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A anon over on Tumblr dot com requested some recs for books about women that don't contain romance.

I answered with books in two categories:

Category 1: Books I love where there is a romantic interest, but it’s very much secondary and not the point of the book. A partnership might be there as part of the greater texture of human life, but it’s not the focus.

+ Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

+ The Dazzle of Day by Molly Gloss

+ Tamsin by Peter S. Beagle

+ The Likeness by Tana French

+ Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey

+ Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay

+ Rilla of Ingleside by L.M. Montgomery

+ The Steel Seraglio by the Careys

+ Kindred by Octavia Butler

Cateogry 2: books without any romance at all, not even as, like, a C-plot. The ones with * beside them have some subtextual stuff going on that some people (including me) often interpret as romantic, but it absolutely doesn't have to be.

+ Wise Child by Monica Furlong

+ The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. Le Guin*

+ Gullstruck Island, A Face Like Glass, or most Frances Hardinge books

+ Doomsday Book by Connie Willis*

+ Davita’s Harp by Chaim Potok

+ Chalice by Robin McKinley*

I will invite others to add to this list!

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Glancing over my own book posts...

The protagonist of Elatsoe by Darcie Little Badger is a young woman who is ace and uninterested in dating. There is romance among secondary characters, though.

I'm not sure I have anything else. Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro is about a female-coded android, not a human woman, so I don't know if that would fit. And again, secondary characters have a romance.

I'm betting both of those would be up this person's alley, actually, since the main characters are female and don't have the romance. And honestly they've both been on my to-read list so thanks!

No problem! Another thing Klara and the Sun has going for it is that the primary relationships that the book focuses on are among women (and womanlike androids). Female friendships, mothers and daughters, etc. Men are in supporting roles. I'm not sure if I consciously noted that while reading. But it might well be relevant to anon's interests in that way.

Yes, I definitely think that would appeal to them a lot! And also makes me more anxious to read it!

Hmmm, looking at my bookshelf!!

I would argue Greenwitch (Cooper) is about women, and no romance.

+ At least So You Want to Be a Wizard and Deep Wizardry (Duane); the series may keep on being romanceless for a few more books, but I can't remember specifically

+ Similarly, A Wrinkle in Time, but just that one

+ The Dream-Quest of Vellitt-Boe (Johnson)

+ The Golden Compass (just that one, but it's the only one worth rereading imo anyway)

+ The first three Circle of Magic books (Sandry's Book, Tris' Book, Daja's Book), and then Magic Steps, Cold Fire* and Shatterglass from The Circle Opens

+ Headshot (Bullwinkel)

+ Remote Control (Okorafor)

+ Who Ate Up All the Shinga? (Park)

And then it turns out I have these nostalgia books that have 0 romance and are about women/girls but are just not books I can in conscience recommend anymore, lol.

As for Chalice, it does end with Mirasol proposing marriage to the Master. It is literally the third-last page of my copy, but it is in there.

Edited 2025-01-19 05:57 (UTC)

Nice, thank you!!!!

It is literally the third-last page of my copy, but it is in there.

Haha, true! And yet...I think you can read that not-romantically? But it probably does disqualify it for this particular reader's interests.

Also I mean to say that I liked The Golden Compass but have never been able to get very far into the second book, so your opinion feels validating to me personally.

I loved them all as a child -- I thought Mary was the coolest person ever, and I loved the wheel-elephants! -- but when I reread them a few years ago as an adult, I found the first one a gem and the other two pretty holey.

Ooh, interesting. Have just added Chalice to my wish list.

I want to try and sneak Gaudy Night in there (setting: all-female Oxford college) but I think the Harriet/Peter romance is too important to the plot and themes for it to be permitted. Placet, sed non licet.

Looking at my 2024 reading list, I think A Sorceress Comes to Call by T Kingfisher should be okay for the first category. There is a romantic relationship, but it's between the lead supporting character and another supporting character. A destructive mother/daughter relationship powers the plot while female friendship and loyalty save the day.

Chalice is sooooo good!

I want to try and sneak Gaudy Night in there (setting: all-female Oxford college) but I think the Harriet/Peter romance is too important to the plot and themes for it to be permitted. Placet, sed non licet.

Indeed.

