the shelf · fifteen days, twelve books, one question
i read ten romance novels to find out if the book i am writing already exists
The rule was that I only stop reading when I find a book very close to mine. An asexual main character, New York, a lot of yearning, a guy with a dark past, and a very small chess subplot. I did not find it, and the reason I did not find it turned out to be more interesting than finding it would have been.
I did this because I am a masochist and I wanted to know if the book I am trying to write already exists. That is a real question and writers ask it in a specific place, which is a query letter, where you have to name two or three published books yours sits next to. Mine had to be found before I could name them.
So each book below has two halves. What I went in looking for, which is always a piece of my own novel, and what I actually got, which was usually something else. Underneath each one is the part the video could not carry: the fact I did not have while I was reading it.
The video ended when a book arrived that matched. It was my own proof copy, in the post, not for resale. That is a joke and it is also the finding, and the section at the bottom is why.
the video this video ends when i find the book i'm trying to write watch on youtube ↗ what a comp title actually is
A comparison title is a recently published book that has something important in common with yours. You put two or three of them in a query letter and an agent is supposed to understand your book immediately from them. The critic Lisa Levy, writing on Jane Friedman's site, calls them publishing shorthand, and says you should speak fluent publishing before you go anywhere near a query.
The rule that catches everybody is recency. Agents want comps from the last two or three years, and Levy explains why, which most people skip. If your manuscript sold tomorrow to a big publisher it would reach a shelf in about two years, by which point your comps are five years old, and five years is a long time in publishing.
Which does something to this pile that I did not see while I was reading it. Against a query going out in November 2026, exactly 1 of the 12 books here is recent enough to be a primary comp, and it is Give Me a Reason, the one I nearly did not finish. 3 more are arguable at three years. The other 8 are too old, including both of the two that actually got me: Love and Other Words and Let's Talk About Love are eight years old.
So I did not fail to find a comp. I spent fifteen days reading things that could only ever have been secondary comps, which are the looser kind, and the one current book in my hands was the one I was bored by. That is a useful thing to know before you write your query and an annoying thing to find out after.
the twelve
In the order I read them. The star rating is mine and it is only there where I said one out loud.
Cleopatra and Frankenstein Coco Mellors · 2022
i did not finish it
what i went in for
a painter, and New York. The guy in my book is a painter in New York, and my main character is Bulgarian and comes here and doesn't know whether she's allowed to stay. I wanted to see how somebody else writes the art and writes the city.
what i got
I'm still reading it, slowly, every night. I found a quote about art on about page ten and it's the thing I needed: it's chaos on canvas, I feel like I should have never started and then I keep going and somehow things find their order, I know when I finish because I feel this click. That is exactly what painting is like, and honestly what making anything is like. The first stretch is two people talking and it reminded me of Before Sunrise. It's not an easy read, it's more literary than anything else on this pile, so I'm not rushing it.
the thing i did not know
Mellors finished this novel at twenty-six and it came out when she was about thirty-three, so it spent roughly seven years getting from done to in print. She wrote it while getting sober, and she has an MFA in fiction from NYU, which is a fair part of why it reads literary. And the title is not Mary Shelley and it is not Egypt. Cleo and Frank are the nicknames they give each other the night they meet, and they're married six months later.
content note: alcoholism and addiction.
Give Me a Reason Jayci Lee · 2025
recent enough to be a comp goodreads 3.39 from 1,094, read 10 October 2026 i did not finish it
what i went in for
ten years of two people thinking about each other, and the famous-person idea I have for a later book. He's a K-drama actor, she isn't famous, and they knew each other as kids.
what i got
The yearning. I was on chapter nine and I didn't even know if I liked the writing, but the idea that for ten years they've been thinking about each other is insane to me, and it made me want to write that. By chapter seventeen it had gone chill. I don't think there's much plot, their emotions are what makes it good, and I read it on a fifteen minute break because I had a final presentation for my internship and I needed to not be in my own head. Then I nearly DNF'd it. I could tell where it was going, and I'd stopped feeling connected to it.
the thing i did not know
The Persuasion retelling is in the names and not only in the plot. Anne is Austen's Anne Elliot, Frederick is Captain Frederick Wentworth, and like Austen's Anne she gave him up under family money pressure. Which also answers the complaint instead of arguing with it. Persuasion never shows you the courtship either. Austen opens eight years after the engagement broke and the whole romance is retrospective. The gap I was describing is the gap in the source.
content note: family financial ruin, and a decade of unresolved hurt.
