert’s books are very heavy on profanity and I would go so far as to say all because while I haven’t read all of her books, I’ve read many. 🫣 I understand why they wouldn’t be for you, Carla! I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying Wesley’s series though—it’s one that I feel is still underrated but I’m excited to catch up on the second book soon!

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  7. I know so many readers love Helen’s books but I’ve never read one by her. The Singles Table looks fun and cute. That may be one I need to read about (and add to my already “too large” TBR!). Thanks for visiting my list!

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    • It’s so good! I ended up loving it more than The Kiss Quotient. Even though I’m recommending the entire series I still haven’t read the last book although it’s a high priority for me this year! I hope you enjoy Bride Test whenever you read it 😍

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  9. Great list, Dini! I remember when we read Seven Days in June together! It was such a great book. I love how you found so many BIPOC you enjoy. I have read the Bride Test but some of these are on my TBR! I need to be better about my diverse reads. ❤

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    • Omg, we did read Seven Days in June together! Ugh, I loved that book so much 🥹 I can’t wait to re-read and annotate the heck out of my physical copy, haha. I know I still need to work on reading more diversely too—I have a lot of diverse titles on my TBR and I keep saying I’ll get to them but never do. 🤦🏻‍♀️ It’s a work in progress but it’s progress at least! 💜

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      • Yes, agreed! I think we keep getting sidetracked by all these new books- like always. It’s how I’m not getting many of my backlist read year after year. haha. I’m hoping to at least request more diversely and maybe that will help!! 🙂

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    • I finished The Brown Sisters series last year and ugh, SO GOOD! I love Hibbert’s books so much! I admit I still need to finish TKQ series but I’ve just got the last book to go and I mean, it’s about QUAN. I’m so excited to read more about him so I know I’m already (probably) gonna love it, lol. 💜 I hope you enjoy both series whenever you finish them!

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  16. This is a great topic. I was a little sad about how white my own list was, even though I feel like I read diversely. I love Talia Hibbert’s books and Very Secret Society. Role Playing has been on my list for a while. I wasn’t crazy about The Kiss Quotient but I know I’m an outlier with Helen Hoang’s books. Thanks for sharing and happy TTT!

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    • Aw, that’s alright. The majority of the romances I read are actually still by white authors and with white characters, but I always love to spotlight BIPOC romances and doing something similar over the years encourages me to read more of them over the year so that I have more choice recommendations in the coming year 🙂 Talia Hibbert is a great fave and I feel like Role Playing is an underrated romance but I loved it so much, I think because I could also relate to the gaming aspect and despite being younger than our older protagonists, I very much related to the FMC in so many ways! 😂

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    • Aw, sorry to hear that you didn’t like Irregular Witches. It’s one of my favourite slow-burn cosy fantasy romance reads but I can see why it wouldn’t be for everyone 🙂 I hope you enjoy Bride Test and Seven Days in June!

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    • I ended up enjoying The Bride Test more than TKQ but love them both. I actually still need to finish reading the series but I hope to this year—it’s a top priority! I hope you enjoy Bride Test whenever you get around to it 🙂

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      • Yes, that’s the one! I listened to the audiobook and enjoyed it a lot. (There’s a lot of Spanish words in the text, though, which didn’t phase me since I know enough Spanish from high school to get the general idea of what was being said even when I didn’t know all the words. But some readers might want to have the text version to look up the Spanish words easier.)

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        • I still don’t listen to very many audiobooks so I think I’d pick this up as an ebook but thanks for the heads up. I’m actually starting to learn Spanish now so let’s see if I can catch on to any of the words within the context! 😂

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  23. What a great topic. Thank you for this list. It’s getting easier to get access to BIPOC authors, but still not easy enough. So many are still self published or indy, which are few and far between in the local library.

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    • Thanks, Cheri! I definitely still see a lot more white authors in mainstream and the BIPOC authors I do see are usually the same ones over again (which is fine but I just wish we’d see more)! Yeah, most of the BIPOC authors I’ve discovered have been indie and thanks to KU, which is great but I do wish that it would be easier to discover more!

