Back in the day, 2,000 years ago, when Christianity was supplanting heathen gods, Christians took pagan holidays and “Christianized” them. The Roman Lupercalia, a fertility festival, slowly, over time, morphed into Valentine’s Day. Saint Valentine was a real person, who was executed by the Romans, although the historical evidence is sparse when it comes to who he was and why he was executed.
Geoffrey Chaucer, author of “The Canterbury Tales,” helped link Valentine with courtly love and written messages of love, exchanged on Valentine’s feast day of Feb. 14. Thanks, Chaucer! You created an industry: $27.5 billion last year in the U.S.
But what has this to do with books? Well, a good book is a great way of showing love, a thoughtful sharing of words with someone you care about. How about sharing some poetry? Anything by Mary Oliver comes to mind. Love, love her work. Pablo Neruda’s “Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair” is absolutely right when you’re feeling intense. Or how about “The Sun and Her Flowers,” by Rupi Kaur — love, heartbreak, healing?
If you’re in search of a happier story on Valentine’s Day (and this year, I am), try some fiction by Emily Henry, who is becoming the mistress of confused love stories ending well. Maybe “Happy Place” or “Great Big Beautiful Life”?
Or try Nicholas Sparks’ “The Notebook.” The story crushed me: grand, emotional, a classic story of love, really deep love, with all its joys and pains over time.
It’s impossible to ignore the massive success of the Game Changers series by Rachel Reid. HarperCollins can’t print them fast enough. Two of the books, “Heated Rivalry” and “Game Changer,” are the basis for the runaway hit series on HBO Max, “Heated Rivalry,” about gay, closeted pro hockey players working their way to happiness. It’s become a phenomenon. Read and watch.
The mention of Valentine’s Day evokes images of candlelight dinners, poetry, gifts of jewelry, two people caught up in romance. It’s love in all its forms — lovers, yes, but also friends, relatives, self, siblings, parents, and children. Anyone who matters to us is worth a Valentine’s thought.
Perhaps give “The House in the Cerulean Sea” by TJ Klune? Linus Baker, a caseworker in the Department in Charge of Magical Youth, goes to an orphanage in the Cerulean Sea to investigate it. He finds both family and love.
Or pick up “The Life Impossible” by Matt Haig, he of the hugely popular “Midnight Library.” Grace Winters, a widow in the winter of her life, inherits a house in Ibiza from a friend she hasn’t seen in decades. Grace is touched by a power from another world, strangers become family, and her new gifts save the island and guide her to a happiness she’s long denied herself.
“The Correspondent,” by Virginia Evans, is a story told entirely in the letters and emails of Sybil Van Antwerp, an older woman who has lived a very full life, finding in her correspondence ways to face grief, age, loss, acceptance, the past. It was a hit no one saw coming, rising by word of mouth to the bestseller lists.
“Theo of Golden” by Allen Levi fits that description, too. Self-published, its success has seen it picked up by Simon & Schuster. Theo, a Portuguese man, arrives in Golden, Ga. At a coffee shop, he finds portraits in pencil of many Golden residents. He begins to buy them and give them back to the people depicted. His wisdom and kindness ripple through the town, a town he has come to for his own secret reasons.
Romantasy is doing wonders both in terms of sales and in terms of helping couples have better sex lives. As you can imagine, that’s made headlines. One of the latest books in the genre is “The Everlasting,” by Alix E. Harrow, on some “best of” lists of 2025. Owen Mallory, warrior turned scholar, studying Sir Una Everlasting, suddenly finds himself centuries back in time, confronted by Sir Una with her sword at his throat.
Yes, Valentine’s Day is mostly associated with romance. It’s more, too: a celebration of friendships and found family, the people who encircle our lives and uplift them, holding us up when romance breaks down.
Mathew Tombers, Manager/Buyer, Edgartown Books