The Argonauts Maggie Nelson · 2015
i did not finish it
what i went in for
nothing to do with my plot. It's a memoir that is also an argument about the language we use for love, which is more or less what this whole channel is about. It's also my first ever book mail. I emailed Graywolf Press not expecting anything and they sent it.
what i got
I haven't read it in this video and I said so on camera. It isn't fiction and I wasn't sure it belonged. I wanted to show you because getting a book in the post for the first time is kind of insane.
the thing i did not know
The title is a Roland Barthes idea about what loving somebody is actually like. An Argonaut replaces every part of the ship over the years and the ship keeps its name. So the book is named after a metaphor for saying I love you to the same person for years while both of you are being replaced piece by piece. It won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015 in Criticism, not memoir, which is itself the argument about what kind of book it is. The publisher calls it autotheory.
how it was published: Graywolf Press, an independent non-profit publisher in Minneapolis.
content note: pregnancy and childbirth, the death of a parent, and close writing about a partner’s transition and top surgery.
Check & Mate Ali Hazelwood · 2023
i gave it 4
what i went in for
the chess. There is a very small chess subplot in my book and I wanted to watch somebody make chess interesting on a page.
what i got
Four stars, and she does make it interesting. I read for five hours straight on the floor instead of doing my laundry. The first line is I am reliably informed that you're a Gen Z sex symbol, and you cannot open a book like that and expect me to put it down. Two problems, though. Mallory's whole problem is her personality, that she won't put herself first, and it comes up again and again without ever getting another layer. And Nolan has no flaws at all. His personality is being perfect. I'm obsessed with him and he is not a real person. It's also not that close to mine, because theirs is rivals with a money imbalance.
the thing i did not know
This is her only young adult book, and the fact worth having belongs to my book and not to this one. Hazelwood is Italian, writes under a pen name, and was a working neuroscience professor before she left academia. In April 2025 she cancelled her planned UK tour dates because she was not sure she could safely return to the United States. I picked her book up for the chess. I'm writing a novel whose engine is a visa.
heatnot verified for this one. What is verified: every other Hazelwood novel is adult and that line is explicit, so somebody who loves this and grabs the next one off the shelf lands somewhere very different.
Let's Talk About Love Claire Kann · 2018
i gave it 4 to 4.5 goodreads 3.69 from 11,673, read 11 October 2026
what i went in for
the whole reason for the video. An asexual main character. My main character is asexual and I want a lot more ace fiction to exist.
what i got
Four stars, or maybe 4.5, and the half star is because she's ace. It starts with her girlfriend breaking up with her over it and asking have you been to a doctor, were you abused, are you saving yourself for marriage, which is the entire thing every ace person has sat through. That first chapter is the representation I wanted. What I didn't get is a plot. She has layers and not much happens to her, and Takumi is perfect and I still don't know anything about his past. It's 260 pages and that's the problem. I needed more room to be in her.
the thing i did not know
Alice is not only asexual, she is a biromantic asexual woman, which is the more precise identity and is the reason the book gets to be an ace book and a romance at once. And the fact underneath it is the shape of the shelf. On the main public list of asexual characters in fiction, the two titles anybody reaches for are this one and Alice Oseman’s Loveless, and both are young adult. Its original imprint, Swoon Reads, no longer exists; it prints now under Feiwel & Friends and Square Fish.
heatclosed door.
content note: a relationship ended over a character being asexual, and acephobia on the page.
The Idea of You Robinne Lee · 2017
goodreads 3.73 from 178,874, read 11 October 2026 i did not finish it
what i went in for
famous people falling in love with people who are not famous. I think it is a very cool idea and there is another book in the series I want to write that runs on it.
what i got
DNF, two instances in, because it was a little bit too spicy for me. I'd watched the film first, with Anne Hathaway, which I love. I was about 9% in and I had high expectations and I still put it down.
the thing i did not know
Robinne Lee is an actress, and two of her credits are Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, both released in the two years around this book. The one you actually need, though: the 2024 film changed the ending. Screen Daily says the screenplay diverts from the book’s sombre climax to a more audience-friendly one. So anybody who watched it and thinks they know how the book ends does not. Gabrielle Union optioned it in 2018 because it was one of her ten favourite books.
content note: a nineteen-year age gap where the younger person is twenty, divorce, and a mother hiding a relationship from her teenage daughter.
