We see the most in workplace/office romance: boss, employee, and co-workers. It is forbidden, but love flows its way and breaks all the rules. In 9-5 or regular job, we spend all the day at the workplace. So it is a high chance of falling in love here, and this type of relationship has some privacy.
Most of the time, it has angsty, slow-burn, age-gap, enemy-to-lover, and one-night stands. You get to see all kinds of romance tropes/themes in the office/workplace. So this one is a very common and popular category for romance readers.
20 Office Romance Books (Workplace/Job Romance)
Office romance is not necessarily taking place in an office. They’re all books where the characters work together, and every single one of these books I’m about to talk about, the couple working together.
So that’s a dynamic of itself, and every single one of these books, they’re contemplating whether they can be together because they work together. I will review the 20 best office romance books you can read anytime. Let’s go!
1. So Over You (Chicago Rebels)
This book is about Russian hockey players Vadim Petrov and Isobel Chase (NCAA). Isobel Chase is one of three sisters who partially own this hockey team, and she also made a run. She was in the Olympic hockey game, and she got hurt. She also previously had a romance with Vadim Petrov. Then her dad found out about it and pretty much ruined his career for a while. They were both only 18.
Vadim was getting on to the team, and Isobel was in the Olympics. Her dad ruined this guy’s career, and they never got a chance to talk about it because they had been flirting around each other, they had sex. It wasn’t that great for Isabel because it was her first time, and they never had a chance for a repeat or a chance to talk it through. Her dad found out and sent him away. Then she had everything happen.
Now Isobel’s father is gone, and she and her sisters are running this team. She is also trying to be a coach. So she is coaching the guys and helping with therapy. Vadim comes to this team, and he gets traded to her team, and he is injured. So she’s helping him with extra practices and healing. When they first see each other again, it’s still instantly attractive. It’s also a coach-player romance.
Author: Kate Meader
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Sports Romance
Available: Audiobook | Mass Market Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
2. Dr. OB (St. Luke’s Docuseries)
This one is fun, and a TV show is being made about the three different doctors working in different parts of the hospital. We have poor Dr. OB, which he gets filmed first, and he hams it up for the camera a little bit. He ends up looking flirting with girls over their vaginas while he’s doing his job. It’s embarrassing, and he’s so mortified, and he needs a new nurse hired. When HR is hiring, they hire this woman (Melody Marco), his nurse, because she hasn’t heard of the show. So that’s why she gets hired.
Melody’s a hot mess and late for work a lot. When they meet each other, sparks fly right away, and they pretty much immediately like each other. It makes sense that the person she’s directly working with works the same shifts because she’s his nurse. They would end up seeing each other, and it’s also super sexy. So it’s about a nurse and a doctor romance.
Author: Max Monroe
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
3. Before I Ever Met You
This one is an age gap romance, and it’s a dad’s best friend or office romance. Jackie’s heroine had a hot marriage mess, and she has a son. So she got divorced and moved back home with her parents. Now she’s trying to repair her relationship with her parents, and her dad ends up getting her a job as an assistant to his co-worker, best friend, William McAlister. Jackie is twenty-six, and he’s almost 40.
This is friendship to love because there’s a lot of chemistry. I like it where William’s pursuing her, which doesn’t always work when it’s a boss to an employee. In that situation, it needs to be the employee liking up because of the power dynamic. It’s not great if an employer is pursuing and not even matters. The reason why this one works so well for me is that all of those boxes are ticked. William pursues her in such a sweet way. Also, he’s so much more into her than she’s into him.
Author: Karina Halle
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Romantic Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
4. A Nordic King (Nordic Royals)
This is a forbidden romance of royal proportions, and here we’re dealing with Aksel. He needs a nanny for his two little girls, and he is the king of Norway in this book. Aurora’s from Australia, and she gets hired. They’ve been running through a lot of nannies. Also, they have such great chemistry.
It is also a slow-burn romance. There’s also a mystery aspect happening because Aksel’s wife died mysteriously, and he took the blame for some things that happened. So he also needs to be careful about public perception. I love that he’s a modern-day king because you don’t get to see that too much.
