February feels like the Super Bowl for romance readers, and this lineup is incredibly stacked. From fake dating in science labs and slow-burn friends-to-lovers tension, to second-chance beach house heartbreak and a love story that literally bends time, these books explore every shade of falling in love. Smith Library has all the essentials, longtime best friends realizing they’ve always been more, exes stuck together for one last week, and strangers connecting across impossible timelines. Expect yearning, sharp banter, emotional chaos, and that moment when feelings become unmistakably real. Grab a cozy blanket and settle in. This month is all about love in its messiest, funniest, and most fate-filled forms.
Happy Place – Emily Henry
For fans of second-chance love stories, this one’s calling your name. In Emily Henry’s Happy Place, we meet Harriet and Wyn, once the golden couple who fit together perfectly from the moment they met in college. Everything between them seemed easy… until they ended things six months ago and never told a soul.
Which is why they end up stuck sharing the biggest bedroom at the Maine cottage their friend group has escaped to every summer for the past ten years. Only this time, Harriet and Wyn are pretending they’re still together, while trying to ignore the fact that the spark between them never really died.
With the cottage up for sale, this getaway marks the last time their whole group will be together in the place that holds so many memories. They can’t bear to shatter their friends’ happiness, so they commit to the act. It’s a perfect plan, at least on the surface. But after years of real love, how easy is it to fake it for a single week, especially in front of the people who know you best?
People We Meet on Vacation – Emily Henry
Now a hit film adaptation, Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation is the ultimate summer escape, even if you’re reading it bundled up in the middle of winter. This friends-to-lovers romance follows Poppy and Alex, two opposites who’ve shared one trip every summer for a decade.
Twelve years ago, they met in college and couldn’t stand each other, both certain they’d never cross paths again. But a year later, a shared ride home sparks an unexpected friendship. From then on, each summer brings a new destination, a growing collection of inside jokes, and memories neither of them saw coming.
Until two years ago, when one disastrous trip changed everything, and they stopped speaking entirely. Now Poppy, stuck in a life that looks perfect on paper but feels completely wrong, knows exactly what’s missing, those trips, and Alex. So she convinces him to take one last vacation together, determined to fix whatever broke between them. But as they retrace the rhythm of summers past, old feelings rise to the surface, and the line between friendship and something more becomes impossible to ignore.
After years of “almosts,” misunderstandings, and carefully buried truths, Poppy and Alex have one week to face what really happened, and what they still mean to each other.
The Seven Year Slip – Ashley Poston
“Right person, wrong time” is a romance trope I adore, but it’s rarely this literal. After the worst day of her life, Clementine focuses on simply surviving. Her plan is simple, work hard, find someone safe to love, and remember to “chase the moon,” as her late aunt used to say. Still, she keeps everyone at a distance, unsure her heart could handle breaking again.
Then one day she walks into her aunt’s apartment and finds a stranger in the kitchen, kind-eyed, Southern-voiced, and fond of lemon pie. He’s exactly the kind of man she would’ve loved once. The kind she could love again.
The problem? He’s living seven years in the past, and Clementine is firmly in his future.
Her aunt always said the apartment was a “pinch in time,” where moments blur together like watercolors. Clementine knows better than to trust that magic. Because if she falls for him, she won’t just risk heartbreak. She’ll risk a love that was never meant to exist at the same time.
Because sometimes love isn’t just about finding the right person. It’s about catching them at exactly the right moment. Ashley Poston’s The Seven Year Slip spins that idea into a playful, heartfelt story about two people thrown into an impossible, time-twisted connection, falling for each other while living in completely different years and wondering whether the person they love now will still be the same when their timelines finally catch up.
The Summer I Turned Pretty – Jenny Han
In Jenny Han’s beloved trilogy The Summer I Turned Pretty, now a swoon-worthy TV series, we follow Isabelle Conklin, aka Belly, a girl who measures her life in summers. Every good, glittering, unforgettable thing happens between June and August at her mom’s best friend’s beach house. The rest of the year? Just a long countdown until she’s back by the ocean, back with Susannah, and most importantly, back with Jeremiah and Conrad Fisher.
The Fisher boys have been part of Belly’s world since her very first summer, sometimes like brothers, sometimes like crushes, and sometimes something far more complicated. Growing up together means shared secrets, shifting feelings, and a love triangle years in the making.
But then comes one summer, beautiful, heartbreaking, and impossible to forget, when everything changes. Lines blur, hearts break, and Belly is forced to see the boys, and herself, in a whole new light. Because growing up means realizing first love isn’t always simple, and the people who feel like home can still surprise you.
Through sun-soaked days, late-night swims, and the kind of memories that linger long after the tide rolls out, Belly learns that some summers change you forever, and that love, like the ocean, never stays still.
The Love Hypothesis – Ali Hazelwood
Olive Smith, a Stanford Ph.D. candidate, doesn’t believe in lasting love, but she does believe in keeping her best friend from spiraling. So when she’s put on the spot, Olive panics and kisses the first man she sees to “prove” she’s dating someone.
That man is Dr. Adam Carlsen, a brilliant, intimidating professor with a reputation for being cold, blunt, and impossible to impress. Instead of calling her out, Adam quietly agrees to play along as her fake boyfriend. For him, the arrangement has perks too. Looking “taken” helps him dodge awkward attention and professional complications at work, and gives him a convenient excuse to shut down unwanted advances.
What starts as staged coffee dates and forced hand-holding slowly shifts into something more genuine, as Adam reveals himself to be thoughtful, fiercely supportive, and deeply respectful of Olive’s research and ambitions.
But fake dating comes with very real feelings, and Olive’s insecurities make it hard to believe someone like Adam could actually want her. As academic pressure mounts and misunderstandings pile up, Olive has to decide whether she’s brave enough to risk her heart alongside her career. The Love Hypothesis is a romance full of lab tension, imposter syndrome, and the reminder that love, like science, sometimes requires a leap of faith.
Whether you’re in the mood for slow-burn tension, second chances, or love that defies time itself, there’s a story here ready to sweep you off your feet. February is the perfect excuse to lean into the feelings, embrace the drama, and let yourself believe in a little bit of magic, one page at a time.
by Brielle Regdos, HPU Print Shop Assistant