Your reading mood: witty text exchanges, a hero who understands the assignment, a heroine with a life beyond getting kissed, and absolutely no need to skip a page because someone has suddenly become very interested in a kitchen island. The best clean rom com novels deliver the butterflies, the chaos and the emotional pay-off without explicit scenes taking over the plot.

That does not mean they are beige. It means the chemistry has to work harder. A loaded glance across a café, one bed at a snowed-in inn, an accidental hand-hold that alters the Earth's axis - this is the good stuff. For readers who prefer low-to-no spice but still demand banter with bite, these are the books to put on the TBR.