Here's a thing that's been bothering me for a while: romance has given the American South an entire universe. Sweet tea, wraparound porches, a grandmother with Opinions, a small town where everybody's business is everybody's business and somehow that's charming instead of exhausting. I love it. I have read forty of these books. I will read forty more.
But where is my Midwest?
Where is the genre-wide love letter to a region that produces more casseroles per capita than anywhere on earth, where "fine" can mean anything from "actually fine" to "I am one bad day from combusting," where the humidity in July makes everything - everything - sticky, and where a person can drive past four gas stations, three dollar stores, and a Culver's inside of two miles and still, somehow, call it a small town?
Because that's the real Midwest. Not just the postcard version - though we have that too, don't worry - but the whole deeply specific thing. And it's about time somebody built it a rom-com shelf dedicated to it.
The charm is in the contradiction
Here's what I mean. A good Midwest rom-com can go two completely different directions, and somehow both of them are true at once.
Direction one: the golden, nostalgic version. Small towns where the diner waitress knows your order and your business. Front porches. Fireflies. A Fourth of July parade that the whole town actually shows up for, not ironically. This version leans hard into old-fashioned, and it's not wrong to; there really are towns like that here, tucked between cornfields, where the biggest scandal of the decade is who won the county fair pie contest.
Direction two: the unglamorous, dead-honest version. The strip mall on literally every corner, anchored by the same six businesses in a slightly different order - a Kohl's, a nail salon, a payday loan place, a Chili's that's somehow always half-empty. Icy winters that make you question every decision that led you to live there. Humid summers where the air itself feels thick as wool. A specific brand of Midwestern politeness that lets you know exactly what someone thinks of you without them ever technically being rude about it.
Both of these are real. Both of these are the Midwest. And the best Midwest rom-coms don't pick one. They let the fireflies and the strip malls coexist, because that's what actually living here is like. You can love a place and also complain about its Applebee's-to-population ratio in the same breath. That's not a contradiction. That's life.
And there's something else, too, something quieter that runs under all of it. A specific kind of American culture that doesn't get written about nearly enough: the hot dish at every funeral and every wedding and every occasion in between, the way "how are you" is a greeting and not actually a question, the deep, unshakeable loyalty to a sports team that has disappointed you every single year of your life. A Midwest rom-com, done right, gets all of that texture in alongside the kissing and yearning. This setting is a whole personality.
So here we go. A mix of indie authors and traditionally published ones, all contemporary, all closed-door, all genuinely set in the Midwest. If the South gets a universe, we're allowed one too!
Gardens & Grudges by Amanda Pennington
I have to start with mine, obviously - it would be strange not to, and also I wrote it, so I have opinions. It's a small-town, grumpy/sunshine rom-com built around a gardener, a chef, and a cat neither of them can agree who actually owns. It's got the porch-and-fireflies version of the Midwest running through it, but it's got some strip-mall honesty in there too, because I couldn't in good conscience write a small Midwestern town without at least one gossip wondering about the new Wawa someone is building down the road.
Very Sincerely Yours by Kerry Winfrey
Set in Columbus, Ohio, which is Winfrey's actual hometown, and it shows. Teddy gets dumped right before what she thought was going to be a proposal, moves in with her two best friends, and finds unexpected comfort and a crush in the host of a local kids' show she's been quietly obsessed with for years. Closed-door, cozy, and full of the specific, lived-in Columbus detail you only get from a writer who calls it home.
Summer at Fraser's Mill by Ursi Engebretsen
An indie pick set in the fictional town of Fraser's Mill. Grace wants a big, important career far away from home; instead she ends up back in her small hometown, running headlong into the local doctor she'd sworn she was over. It's small-town, closed-door, and built on exactly the kind of "everyone knows your business and somehow that's a comfort, not a curse" texture that makes a Midwest hometown story work.
The Coincidence of Coconut Cake by Amy E. Reichert
Milwaukee, Wisconsin, gets the full food-tour treatment in this one. Lou is a chef fighting to keep her struggling French restaurant afloat; Al is the anonymous, brutally honest food critic who nearly tanks it with one devastating review. When they meet by chance, neither realizing who the other actually is, they end up touring Milwaukee's food scene together, one plate at a time. This is a rom-com that treats the Midwest's food culture like the genuine selling point it is, instead of an afterthought.
Small Town Famous by Michelle Lynn Ross
This is book two in Ross's Fawn Creek, Kansas series. Avery is rebuilding her life and her confidence after leaving a controlling relationship, and stumbles into unexpected online fame as a content creator - right as she starts noticing her longtime friend, the town's police officer, in a very different light. Friends-to-lovers, Hallmark-vibes, closed-door.
Attachments by Rainbow Rowell
Omaha, Nebraska, 1999. Lincoln works the night shift in IT security at the local newspaper, tasked with flagging inappropriate employee emails, but instead finds himself completely charmed by the running email correspondence between two coworkers he's never met. It's an epistolary rom-com about falling for someone through their words alone, and it's got a very specific late-90s, pre-smartphone Midwest office energy that I find comforting. With this level of slow burn, you either love it or hate it, and I loved it!
Why this shelf matters
The South definitely deserves its rom-com empire. But the Midwest has just as much material. We've got the small towns. We've got the strip malls being unglamorous right next to the small towns. We've got casseroles that function as both comfort food and social currency, humidity that turns August into a group struggle, winters that turn everyone into temporary shut-ins, and a deadpan sense of humor that comes from surviving all of the above.
That's a whole setting, fully loaded, just sitting here waiting for more people to use it.
So here's my pitch: if you're a reader, go find these books and support the ones already doing this well. And if you're a writer sitting on a small-town Midwest story you've been talked out of because "small town romance" reads as automatically Southern in your head, it doesn't have to. Write your strip mall. Write your ice storm. Write the Culver's or Heine Brothers. There's room here, and there's a lot of unclaimed territory between the coasts.