Valentine’s Day is here. And for those who want to ditch the candy and the dinner date for a good book, the staff at Scientific American has you covered. Here are eight recommendations for novels with enough scientific rigor and romantic spark to light a Bunsen burner.
Atmosphere: A Love Story
by Taylor Jenkins Reid
Ballantine Books, 2025
(Tags: Historical Fiction, LGBTQ+)
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Atmosphere was ranked among Scientific American’s best fiction books of 2025, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a breezy, compelling read that offers up the real history of NASA’s early space shuttle program through the eyes of a fictional aspiring female astronaut. The plot weaves together elements of romance, family drama and feminist struggle against the backdrop of a space walk gone terribly awry. —Meghan Bartels, Senior Reporter
I Got Abducted by Aliens and Now I’m Trapped in a Rom-Com
by Kimberly Lemming
Berkley, 2025
(Tags: Erotica, Science Fiction)
Lemming has the perhaps unique ability to write a book about a woman who gets abducted by owl-sized extraterrestrials and winds up stranded on a planet inhabited by yet more (horny) aliens and make it both serious about the science and genuinely funny. Between jokes about research funding and the scientific questions that might arise upon spotting a fuzzy pink Tyrannosaurus rex on a strange planet, Lemming uses her protagonist, Dory, to poke fun at romance tropes and graduate student woes alike. —Brianne Kane, Associate Editor/Books & Rights Manager
The Potency of Ungovernable Impulses
by Malka Older
Tor Books, 2025
(Tags: Closed-Door Romance, Mystery, LGBTQ+)
Living in a human colony on Jupiter, Mossa and Pleiti are a sweet, relatable couple who get roped in to help a friend’s cousin as an academic espionage plot turns potentially deadly. Nerdy scholars, tortuous tenure tracks and college campus rivalry abounds. I loved the world that Older has created by combining real science and more fantastical science fiction. —Brianne Kane, Associate Editor/Books & Rights Manager
A Quantum Love Story
by Mike Chen
MIRA, 2024
(Tags: Time Loops, Slow-Burn Romance)
This time-loop story leaves Groundhog Day in the dust. Mariana Pineda manages to be relatable as a neuroscientist who really doesn’t like her new job and has serious doubts about a seemingly random man telling her that she’s stuck in a time loop with him. Said man, Carter Cho, seems to have got stuck in the loop following an accident inside a top-secret particle accelerator. I loved how the characters each bring their own skills to bear in solving this scientific mystery—and the buildup to their love is worth every repeated day. —Brianne Kane, Associate Editor/Books & Rights Manager
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries
by Heather Fawcett
Del Rey, 2023
(Tags: Fantasy, Academia)
Protagonist Emily Wilde is a “drydologist,” or faerie expert, at the University of Cambridge in a world where faeries exist and are studied like any other part of nature. She faces the same stressors as anyone in academia: pressure to publish or perish, fears of being scooped and conflict with an infuriatingly charming rival scholar. Written like a field research journal, Emily Wilde is a clever and charming portrait of a scientist on a journey toward discovery, hard at work in the field and stumbling toward love, all at the same time. —Jennifer Hackett, Associate Copy Editor
Love, Theoretically
by Ali Hazelwood
Berkley, 2023
(Tags: Contemporary Romance, Enemies to Lovers)
Author Ali Hazelwood is known for her spicy STEM-steeped romances. Do the main characters of this book bear more than passing resemblance to actors from various Star Wars movies? Yes. Is that resemblance a problem? No. Love, Theoretically appealed to me because it focuses on physics, which just so happens to be my academic background. If you like quippy banter, academic rivalries—theoretical versus experimental physics; if you know, you know—and confessions of love, this one’s for you. —Jennifer Hackett, Associate Copy Editor
The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics
by Olivia Waite
Avon Impulse, 2019
(Tags: LGBTQ+, Historical Romance)
In this delightfully science-minded historical fiction novel, one of the main characters runs away from her family to do astronomy while the other clocks up multiple major scientific expeditions under her belt. Together they fall in love—and challenge the male-dominated scientific establishment. My favorite aspect of the book is its quiet, insistent message that science is for everyone and that enjoying science can be expressed in many ways, whether it’s through crunching numbers, embroidering tropical plants or translating research findings into stories people want to read. —Meghan Bartels, Senior Reporter
The Calculating Stars (Lady Astronaut #1)
by Mary Robinette Kowal
Tor Books, 2018
(Tags: Alternate History, Science Fiction)
This book and its sequels don’t shove the romance in your face, but the long-term relationship between Elma, a mathematician and pilot who becomes an astronaut, and her husband Nathaniel, a rocket engineer, is central to the plot. Set in the 1950s, the story is a well-researched and fascinating alternative history of the lead-up to the moon landings—with stakes far higher than geopolitics. If you’re looking for a story that’s infused with, but not driven by, romance, this is the book for you. —Meghan Bartels, Senior Reporter