Once Upon a Broken Heart Stephanie Garber · 2021
goodreads 4.06 from 782,178, read 11 October 2026
what i went in for
nothing, honestly. There was no reason for me to read this. I started the audiobook on a walk and it caught me by surprise, and I let it, and then it ate the rest of the video.
what i got
Don't ask me when I listened to 70% of it, because I don't remember doing it. I think it's one of my favourite romantasies ever. I read Caraval about four years ago and I liked the vibe and never connected to the characters, and I love these ones. I would do anything for Jacks. I was emailing publishing houses trying to get the next book before it came out, which is the kind of person this series turned me into.
The Ballad of Never After Stephanie Garber · 2022
goodreads 4.48 from 562,226, read 11 October 2026
what i went in for
to know what happened to Jacks. That is the only thing I wanted and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
what i got
I listened to it while making my portfolio because I could not put it down. It also gave me a book idea that has nothing to do with the one I'm writing: there's a vampire in it, I'm Romanian, Transylvania is right there, and I have been thinking about it since.
the thing i did not know
Garber did not plan any of this. She has said she did not intend Caraval to start a series or to be a romance. She was a college resident director writing in her spare time, she wrote several novels and collected rejections, and the fourth one, a space opera, got her an agent. When the space opera failed to sell she wrote Caraval instead. The six-book universe that took over my video started as a book that did not sell.
A Curse for True Love Stephanie Garber · 2023
what i went in for
to read the third one physically so I could annotate it, which is why I went to Barnes & Noble on my lunch break for the special edition and came out with three books.
what i got
Chapter 41 will be my favourite chapter forever. I was physically shaking at the end. I worked out why Jacks is always eating apples and realised they have been placed on purpose the whole way through, and now I want to go back through all of them and find every one. There is a bonus epilogue that is basically a second ending.
the thing i did not know
This is the end of that trilogy and it is not the end of that world. There is a 2026 novella in it, The Mirror of Infinite Endings, there is a 2024 illustrated novella on the Caraval side called Spectacular, and Garber started a new series, Alchemy of Secrets, in 2025. Also worth knowing, because the video is me falling in love with these in real time: the critics did not agree. Kirkus called Legendary weak plot and ultraviolet prose, and called this trilogy’s second book a disappointing delivery. None of those reviews touch the thing I actually love, which is how she lands the end of a chapter.
Picking Daisies on Sundays Liana Cincotti · 2023
i gave it 4
what i went in for
unrequited love, and two people who used to be best friends trying to get back to each other. I think I have a thing with exes and ex best friends becoming lovers.
what i got
Four stars. It was adorable and the guy is such a golden retriever. I was 45% in within about an hour and a half. My one problem is the reason they stopped liking each other is weak, it's a miscommunication and the reaction to it is blown out of proportion. I read it at the same time as Love and Other Words, which was a mistake, because they have very similar vibes and I could not tell you afterwards which one I liked more.
the thing i did not know
This is the closest book on the pile to the one I'm writing, and neither of us noticed. It is self-published. It is set in New York, in the West Village. It is a fake-dating book, which I never said on camera. The yearning runs on somebody she already knew. And there is an institutional fear threaded through it, a dream grad school she might be rejected from. My novel is a New York book about yearning with a visa in it. The nearest thing to it came out independently in 2023.
how it was published: independently published.
Love and Other Words Christina Lauren · 2018
i gave it 4.5 to 5
what i went in for
two people falling in love through written language. I found it in my library for two dollars and I bought it on the spot.
what i got
Five stars, or 4.5, and it broke my heart. I opened it the second I woke up without turning my alarm off. I cried and nothing sad had happened yet. This man is the kind of man I have been into since I was about five and I need to move on. What actually got me is that they are emotionally intelligent and there is no miscommunication in it. They love each other and they do not want to make a bad decision with it. I had not enjoyed anything else by Christina Lauren and this one wrecked me.
the thing i did not know
The thing I responded to is a structural choice and it is in the publisher’s own copy: it is told in alternating timelines, Then and Now. So you watch two teenagers build it while already knowing it is broken, and that is why it hurts. The two of them are a duo, Christina Hobbs and Lauren Billings, who met writing fanfiction online in 2009 and started co-writing the year after.
content note: the death of a parent, and the book is built on it.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown Talia Hibbert · 2019
what i went in for
I picked it up at the end, past the point where the video had a rule left in it.
what i got
I finished it and it took longer than I expected because it was a little too spicy for me. I liked the banter and the writing and the dialogue, there was a cat in it, and he was an artist. I didn't annotate it, which I'm sad about. I haven't decided a rating.