Author: Karina Halle
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
5. Reasonable Doubt
This is another lawyer age gap because the older guys work there. Also, it’s a trilogy, but the books are short, so you’re going to want to binge all three of them together. We have Andrew, who he’s a lawyer. He is messaging with a pre-law student, Alyssa. So he’s been flirting with Alyssa, who he believes is in her later twenties is already a lawyer.
Then they are hiring interns for his company. Alyssa comes in who is only 22 and is a senior in college. She’s also a dancer, which is cool. She dances ballet, but she’s also going to law school. Then she gets hired as his intern. So this starts as a hate situation because he is embarrassed. Andrew feels betrayed, and he has a big thing with people lying to him.
But as he interacts with this girl who becomes his intern, he learns more and more about her and the sacrifices she’s had to make. Alyssa continues with law school or whether she goes to be a ballerina?
Author: Whitney G.
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Romantic Erotica
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | MP3 CD
6. Elements of Retrofit (Thomas Elkin)
This is a male-male workplace romance, and the first one is called Elements of Retrofit. We have Thomas Elkin, who is an architect. He’s taking on interns, and his new intern is his son’s best friend, Cooper Jones (gay). Thomas has ended his marriage that he came out to his wife about being gay, but not to anyone else.
Jones starts pursuing Thomas, and the first initiation of a scene is an intern. He’s on fire, and Thomas ends up working from his house one day. So he texts that he doesn’t come into the office and working from home today. He shows up at his house with pizza with food to work there. Are they going to kiss and figure this out because the sexual tension is distracting? They’re sexy times in this, but it isn’t going to overstimulate you.
Author: N.R. Walker
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: LGBTQ+ Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
7. Unbreakable (Cloverleigh Farms)
Sylvia comes home to stay with her family, and she starts working around the family farm again that Clovelly farms. They own this hotel bed and breakfast wedding venue. Moreover, there’s a guy named Henry, who runs the winery part of it. Sylvia is interested in that.
Henry has also recently been divorced. They have crazy chemistry with each other. Also, Henry takes her under his wing because she wants to learn more about the business, and she wants to learn more about winemaking. So they end up colleagues in that sense, even though she’s the owner’s daughter. They can’t deny their love for each other.
Author: Melanie Harlow
Average Customer Review: (4.7 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Romantic Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
8. Brooklynaire (Brooklyn Bruisers)
Nate owns the hockey team on a losing streak and not doing well. So he’s been shaping it up. He has an assistant named Rebecca, who’s been with him since they were still working in the bottom of an office building. They went from 20 employees to thousands. Rebecca runs the hockey, and Nate likes Rebecca from seven years of working for him. Also, he didn’t want to be the rich boss who crushed his assistant.
Nate doesn’t want to make a move and make her uncomfortable because Rebecca doesn’t give him any signs. So Nate moved her from his assistant to working in the hockey division. Rebecca has always felt demoted because she knew everything about Nate. She helped him with everything, and she doesn’t understand what she did to offend him. So she’s been living under that pretense for a while now.
Author: Sarina Bowen
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
9. Boss Man
Boss Man is about a girl (Reese Annesley) who goes on a first date, and it’s not going well at all. She goes to the bathroom to talk to her friend on the phone and tell her how it’s going, and she meets Chase Parker in the hallway, who calls her out for being rude. Then this man she met in the hallway comes overacts as he knows her.
While it’s so ridiculous and crazy, Chase starts making up crazy stories about them. When Reese arrives at her new job, she discovers Chase is her boss. He also had no clue. So it starts there. They had this weird first introduction, but the story continues. You get to see many interesting plot developments and funny moments in this office romance.
Author: Vi Keeland
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Erotic Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
10. We Shouldn’t
Annalise is applying for a job, and she has an interview. Before the interview starts, she goes to her car and realizes that she has a ticket. Another car is the exact model of her car in front of her with no ticket. So she moves the ticket ends up breaking the person’s windshield wiper. Here, she meets Bennett in the elevator, who’s super charming. But when she gets to the office for her interview, she realizes that he is her rival and is competing for the same job as her.
