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Love Through Letter Writing: 3 Epistolary Romance Novels

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P.N. Hinton

Contributing Editor

Born into a family of readers, P.N. gained a love reading as a sort of herd mentality. This love of reading has remained a life long passion, resulting in an English Degree from The University of Houston in Houston, Texas. She normally reads three to four books at any given time, in the futile Sisyphean hope of whittling down her ever growing to be read pile of no specific genre.

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The first thing I did when I finally got my hands on my TBR cards was to shuffle through the deck and check out just a few of the prompts. One was an epistolary novel, which is one of my favorite ways of telling a story. I’m not sure why I love it so much, but I know it’s high up there on my list. Below are a few that I have found or read that I feel are good examples of a way to fall in love through letters and other written methods of communication. Please note that while not all are purely epistolary, that this type of written correspondence plays heavily in all the books listed here.

cover image of Hold Me by Courtney Milan

Hold Me by Courtney Milan

Maria and Jay may loathe each other in real life, but they have a very real connection between a computer screen thanks to their correspondence on Maria's blog. However, neither one has any idea who they’re really talking to online. Of course, that is about to change. As an aside, Milan’s long awaited and anticipated The Devil Comes Courting was also released earlier this week as well, so be sure to snag that too.

cover image of Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

Goodnight Tweetheart by Teresa Medeiros

Best-selling author Abigail should be focusing on finishing her upcoming novel, but instead finds herself pulled into the world of Twitter after her publicist creates a profile for her. After her first disastrous attempt at a tweet, regular Twitter user Mark Baynard offers to show her the ropes. As she begins to get a handle on things, the two start up an online relationship there until a revelation occurs that could change the foundation of it. This book is told almost entirely in Tweets and DMs, and is a modern example of the epistolary novel.

Relationship Goals by Christina C. Jones

Relationship Goals by Christina C. Jones

This novella is about Nick and Noah who, after a literal and accidental run-in at the airport, suddenly find themselves blowing up as a hashtag on social media. While not entirely in letter format, from what I’ve read about it, there are a lot of DMs, @s and hashtags flying around to help this novel earn its place on this list. Plus, this author is a darling in the romance world and one I definitely need to pick up soon.


Honorable mention also goes to the various books that make up The Boy series by Meg Cabot. Yes, it’s more than a bit dated, but they’re still good, pure, and fun reads.