The one where the RNA announce their Romantic Novel Award 2025 Finalists
The Romantic Novelists’ Association (RNA) have announced the finalists in their Romantic Novel Awards 2025 this morning and I am delighted to share that I’m one of them. Eek! The RNA's press release can be found here.
The Awards, which are in their 65th year in 2025 (running since 1960 in case it’s too early to do the maths!) celebrate the best of romantic fiction. You can read more about them here. There have been various changes to the categories over the years but, for 2025’s shortlist, there are ten awards. Eight of these are according to genre e.g. romantic thriller, contemporary, festive holiday and historical. A ninth award is for debut novels and all nine of these are shortlisted by the publisher or author submitting their book which is circulated around a group of reader volunteers.
There’s a final tenth award – the Popular Romantic Fiction Award – which works slightly differently. Books can’t be submitted for this award. Instead, they’re nominated by librarians, booksellers and book bloggers/reviewers and readers. The entry form states, ‘Nominations are invited for any romantic novel that has achieved popular success. We’re looking for the book that is constantly issued or reserved in libraries, always being picked up in book shops – the book that you read and can’t stop raving about.’
In 2022, Snowflakes Over The Starfish Café was a finalist in the festive category and in 2024, The Start of Something Wonderful was a finalist in the contemporary romance category. Both times I had an amazing trip down to London and, even though I didn’t claim the overall win, I was so honoured to be nominated.
An author can only have two books submitted each year which presents a dilemma for my publisher, Boldwood Books, and me each year as I typically write three or four books a year. We have to try to pre-empt which two of those releases might have the best chance of being shortlisted. This year, as I didn’t have a festive release, we entered A Breath of Fresh Airand A New Dawn at Owl’s Lodge into the contemporary category. Finalists were notified by the end of February and, as I hadn’t heard anything, I needed to assume that they hadn’t been shortlisted.
In early March, the RNA announced that the Popular Romantic Fiction Award was open for nominations. Last year was the first time this Award was opened up to readers to make nominations – something which somehow completely passed me by. But I shared the RNA’s post this year with my readership, encouraging them to nominate their favourite romantic release from 2024, whether that was one of mine or that of another author.
A few weeks ago, I received an email which made me squeal with excitement – The Best is Yet to Comewas a finalist for the Popular Romantic Fiction Award. How funny that the reader favourite was the one we hadn’t put forward for one of the genre awards! It took me ages to stop shaking after that email came through. I'm still feeling shaky now! Congratulations to Emma Denny, Miranda Dickinson, Julie Haworth and Helga Jenson who are also finalists in this category. I've never met any of them so look forward to doing so on the night.
I can’t thank my readers enough for putting one of my books forward for this award. It really does mean the world to me. My hotel is booked, I have a new frock hanging on the outside of my wardrobe and I’m so excited to be heading down to London next month for the awards ceremony (Monday 19th May).
Will it be third time lucky for me to bring home the overall win? I’d love it if it was but I’ll go with no expectation of winning and enjoy the event, just like I did the previous two times.
I don’t know how the winner is selected – whether it’s purely on the basis of the number of nominations received or whether there are other factors considered. If it’s purely on votes, I know that some of my lovely readers mentioned putting A New Dawn at Owl’s Lodge forward as their favourite 2024 read. A split vote could mean I don’t have enough to bring home the win but it was important to me that I didn’t influence it by asking readers to vote for a particular title. The posts I shared on the socials were very much positioned as vote for your favourite romantic read of the year which might be one of mine but might be someone else’s and that support for the genre was what was important here. I could have been really pushy, asking friends and family to nominate one of my books but I didn’t share it on my personal feed as most of my friends and family members are not readers and no way was I going to do anything to unfairly manipulate the results.
While I’m down in London, I’m having lunch with my lovely editor, Emily, on the day of the awards. The ceremony starts with a photoshoot early that evening and then the event itself. The following day is Boldwood’s Summer Party which is always a fabulous event so I’ve got lots to look forward to. May’s shaping up to be really busy because, as well as this, I’m celebrating the release of Sunshine After the Rain on 15thMay and my tenth anniversary as a published author on 23rd May. So four big celebrations in the space of eight days!
Before I go, I’d like to particularly say congratulations to my good friends Joy Wood with Whatever It Takes shortlisted for the Romantic Thriller Award and Jeevani Charika shortlisted for the Romantic Comedy Award with The Winner Bakes it All. Congratulations also to my fellow Boldwood authors Judy Leigh writing as Elena Collins, Rachel Burton, Kate Hewitt and Rebecca Raisin who are also finalists. And, of course all the other finalists. Whatever happens on the night, enjoy the moment. I've added the finalist graphics below. This includes those shortlisted for the Joan Hessayon Award which is something slightly separate - for novels which have been through the New Writers' Scheme and then gone on to be published. This award will be given out on the same evening.
A final thanks again to all the readers who nominated one of my books. I’m so incredibly grateful to you.
Big hugs
Jessica xx
