Infamous: 'Bridgerton's wild little sister. So much fun!' Sarra Manning

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Rose had been asked to dance many, many times, and Eddie only a few; she hadn’t minded that at all, although she had resented the fact that she had to watch Rose line up again and again, her painstakingly fashioned ringlets flying as she was whirled and courted by all manner of eager, pink-faced gentlemen.

He adds that “acceptance is so much higher now than it was when I was growing up in the 1980s, way higher than I ever expected it would be.”

Although not strictly a romcom, Ryan O’Connell’s uplifting Just By Looking at Him, published earlier this month, offers much-needed representation to LGBTQ+ people with disabilities – the main character being a gay man with cerebral palsy – while Florence Given’s Girlcrush, published in August, is described by the author as: “queer, hilarious and full of joy”. Matt Cain’s latest novel The Secret Life of Albert Entwistle follows Albert, a closeted 64-year-old postman, as he sets out to reconnect with his former boyfriend. Cain believes the increase in LGBTQ+ fiction is in part the result of “greater visibility”, which he says has “showed the general population that we’re just like them”.

I knew that some people were going to ask why I put the word ‘chill’ in the book and if anything that made me double-down. It was a very intentional choice.” Toying with freedom Father said I’m doing a damn good job of it!” Beatrice shouted, over the sound of the ongoing peals. She was seven, and enthusiastic to a fault about any task she was delegated. I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.*** Eddie ignored her and took a seat next to her father; Rose sat down next to Simon, who solemnly offered her his hand to shake.Toward midnight, they escaped up some stairs and out onto a balcony to be alone, crashing through the doors in a rush of silk and lace. London spread out before them, an intricate puzzle of rooftops partially obscured by chimney smoke. These titles include Lily Lindon’s recently published Double Booked, about a 26-year-old woman who realises that she is bisexual, and two queer coming-of-age novels: Cynthia So’s young adult novel If You Still Recognise Me and Henry Fry’s First Time for Everything. It’s a boom reflected in film and TV, too, notably with the release of Netflix’s Heartstopper, based on Alice Oseman’s graphic novel of the same name. GWEN AND ART was exactly what I need right now – a delightful, heart-warming, hilarious historical romp, overflowing with queer panic and terrible jokes. I loved it.' ALICE OSEMAN, bestselling author of HEARTSTOPPER Our cook is very dreadful,” she said to Rose in an undertone. “Mama says we mustn’t take it personally, and that if she really meant to kill us, she’d have done it years ago.” This historical-ish bildungsroman with a big side of friends to lovers sapphic romance is set in the Regency period but written with a decidedly 21st century queer and feminist sensibility." –– Autostraddle

Then Eddie meets charming, renowned poet Nash Nicholson––a rival of Lord Byron, if he does say so himself––and he welcomes her into his world of eccentric artists and boundary-breaking visionaries. When Eddie receives an invitation to Nash's crumbling Gothic estate in the countryside, promising inspiration (and time to finish her novel, a long-held dream), she eagerly agrees. But the pure hedonism and debauchery that ensues isn’t exactly what she had in mind, and Eddie soon finds herself torn between her complicated feelings for Rose and her equally complicated dynamic with Nash, whose increasingly bad behavior doesn’t match up to her vision for her literary hero.While Lex Croucher’s latest book is set in Regency England, with some of the airs and graces of that society, it also felt thoroughly modern (in a good way). Bauer said: ‘‘No one writes Regency like Lex. Being one of the first people to read Infamous was such a treat and I know readers will fall in love with Eddie and Rose instantly, as I did.’ With their first novel, Reputation, Lex Croucher wrote a regency rom com that was as much about friendship as romance and told a historically detailed story with a modern voice. Infamous is a sort of spiritual sequel, with the same mood of twenty-first-century-sensibility-meets-Regency-style. In this work, however, the scope is broader and the story feels bigger than a young woman's misadventures (even though, on a literal level, that's more or less what it is). Infamous is primarily about love rather than friendship, and it's about the world: art and its importance, power and who wields it, the rules society makes and who is allowed to bend or break them. Eddie meets the charming renowned poet Nash Nicholson, who invites her to his crumbling old estate in the country, which houses a colony of artists and unconventional people. Eddie had always loved to invent stories, lengthy plays for her siblings to perform and short dramatic tales of daring starring herself and Rose in the main roles, but it was in her early teens that she started to write what she thought of as proper stories—all of them written exclusively for the entertainment and delight of her best friend. She was relentlessly prolific; there was an entire trunk full of her work at the foot of her bed, a treasure trove of great loves and gruesome deaths that she would dip into regularly so that she could present Rose with a story as one might give a bouquet of flowers.