A destructive mother/daughter relationship powers the plot while female friendship and loyalty save the day.

Oh nice! I love that!

From my books reviews a couple of years ago:

Flame-coloured taffeta / Rosemary Sutcliff. ♥ This is an historical romance for asexual people, or at least people who want historical romance without the kissing and too-frequent rapiness: a fairly Gothic plot but no one even thinks about kissing because they have shit to do and/or are twelve. Cornish smuggling! The king over the water! Our heroes are perfectly intelligent and make mostly-sensible choices! The only flaw is that it is too short.

I don't think it's about women, but the protagonist is a 12-year-old girl and the local herbalist is a prominent secondary character.

Oh, and Rumer Godden's In this house of Brede is about a community of nuns (no lesbians, as far as I recall). I don't *think* there's any romance, except maybe a minor character on the outside of the community pining after the main character for a while, but if that is a thing, it's very minor.

Another that's been on my to-read list for a long time!

I'm not sure I *liked* it? But it was really interesting and I would reread it.

An obscure Sutcliffe! I haven't even heard of that one! But I will certainly read it myself and pass it along!

It's really hard to track down, but totally worth it, imo.

Till We Have Faces is a great rec! What about Lolly Willowes?

:D Yes, Lolly Willowes! I will add it to the list!

Maybe Blood Over Bright Haven by M.L. Wang? There’s a hint of it, a could-have-been of it, but the most important thing is The Cause.

The War Arts Saga by Wesley Chu – three out of four protagonists are badass ladies; one has a femme fatale-esque history, but it’s very much background.

The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan – family saga about Chinese-American women; some do have spouses but the focus is mothers and daughters.

The Cause! Love it!

Good suggestions! I will add them when I update the post!

TBH I was mid on Archivist Wasp but it's very explicitly & intentionally stated by the author to be a book featuring a woman that has no romance in it!

As much as I think Yoko and her rat friend are deeply romantic at heart, Fuyumi Ono's Twelve Kingdoms series has no textual romance in it whatsoever -- Shadow of the Moon, the Sea of Shadows and A Thousand Miles of Wind, the Sky at Dawn follow on from each other, the first is a close character study of one teenage girl who is having a bad time in a portal fantasy, and the second puts her in parallel with two other teenage girls in the same world.

Amy Thompson's The Color of Distance is tremendous thoughtful science fiction about a woman who gets stranded alone an alien planet for a period of time. She learns to live among the aliens but does not fall in love with any of them.

Oh interesting, I hadn't even heard of Archivist Wasp.

These all sound like great suggestions! Thanks so much! (I knew my flist would come through!)

The Adventures of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Catherine Louisa Pirkis -- 1894 collection of short stories about a lady detective, no romance whatsoever.

The Mrs. Pollifax books (starting with The Unexpected Mrs. Pollifax) are in the second category for the first four books; in book five, they shift into the first category, as she later marries a man she meets in that book, but thereafter he's often entirely offscreen except for a few pages at the start or end of the book. They're nostalgic comfort reads for me, especially the first several, but do note that there's always some amount of cheerful American imperialism and the amount of cheerful orientalism varies heavily book to book, so they may not be for all tastes.

Kaikeyi by Vaishnavi Patel is kind of a borderline case, because the main character lives in a society where arranged marriage is pretty much inevitable for a woman of her class, and the fact that she's asexual (and very possibly aromantic as well) doesn't change that; I like her relationship with her husband, and it's more like a life circumstance she maneuvers into a friendship than a romance per se, but it definitely is something that shapes her life and the plot of the book significantly.

Drunk on All Your Strange New Words by Eddie Robson has no romance that I can remember.

Zen Cho's Black Water Sister is in the first category. The main character has a girlfriend, but it's a long-distance relationship and she's mostly offscreen while the actual plot of the book happens (though the themes do include coming out to your family, so romance is on the main character's mind to some extent, but it's not a romance plotline, if that makes sense).

Most of Frances Hardinge's novels fit into the second category, although occasionally with a *; the only ones that don't are Verdigris Deep and Deeplight, which have male protagonists (and Unraveller has two protagonists, a girl and a boy). I love her stuff and highly recommend them all.

Yay! More to add to the list and more to read myself!

(Love to see more love for Hardinge!)

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