The best romance novels set in a lighthearted, cozy fantasy world

This book made me laugh out loud so many times—it's the funniest fantasy I have ever read. An oddball crew breaks into the protagonist’s prison cell to rescue a prince, so the protagonist claims to be the prince and is rescued along with his cellmate.

The journey back to the prince’s country is a road trip comedy with a wacky cast... but amid all the crude jokes are real emotional moments and characters being kind to each other. The protagonist can’t stop himself from falling for the prince and grows as a person in the process. Nothing about the story ever gets too serious, and the bad bits happen quickly and without prolonged trauma. I loved everything about it.

This is an adorable love story between a nerdy queen with magical powers who wants to be left alone in her laboratory to work on spells to protect her people, and a passive archduke who’s been used as a pawn by his in-laws.

The queen hides behind a persona of being evil, such that even the archduke’s in-laws won’t mess with her. When the archduke finally escapes his home, he decides to go to her castle and beg for help—only she mistakes him for the dark wizard she advertised for and hires him to organize her library.

Most of the book is a comforting time spent in the castle as the couple try to keep their secrets and prepare for a final showdown. The story has enough action to be interesting without any stress.

This book starts with the heroine stumbling home drunk after eating a lot of cheese at her village’s harvest festival. The irreverent tone continues as she rescues a man in the forest, discovers he’s a demon from another dimension and gets swept up in his quest to take down an evil witch.

The whole story is so much fun. Even when violence and destruction happen (along the lines of “half the city was destroyed”), the goofy nature of the book helped me move past it without taking it seriously. (I wasn't thinking too hard about the destruction, but some readers might not like it.) And, of course, the demon becomes a sexy love interest.

This series is set in a magical land that’s hidden and protected from the rest of the world. It’s filled with delightful villages that have festivals and games, where the locals work at their craft and then drink beer at the tavern in the evening—basically, the exact place I would design to live in.

In Brewed in Magic, Lilia is a brewer who travels the countryside with her mobile tavern. On the way to a festival, she camps out with another traveler and they hit it off—until he disappears in the morning. Turns out he has rushed to beat her to the festival and steal her spot with his own mobile tavern. They continue to spar but must team up when all the beer disappears.

That’s right: the level of conflict in this story is “if we can’t find the beer, the festival will be ruined.”

Deven is a super nice and laid-back guy who is sent by his village leaders to seduce the dragon who lives up on the hill, in order to get one of the dragon’s scales. The dragon has never hurt anyone (it turns out he supports the local businesses), and when he takes his human form, he’s awkward and bumbling, while trying to be commanding and scary.

It’s the perfect setup for a sweet love story with some high-stakes background drama (for example, Deven has to meet the parent dragons) without a lot of stress. And, like all romance novels, it has a guaranteed happy ending.