Sapphic low-angst romance (Sapphic Book Bingo 2023 #16)

After last week’s category featured 15 high-angst romances, this week, it’s time for sapphic low-angst romance novels! A low-angst romance is feel-good book that feels like a warm hug. It’s more on the light-hearted side, without a lot of relationship drama. The main characters usually don’t have a traumatic past.

Angsty sapphic romance (Sapphic Book Bingo 2023 #15)

This week’s Sapphic Book Bingo category features angsty sapphic romance novels.

An angsty or high-angst romance is a book in which the author puts the characters (and the readers) through the emotional wringer.

When it comes to romance novels, “angst” usually means that the characters are going through inner turmoil and painful emotions such as longing, dread, fear, pain, and insecurity. There might be trauma and heartbreak before they characters finally get their happily ever after.

Sapphic book with a stunning or unusual cover (Book Unicorn #7)

For this week’s Sapphic Book Bingo, read a sapphic book with a cover that is stunning, unusual, or stands out in some way.

Of course, “stunning” is a very subjective term, and what stands out to one person might be considered nothing special by another. So for this category, just go by whatever cover you think is amazing or unusual in some way.

I picked the books I recommend for this category either because they won a GCLS Tee Corinne Award for Outstanding Cover Design or because they were among the top 10 favorite covers voted on by readers in my Facebook group.

Sapphic enemies-to-lovers romances (Sapphic Book Bingo 2023 #11)

This week’s Sapphic Book Bingo category features sapphic enemies-to-lovers romances, one of the most popular romance tropes! 

In an enemies-to-lovers romance, the two main characters start out hating or at least strongly disliking each other at the beginning of the book, but then end up falling in love. Their initial dislike could be due to a family feud, professional rivalry, or just clashing personalities. Whatever the cause, it’s always fun to watch sparks fly and accompany them on the journey from hate to love. 

Sapphic books with an unusual first date (Book Unicorn #5)

This week’s Sapphic Book Bingo category features sapphic books in which the main character goes on an unusual first date. 

What makes it an unusual first date is totally up to you. It could be an unusual date activity, the setting could be unusual, or something unexpected could happen. So there’s a lot of room for interpretation, but you’ll find some suggestions below. 

Both main characters have brown eyes (Book Unicorn #4)

For this week’s Sapphic Book Bingo category, read a sapphic book in which both main character have brown eyes.

In real life, brown is the most common eye color. 70-80% of the world’s population have brown eyes. It’s not rare to find characters with brown eyes, but usually, only one of the main characters has brown eyes, while authors will often give the other protagonist a different eye color to set the two characters apart and not make them look too similar. That’s why a sapphic book with two main characters who have brown eyes is pretty rare—at least if both main characters are white. 

In books in which both main characters are people of color, this isn’t a Unicorn category at all. But then again, women of color are still very underrepresented in sapphic fiction.