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  24. I haven’t read any of these although I’m not entirely surprised as romance isn’t really a genre I tend to pick up. I am hoping to try a couple this year though and one of the main ones I hope to get to is The Bride Test. Another on my TBR is, unsurprisingly, the witches one 😂 and this is definitely the reminder I needed to add Talia Hibbert’s series to my high priority TBR. I’ve seen a lot of love for that one so it seems like another good, early romance attempts choice. A couple of the others I’m going to have to look up as the titles & covers intrigued me. I hope you manage to find even more romances in the future 🥰

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    • The Bride Test is so good! I loved the cultural aspect as much as the neurodivergent aspect and the romance itself. Also, Mandanna’s witches book is amazing. The romance is obvi a big part of the story but it’s so much more than that and it’s a very heartwarming cosy tale. I hope you love it whenever you check it out! Talia Hibbert’s books are AMAZING. I might be super biased because I love her books so much, haha, but they’re just so much fun. Lots of cheeky banter and realistic characters although fair warning, they tend to be very sweary and also very steamy, in case that’s not entirely your jam, lol! 🤭

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      • They all sound fantastic and like they have lots of great elements to draw me to them 😊 knowing me I’ll probably end up getting to the witch one first, especially as I really want to check out more cosy fantasy books. I’m hopeful that I’ll try a few romance reads out this year though. And don’t worry, those don’t really bother me as long as they fit within the story 😊

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  25. I have Seven Days in June on my TBR. I’ve read Thirsty and it’s an awesome read!

    I admit, I also don’t read as diversely as I want to be, and I’m doing my best to change that this year.

    This is an awesome list! I recommend Nalini Singh, of course. Her Psy-Changeling series has racially ambiguous characters, though. Another author I recommend it Tif Marcelo. She writes Filipino-American romance. Her book The Holiday Switch is YA but it brought a lot of nostalgia for me when I read it.

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    • Thirsty was a great introduction to Mia Hopkins~! Keen to check out more of her books 🙂 I still haven’t tried a Nalini Singh book but they’ve been high on my TBR! I just found out that her Psy-Changeling books are on KU (UK) and I’ve already got the first one in my library! I’ve also heard of The Holiday Switch by Tif Marcelo and it looks really cute. I’ll have to put that back on my radar and see if I can get my hands on it. Thanks for the recommendation 🙂 I hope you find some more amazing diverse romances this year!

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  27. What a great selection! I read Get a Life, Chloe Brown and loved it but I know that Dani’s story has a trope I don’t like :S. But then the third sister’s story Eve, I want to read that one!! LOL Role Playing and The Very Secret Society are ones I want to read too! 🙂
    Another romance by a BIPOC author I loved was That Time I Got Drunk and Saved a Demon.

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    • Ooh, Dani’s story is amazing! It was my favourite until I read Eve’s book but then they ended up being tied. So good 😍 I do get not wanting to read books with a trope you don’t like though! I hope you love Secret Society and Role Playing—I have big love for those books. Also, I LOVE Lemmings books! They’re so entertaining and never fail to have me cackling in the middle of the night as I read, haha. I can’t wait for her next aliens book 😂

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      • Ahhh now you’re making me want to give a book with fake dating a try. Well if I ever feel like giving a chance to that trope again I will go visit Dani lol. Glad that you loved Eve just as much though!
        Thank you, I need to read more adorable books about nerdy hobbies in general!
        I need to continue the Lemmings series, the first one was funny and entertaining! Excuse me, Alien books? 👀👀 I did not know this, how exciting!

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    • Dani’s was my favourite until I read Eve”s and then they became tied. But that series is gold 😍 Seven Days in June was incredible—the amount of emotion and heart and just the things Tia William did with that story was too good! I would highly recommend it (might be a little biased with how much I loved it though, haha). I hope you love it if you give it a try!

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