Bennett also knows that she broke his windshield wiper and saw everything. The relationship starts with applying and interviewing for the same job, continuing from that point forward. Vi Keeland’s books are always very unpredictable and fun. So you can expect a lot of chaos in the ensuing.
Author: Vi Keeland
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Women Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
11. Beautiful Mistake
This one is about a girl (Rachel Martin) who is out at a bar with her friend, and her friend had a bad breakup. This boy cheated on her, and this girl sees a man at the bar that she thinks is her friend’s boyfriend. So she goes up to him and curses him out is so mean and rude to him. It’s not the guy who saw her friend, so she’s embarrassed.
The next day, Rachel shows up to a class to be a teacher’s assistant. It turns out the professor, the man that she’ll be working under the whole semester, is the man from the night before at the bar. So she made a complete fool of herself, and now she has to work with him, and it goes from there. The romance is also so sweet and beautiful. It made for an interesting story that kept my attention the whole time.
Author: Vi Keeland
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: New Adult & College Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
12. Real
Real is about a girl (Brooke) who becomes a traveling physical therapist for Remy, a fighter. Remy needs someone to travel with him to help him out during his season. He has a lot of anger issues a lot of troubling behavior. Brooke commits to the job because it’s a good job. She was an athlete previously, but she had an injury that made her go back to being a physical therapist.
So Brooke’s stuck in this job, but she goes and works for Remy, and he immediately is drawn to her while she’s on this job. She doesn’t want it to become unprofessional, and it goes from there. He’s very convincing and very attracted to her, and the story goes. If you like the fighter romance, this one is for you.
Author: Katy Evans
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Sports Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
13. Stay (WAGs)
This is the second book in the WAGs series, but you can read it without reading anything previously. It’s about a girl (Hailey Taylor Emery) who works as an anonymous assistant through websites for Matt Eriksson, a famous hockey player. He’s a single dad going through a lot in life, and Emery is a super big hockey fan who got divorced, and she works for him.
They don’t know each other, or she doesn’t know him at all. But she has a clue that it might be him, and he ends up giving her tickets to watch him play hockey. That’s where they meet, and things start to happen. It’s a unique plot with this whole application of her being the anonymous assistant. I also love the single-parent trope that we have here with him having kids.
Author: Elle Kennedy
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Romantic Comedy
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle | Audio CD
14. Mr. Masters (Mr. Series)
It is about a woman (Bree) who moves from Australia to become a nanny in the UK. She thinks she will be working for a woman and her two kids. But she gets there, and it turns out to be a man, and she doesn’t know. So she lives in his house, and she watches his two kids, one as a teenager when he’s younger than that.
They have this weird vibe with each other, and they don’t get along. As the story progresses, they start to see each other in a different light, and it goes on. It’s a fun spin on the workplace environment, and I love the relationship between these two.
Author: T L Swan
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Family Life Fiction
Available: Paperback | Kindle
15. The Wall of Winnipeg and Me
Vanessa is an assistant to a famous football player, and she ends up leaving the position early on in the book. Something happens, and you’ll see how the story goes. It’s considered the trope, what do people call it, the grumpy sunshine trope where one is always in a constant mood and the other one’s super happy.
The main character, Aiden Graves, is super broody and doesn’t share his emotions too often. But as the book continues, you see a softer side to him. They’re both encompassing some type of work environment. It is a slow-burn romance where both take a long time to love each other.
Author: Mariana Zapata
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Sports Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
16. Breathe (Sea Breeze)
It is the first book in the Sea Breeze series. It follows a lady (Sadie White). When her mother falls pregnant and can’t work anymore, she takes over for her mother. They’ve always loved them, too. She realizes that she truly can’t let anybody work in their house, and she needs to step up.
So Sadie decides to take over her mother position, who works at this mansion on the beach where they live. It turns out that this mansion belongs to Jax Stone, who is a singer and very popular amongst the teenage crowd. He stays there during the summers, and Sadie’s mother worked there as a housekeeper, so she resumes the position. She’s affected by this guy, even though he’s every girl. Her age is her biggest fantasy.