the thing i did not know
Two things. The first: Chloe’s chronic pain is Hibbert’s own. She lived with undiagnosed health problems until she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and her own experiences with doctors are why medical discrimination is in the book. She has said so in her own interviews. The second is the one I missed completely. Red is a handyman who paints at night and hides the work in daylight. The male lead of my novel is a painter with a past he does not talk about. The book I put down for being too explicit has the closest thing on this pile to my own love interest in it.
heatconfirmed, and from the back cover. One of the seven items on Chloe’s own list is have meaningless but thoroughly enjoyable sex.
content note: chronic illness and chronic pain, and dismissive doctors.
the shelf i was actually looking for is young adult
This is the part worth the fifteen days. I went looking for an adult contemporary romance with an asexual main character, and the two books anybody hands you when you ask for that are Let's Talk About Love and Alice Oseman's Loveless. Both are young adult.
Go down the main public list of asexual characters in fiction and the pattern holds all the way: Quicksilver, Clariel, Summer Bird Blue, Raybearer, Before I Let Go, the Montague Siblings books. All young adult. The adult entries on it are a fantasy novella, a science fiction novella, a superhero series where it is one line in book two, and a 1984 Booker winner that never uses the word. Not one of them is an adult contemporary romance.
Open Library's own catalogue says the same thing from a different angle. Search its newest records for asexuality and you get mostly nonfiction, I Am Ace, Ace Notes, Refusing Compulsory Sexuality, Ace Voices, and where there is fiction it is young adult again. The clearest thing in that whole list is an academic book from 2025 called Asexuality in Young Adult Fiction. The scholarship is named after the category it lives in.
I want to be careful with this, because it is the kind of claim that gets repeated wrongly. I am not saying no adult ace romance exists. Nobody can prove that, and a list anybody can edit is not a bibliography. What I can say is what is on those lists, and on those lists the adult contemporary romance column is empty.
If you are ace and you have spent years being handed the same two books, that is why. And if you are writing one, that is not a reason to stop. It is the whole argument for carrying on.
two things i asked on camera, answered as far as they go
does jacks turn up in caraval, and in which book
I asked you this on camera and here is the answer. He is not in Caraval itself. He turns up in Legendary, which is book two, and he is one of the things driving it. Kirkus names him in its review of that book, as the convoluted machinations of the Prince of Hearts, one of the Fates, alongside Legend and the empress. He carries on into Finale, book three. So if you are there for him, and I was, you can start at Legendary and lose nothing you came for.
The thing I will not do is tell you what he does in them, because I have not read them yet and I am not spoiling my own next read off a wiki.
the apples
I worked out on camera that Jacks eating apples is deliberate and planted across the series, and I still think that. It is mine, though, not Garber's. There is no interview, no newsletter and no author statement I could reach saying what they mean or confirming they were placed on purpose, mostly because her site has nothing on it right now. So this stays what it was: a reader noticing a pattern on her third book in a fortnight, which is a good thing to be and is not the same as a confirmed fact.
what the search actually turned up
The ending of the video is that the only book I found was my own, which came in the post from a print-on-demand service with "not for resale" on it. I meant it as a joke when I filmed it. Going back through the twelve with the research done, it is just true.
Three things sit underneath it. The adult ace romance shelf I was looking for is close to bare on every list I can read. The one book here current enough to put in a query is the one I was losing interest in. And the two books that came nearest to mine in shape are the two I would never have picked for it: Picking Daisies on Sundays, which is self-published, set in New York, and runs on years of yearning for somebody she already knew, and Get a Life, Chloe Brown, which I put down for being too explicit and whose love interest is a man who paints at night and hides the work in daylight. That is my male lead. I did not notice while I was holding it.
So the honest version of this video is not that I failed. It is that searching for your own book is a worse way to find comps than it looks, and a very good way to find out what is missing from a shelf.
keep going: the eleven i read in August while drafting, which is the same habit and a different question · romance books with no sex scenes · falling for how somebody thinks · the whole shelf, sorted by what is wrong
one thing this page does not have, and it is on purpose. Seven of the twelve books carry no Goodreads average. Goodreads stopped answering part way through the day this was researched, and the five numbers that are here were each read again from the book's own page before going up, with the date attached. Six more were found by guessing book IDs and two of those were plainly the wrong edition, so none of that set is on this page. A rating with no date is not worth printing and a rating off a guessed link is worse.
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