Are you looking for some clean, wholesome romance reads? I have different suggestions for you. All of them are PG-rated when it comes to heat level. However, they are still hot regarding the love/romance between the hero and the heroine. It’s much harder these days to find clean romances, only because you used to be able to tell by the covers.
Sometimes a cute little couple or someone with their foot flipped up. Those usually meant those were clean romances. Or, even the illustration covers are so adorable. Lately, there’s nothing wrong with it, but it was going to be a clean read. So you can only sometimes judge a book by its cover. You might have to get a list from somebody else for a recommendation.
10 Clean & Wholesome Romance Books
I want to share wholesome and clean romance books to read when you’re feeling sad or if you want joy in reading. These will all be books that don’t have heavy or adult themes. They’re books you can read to feel comforted for a little while, escape from reality, and not delve into anything particularly sad. So let’s check those out.
| Name | Key Focus | Review (Goodreads) |
|---|---|---|
| The House in the Cerulean Sea | Six magical children change a man’s view, and all of them are bound by love. | 4.4 |
| The Forest of Wool and Steel | A piano tuner’s upbringing and love story. | 3.7 |
| A Wish for Home | An Amish woman meets her childhood bully boy, and they feel for each other. | 4.4 |
| Cold Case Takedown | A podcaster and investigator work on a case, and they build a relationship. | 4.4 |
| A Family for the Firefighter | A firefighter takes care of his friend’s family in his absence. | 4.3 |
| No Time for Lattes | A busy woman can not decide whether date her crush or quit her job. | 4.2 |
| Breakfast at the Honey Creek Café | A mayor’s fiance is disappeared, and she wants to cover it for her image. | 4.0 |
| The Preacher’s Son | An Amish boy has to go to a non-Amish community as punishment, where he finds his love. | 4.5 |
| The Rebel Cowboy’s Baby | A cowboy and his struggles for love. | 4.2 |
| The Texan’s Truth | A man secretly meets his wife for some reason, and a boy claims to be the father. | 4.4 |
1. The House in the Cerulean Sea
The House in the Cerulean Sea is the cleanest and most wholesome LGBT romance I have ever read. It won Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Fantasy. For the plot of the book, we have our main character, whose name is Linus Baker. He works for the department caring for magical youth and messing up that phrasing. He works for the government, which oversees the control of all the magical people in the world. The magical people are considered quite dangerous and a threat to society. So magical children are put into these orphanages where they never get adopted and shoved away from society.
Linus’s job is to go and inspect these orphanages. He works in a gloomy office environment until one day, and he gets an assignment to go to a dangerous orphanage. This is the titular house in the Cerulean Sea. As he goes to this new orphanage, everything changes for him, and he meets the six magical children and their caretaker. He then has to determine whether the orphanage is being run properly and if it needs to shut down. It made my heart feel whole and happy because it has an adorable love story. There are beautiful representations of fatherly love, love between siblings, and all wholesome love.
Author: TJ Klune
Narrator: Daniel Henning
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Tropes: LGBT, Magic, Family, Friends
Number Of Pages: 394
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
2. The Forest of Wool and Steel
The Forest of Wool and Steel is a beautiful little slice-of-life story set in northern Japan. We follow our main character, whose name is Tomura. He is an aspiring piano tuner. The premise for the plot is that Tamura wants to become a piano tuner, and that’s his dream. Don’t expect a complex plot that goes all over the place. It’s a very simple, lovely story about someone with a small, achievable, but also tricky achievement.
There’s a lot of lovely natural imagery. The fact that it is set in northern Japan made me happy because there’s all beautiful, snowy imagery. A lot of comparisons here between the piano being quite similar the forest. We also see the relationships many side characters have with the piano and how Tomura helps them in their lives with the piano tuning. It’s quite a simple, YA wholesome love book, but reading it feels like you’re taking a breath of fresh air.
Author: Natsu Miyashita
Publisher: Transworld Digital (Illustrated edition)
Tropes: Japanese literature, Music, Atmospheric
Number Of Pages: 204
Available: Mass Market Paperback | Hardcover | Kindle
3. A Wish for Home (Secrets of Bliss Valley)
A Wish for Home is a firefighter and Amish romance. It’s a sweet romance between Lauren and Adam, and Lauren is an Amish woman returning home to Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. She is running into Adam, who is a childhood bully.
So he needs her to help with his grandfather’s farm, and she’s returning to help with her parents. The two of them may or may not get together. There is forgiveness and many twists that unfold. So, take advantage of this mindful and clean love story.
Author: Jo Ann Brown
Publisher: Love Inspired Trade
Tropes: Firefighters, Inspiring-love
Number Of Pages: 325
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Library Binding | Kindle | Audio CD
4. Cold Case Takedown (Cold Case Investigators)
Cold Case Takedown is a combination of romantic suspense and second-chance romance. Georgia is a podcaster looking into a decades-old murder case of her friend. The chief investigator is her high school sweetheart, and his name is Colt. So they’re chasing down leads together. This is from Harlequin’s love-inspired suspense line, so it’s a wholesome inspirational romance at the same time.