Even though Sadie very much keeps to herself, Jax immediately likes her. He’s very into the fact that she doesn’t even know who he is or doesn’t want to picture his number or anything. So the book takes off from there.
Author: Abbi Glines
Average Customer Review: (4.3 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Young Adult Emotions & Feelings Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
17. Five Ways to Fall (Ten Tiny Breaths)
This is book number four in the Ten Tiny Breaths series. You do not have to read the other books to read this one. No characters are popping up here and there. It is about our main character heroine named Reese. She got out of a divorce and decided to move to Miami and start a new life all over. Then she goes on a vacation with her friends right before she starts her new job in Miami.
Reese goes to Cancun, and there she needs a bouncer named Ben. They have a one-night stand together that goes completely wrong. It creates an embarrassing situation. When Reese starts her job in Miami, Ben starts his job in Miami. So both of them end up working at this law firm.
It’s quite a forbidden office romance. There is a no fraternizing policy here, and they immediately can’t stand one another or steer clear of one another because of the humiliating night that they had together. But slowly, they start realizing their feelings for one another and confessing them.
Author: K.A. Tucker
Average Customer Review: (4.6 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Mystery, Thriller & Suspense Literary Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle
18. Just a Heartbeat Away (Forever Yours)
Via DeRosa was a kindergarten teacher a couple of years ago, and our hero’s (Sebastian Dorner) son was one of her students. Sebastian’s wife ended up passing away. So Via gives him tips to help him better provide for his son. Being a single father gives him things that he could do with resources. He can call checklists to help him get his life back together because she can see he’s neglecting his kid right now.
So Via tries to push him a little to help him be a better father. He hundred percent agrees with her and appreciates her for what she did for him. Four years later, his son is older. But whenever Sebastian and Via come and contact again, he realizes that she now works at his son’s new school as a student counselor. Sebastian works as a lunch duty parent at lunch, so they work together in the same school. The workplace part isn’t a big thing, but they work together.
They go to professional development team bonding meetings and do many happy hours with the people at work. So they see each other in school at the time. It is such a slow burn, angsty, age-gap romance because he is way older than her. Sebastian believes that Via should be dating younger men. But Via thinks Sebastian can be that person.
Author: Cara Bastone
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Holiday Romance
Available: Audiobook | Mass Market Paperback | Audio CD
19. Fire in You (Wait for You)
This is book number six in the Week for You series, but you don’t need to read the other book. To read this one, the couple in this book do pop up at one point in one of the previous books, but it doesn’t matter. This book takes place a couple of years later, which is about Jillian and Brock, and this is also another age gap romance on top of it being an office romance.
Jillian and her father own a martial arts company, and Brock is one of his company’s famous MMA fighters parts. When she was growing up, she always had a crush on Brock. But he brushed it off because he always thought of her as a little sister. After all, he is way older than her. But a couple of years ago, Brock broke Jillian’s heart before this book takes place.
One year later, Jillian comes to work for her father at his martial arts company, and she has no idea that Brock is still there. Now, Brock is singing Jillian in an entirely new light. Years later, he starts realizing that he might have feelings for this woman, but he knows that it’s forbidden. They have to work together in this environment, so there’s a workplace romance. Her father is the boss, which also plays another part in this book.
Author: J. Lynn
Average Customer Review: (4.4 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: Contemporary Romance
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
20. Plus One (Lighter Ones)
This is another boss-employee dynamic relationship. Our heroine, Kimbra Jones, works for HR. So she comes across the hero (Duncan) of this book in the office one day in the office bathroom, screwing another employee. Her mother ended up calling her about not having dates ever for weddings and family get-togethers. So she sees this as a perfect opportunity for blackmail.
Kimbra decides to blackmail Duncan to be her plus one at this wedding to pretend they’ve been dating for quite a long time. He’s going along with it because he’s had this long crush on her. I found the office workplace dynamic quite interesting and hilarious how she caught him and decided to blackmail him.
Author: Aleatha Romig
Average Customer Review: (4.5 out of 5, on Amazon)
Category: College Romance, Holiday Fiction
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
Read more similar books: 15 Romantic Suspense Books
Table of Contents
