2020 Swoony Award Winners!

We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2020 Swoony Awards! 

2020 was an interesting year, but for the Swoonys, it was probably our best year yet! We had over 460 book nominations and 3,200 voters! We were blown away by all the support and participation this year!

While keeping track of all the books this year, we started noticing a lot more new authors that have NEVER been nominated for a Swoony Award. To say that we were excited to see this would be an understatement! But this got us thinking. Why don't we add a NEW category just for them?! After going back and forth on what to call it, we finally decided on Rookie of the Year! Since there were SO many new authors, we decided we would go with the author who had the highest votes. Eeeeeek! We hope you love this new category as much as we do!

Best Novel of the Year

and

Best Historical Romance 

Forget Me Not by Sarah M. Eden

Best Contemporary Romance of the Year

How to Not Fall for the Guy Next Door by Meg Easton

Best Young Adult Contemporary Romance

The Big Easy & Other Lies by Melanie Jacobson

Best Western Contemporary Romance

Steal My Heart by Heather Moore

Best Billionaire Romance

Stepping in for the Billionaire Groom by Kimberly Krey

Best Celebrity Romance

Do Depend on Your Keeper by Cami Checketts

Best Christmas Romance

Snowed-in for Christmas by Kimberly Krey

Best High Fantasy Romance

The Secret Princess by Melanie Cellier

Best Urban Fantasy Romance

Brass Carriages and Glass Hearts by Nancy Campbell Allen

Best Regency/Victorian Romance

A Proper Charade by Esther Hatch

Best American Hero Romance

Saving Grace by Jennifer Youngblood & Amelia Adams

Best Romantic Comedy Romance

A Man Worth Shaving For by Michelle Pennington

Best Sports Romance

Don't Chase a Player by Cami Checketts

Best Anthology

A Christmas Promise 

by Joanna Barker, Annette Lyon and Jennifer Moore

Rookie of the Year

Once and Future Wife by Clarissa Kae

Katie's Choice 

Room-maid by Sariah Wilson

Kathy Jo's Choice

The Match by Sarah Adams

Kathy's Choice 

Forest of Firelight by Shari L. Tapscott

Heidi's Choice

A Proper Charade by Esther Hatch

THANK YOU again for participating and to all the AMAZING authors who write the books that we love to escape in to!

2020 Swoony Awards - Let the Voting Begin Y'all!

 Welcome to the 2020 Swoony Awards! 

The Swoony Awards are a Reader’s Choice Award recognizing excellence in clean secular, wholesome romance. We wanted a way to show our appreciation to these awesome authors who write the kind of books that we love. It’s also a great way to find new books and a good go-to when looking for something fun to read.

As you may know, last year we switched up the voting process. Some loved it, while others did not. Now, don't hate us, but the voting is going to be different again this year. We've loved that it's been a surprise the last couple of years and we wanted to continue having it be a surprise. We think we've figured out a way to engage everyone from our Goodreads list as well as our Google list.

How are we going to do that? Well, we are going to be doing TWO voting rounds this year.

For the FIRST round, if you're on Goodreads you can vote for your favorite books on our 2020 Swoony Award list. Here's the link: tinyurl.com/2020SwoonyAwards. You can vote for up to 100 books. 

If you're not on Goodreads, you can vote through our Google Form. Here's the link: tinyurl.com/2020SwoonyAwardsGoogle. If you're using the Google Form, all you'll need to do is enter in the title and author. There's no limit to the amount of books you can vote for.

For the SECOND round, we will be taking the top FIVE books from each category and adding them to a NEW Google Form. You will be able to vote for up to THREE books in each category. We know some of you did not like voting via the Google Form last year, but we think it was because you had to physically type in your votes under specific categories, which was probably overwhelming. This year, we're trying to make it easier for everyone. All you'll need to do is choose from the books already listed.

Voting for ROUND 1 is OPEN and will END on December 5, 2020. Voting for ROUND 2 will START on December 12, 2020 and END on December 31, 2020. 

Winners will be announced the first part of January 2021.

The eligibility has not changed. But to refresh your memory...

Eligibility
-ONLY books PUBLISHED January 1, 2020 – December 31, 2020 are eligible.
-Books must be published OR have arc reviews before nomination. Since the award is based on readers having actually read and enjoyed the book(s) they are voting for, the book has to have been published or arcs read in order to receive votes.
-Intimacy: No sex, no/low closed door/fade-to-black, no/low innuendo, nothing crude or crass. G-PG13.
-Language: None/mild (No F words or other explicit language) nothing overly crude.
-Violence: Mild/low.
-Page Count: 100 pages or higher, anthologies are okay. No short stories. No collections.
-Age: Only Young Adult, New Adult and Adult. NO children’s or middle grade.
-Religious: No Christian fiction, some *very mild* religious elements may be allowed.

We're all looking forward to the Swoony Awards this year and hope you are as well! If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to us.

Happy voting Book Dragons!