Author: Jessica R. Patch
Publisher: Love Inspired Suspense (Original edition)
Tropes: Mystery, Suspense, Harlequin, Second-chance
Number Of Pages: 217
Available: Paperback | Mass Market Paperback | Kindle
5. A Family for the Firefighter
A Family for the Firefighter is number one in the “Polk Island” series. It is from Harlequin’s heartwarming line. So I’m super excited because those have lots of angsty romance, and this one will not disappoint. The story is about a firefighter named Leon looking after his friend who has passed away. Then, he looks after his wife and their three-year-old child.
Even though she’s a strong, independent woman that doesn’t need him, she still lets him in and has him help out. We see a little romance kindling between the two, which is very emotional and adorable.
Author: Jacquelin Thomas
Publisher: Harlequin Heartwarming (Large print edition)
Tropes: Small Town, Pure-love
Number Of Pages: 240
Available: Audiobook | Mass Market Paperback | Kindle | Audio CD
6. No Time for Lattes (No Brides Club)
No Time For Lattes is number 10 in The No Brides Club series. The series is a set of all standalone books, and they are all women who have vowed to put their careers before their romances. After losing her job and apartment, Vivian decides to go to New York, and the cat sits for her aunt in New York City, which is not a bad gig.
There she meets Prudence, who gets her to join the club where all the women vow to put their careers before men, which she wants to do because she is out of a job. However, she finds out that Prudence has a cute brother named Sawyer. She is a Broadway performer. Should she date Sawyer, or should she keep on the job? Read the book if you want to know the answer and discover a cute, wholesome love.
Author: Becky Muth
Publisher: Sweet Promise Press
Tropes: Contemporary, Arc, Humor
Number Of Pages: 195
Available: Paperback | Kindle
7. Breakfast at the Honey Creek Café (Honey Creek)
Breakfast at the Honey Creek Cafe is number one in the Honey Creek series about a mayor. She’s the mayor of Honey Creek, and her name is Piper. She doesn’t want to let scandal bring down the entire town, and her fiance has disappeared. So Piper has hired a very hunky undercover detective to come in and snoop around.
As his cover, he’s pretending to be a long-lost boyfriend who wants to rekindle the romance. However, this book also has a clean love triangle because a new preacher in town, Sam Cassidy, is also looking for love.
Author: Jodi Thomas
Publisher: Zebra
Tropes: Mystery, Suspense, Friendship
Number Of Pages: 320
Available: Audiobook | Paperback | Library Binding | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
8. The Preacher’s Son (The Infamous Amish)
The Preacher’s Son is number one in a new Amish series called “The Infamous Amish,” and this one is very scandalous. So it’s the Bernie Madoff of the Amish world who has been sent to jail for fraud. The preacher’s son is Isaiah, and Isaiah returns to the Amish community to make amends, bring out some goodwill, and distance himself from his father.
So he takes a job at the bookbinding shop, which Bethany owns, and Bethany is upset because she lost her fiance because of the fraud. He had to leave the Amish community and go out into the Englisher world, which is the non-Amish community, and get a job. Her father also lost all of his money to Isaiah’s dad. So we’re going to see: Is there going to be a spark? Can he make amends for his dad? The romance view of the book is very ethical and pure. I enjoyed the plot, storyline, dialogues, and characters.
Author: Patricia Johns
Publisher: Zebra Books
Tropes: Arc, Christian Fiction
Number Of Pages: 338
Available: Audiobook | Mass Market Paperback | Kindle
9. The Rebel Cowboy’s Baby (Cowboys of Garrison, Texas)
The Rebel Cowboy’s Baby is the opposite and attracts wholesome romance. Audi is a rodeo cowboy, a fun-loving, spontaneous guy, and he falls in love with Brooke, who is very straight-laced. There probably isn’t a lot of meeting of the minds or getting together here until they find out that they are co-guardians of a baby girl together.
Sasha Summers is one of my favorite authors, but only some of her books are clean. Some of them are steamy. So if you want to keep to the straight and narrow, make sure to email her. She will let you know which ones are clean and which ones are, have a higher heat level.
Author: Sasha Summers
Publisher: Harlequin Heartwarming (Large print edition)
Tropes: Western, Family, Heartwarming
Number Of Pages: 195
Available: Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
10. The Texan’s Truth (Cowboys of Diamondback Ranch)
The Texan’s Truth is number five of the series. All of the books in “The Diamond Ranch” series are standalone. So this one is about Bridges, and Bridges has a cute adorable canine. He’s coming home to recover from a gunshot wound, and he happens to run into the love of his life, who happens to be a widow and also is in the same town.
Bridges get a ready-made family. So a boy shows up claiming to be his son, and he and his long-lost love, Liliana, go to try to figure this out, or they work together to try to figure it out.
Author: Jolene Navarro
Publisher: Love Inspired (Original edition)
Tropes: Inspiration, Religious
Number Of Pages: 211
Available: Paperback | Kindle | Mass Market Paperback
Those are my recommendations for the best clean and wholesome romance novels. Remember, if you have some suggestions that you want to shout out and share, make sure to post them below.
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