Slow burn is my favourite trope, tied with enemies to lovers ⏳ I like a romance where a look that lasts too long or a simple “are you okay?” already counts as a big step, so that by the time they get together, I have been waiting for it as much as they have. Insta-love has never worked on me.
Here are the 18 MM slow burn books I recommend, from fantasy courts and danmei to hockey, a 1968 bookshop and a VR horror game. Each entry says whether the couple gets together within one book or across a whole series, which is the first thing I want to know before I start a slow burn romance.
Which Slow Burn Should You Read First?
Pick your mood and jump straight to the book.
You want to laugh while you wait
You want princes and court intrigue
You want two men who can’t stand each other at first
You want a long fantasy saga
You want a murder to solve
You want sports and a lot of angst
You want something gentle and healing
You want to survive the end of the world
On this page
- → Which one to read first, by mood
- → Slow Burn MM Fantasy With Princes and Court Intrigue
- → Epic Fantasy and Danmei Slow Burns
- → Funny Contemporary Slow Burns
- → Gentle Slow Burns With Hurt/Comfort and Found Family
- → Slow Burn MM Sports Romance
- → Slow Burn MM Mysteries
- → Slow Burn in the Dark: Horror and the End of the World
- → My top three
- → Slow burn questions
Slow Burn MM Fantasy With Princes and Court Intrigue
At court, wanting the wrong man can cost you everything, so everything goes through looks and secrets. For me it’s the best setting for a slow burn.
Captive Prince
Damen should have inherited the throne of Akielos. His half-brother has him seized, stripped of his name and sent in chains to the enemy court of Vere, as a gift for its prince. Laurent is cold and brilliant, with every reason to hate Akielos, and Damen knows that if anyone at this court works out who he really is, he is dead. To survive the plots around them, the two of them end up needing each other.
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Prince and Assassin
Whisper belongs to an assassins’ guild. He arrives at Prince Julien’s court under a false name, with orders to keep Julien alive until the signal comes, and then to eliminate him. Julien has no idea who this quiet new stranger is. He is drawn to him and cannot decide whether he can trust him, while Whisper wants him and knows exactly how this is supposed to end.
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A Taste of Gold and Iron
Kadou is the shy prince of Arasht, a kingdom inspired by the Ottoman Empire, and he has just humiliated himself in front of a powerful ambassador. To prove his loyalty to his sister the queen, he takes charge of the investigation into a break-in, with Evemer, his new bodyguard, at his side. Evemer does not think much of him at first. The conspiracy they uncover could ruin the whole country.
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Epic Fantasy and Danmei Slow Burns
Here there is a spy, a wizard’s apprentice and two danmei classics. In three of them the couple only gets together several books in, and the fourth hides its romance behind a lot of jokes.
Luck in the Shadows
Alec of Kerry is nineteen and locked in a cell for something he did not do, next to a man who is a thief or a spy depending on the day. Seregil gets them both out and offers Alec an apprenticeship. They spend the book on the road, in ballrooms and under floorboards, gathering information for a war nobody has declared yet, while Seregil keeps a great deal to himself.
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Heaven Official’s Blessing
Xie Lian was a crown prince who ascended to godhood, then fell. Eight hundred years after his first ascension he scrapes his way back into heaven, where the other gods treat him as a joke, and with no worshippers left he is sent down to handle the ghost cases nobody else wants. On the road he meets San Lang, a young man who watches his every move very closely and is obviously not what he claims to be.
Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation
Wei Wuxian died hated by the whole cultivation world, for the demonic path he took during the war. Thirteen years later he is summoned back into the body of a young man who gave up his own soul for revenge. Old secrets and new mysteries start piling up around him, and Lan Wangji, the most rigid and correct man of all the sects, stays at his side.
The Lightning-Struck Heart
Sam of Wilds grew up in the slums of Verania, and after he accidentally turned a few bullies to stone he was taken on as apprentice to the King’s Wizard. His life now includes a sarcastic unicorn, a half-giant best friend, a long list of magical disasters and a crush on the knight Ryan Foxheart that he cannot hide. When a dragon kidnaps the prince, all of them end up on the same quest.
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More danmei after Heaven Official’s Blessing
My danmei guide sorts the English translations for readers coming from MM romance, with where to start and what to read next.
Funny Contemporary Slow Burns
These are the slow burns that make me laugh, and most of the tension comes from two men refusing to admit anything.
Leo Loves Aries
Theo needs a lodger, a plan to get his mother back out into the world, and ideally a boyfriend for his sister. Jamie Cooper moves into the spare room, and he turns out to be easy to live with, the kind of person you end up talking to at two in the morning. Theo throws himself into matchmaking for everyone around him, and does not see what is happening under his own roof.
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Star Shipped
Simon and Charlie have spent seven years as costars on a sci-fi TV show and cannot stand each other, and the whole industry knows it. Now Simon’s contract is over and he is moving to New York, but he does not want people to think he was pushed out for being difficult to work with (he is). So he agrees to stage a very public friendship with Charlie for the few weeks he has left. Then Charlie has to leave town for a family emergency, and Simon goes with him.
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Red, White & Royal Blue
Alex Claremont-Diaz is the son of the President of the United States, and Prince Henry is the British royal he has resented for years. After a very public incident at a royal wedding, the two of them are ordered to fake a friendship for the cameras. The fake friendship becomes a real one, then a secret relationship that could derail his mother’s re-election campaign.
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Gentle Slow Burns With Hurt/Comfort and Found Family
Both of these are about people looking after each other, one set today and one in a New York bookshop in 1968.
Carry the Ocean
Jeremey has just finished high school and would like to sleep until it is time to leave for college. Then Emmet Washington walks into his life, a maths and computer science student who is very direct, autistic, and interested in dating him. Jeremey’s parents do not believe in depression, and when his gets worse, Emmet brings him along as a roommate to The Roosevelt, a new assisted living building nearby.
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After Hours at Dooryard Books
New York, 1968. Patrick sells books in the gayest neighbourhood on the East Coast and tells himself he is doing fine, whatever the news from the war. He takes in Nathaniel, a drifter who is clearly hiding something, just as his best friend and her newborn move into the apartment upstairs. Nathaniel only wanted a quiet place to wait for his past to catch up with him, and Dooryard Books turns out to be full of anti-war agitators, two rabble-rousing teenagers and a baby who will only sleep when he holds her.
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Slow Burn MM Sports Romance
One is set in a team sport that does not exist, the other follows a hockey player who has lost a whole year of his life.
The Foxhole Court
Neil Josten has been on the run since childhood, with a fake name, dyed hair and a bag that is always packed. His father is a crime lord known as the Butcher, and staying invisible is how Neil stays alive. Then the Palmetto State Foxes offer him a place on their Exy team, which means his face on national television. He signs anyway, and Andrew Minyard, the team’s unpredictable goalkeeper, decides Neil is his problem now.
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The Fall
One hit on the ice, and when he wakes up the last twelve months of his life are gone. He does not know which team he plays for now, or why there is a gorgeous man in his bed calling him babe. A year ago he was barely hanging on to his career and too scared to admit he wanted a man. Now he has the career, the man and a championship within reach, and he decides to hide the memory loss until it comes back rather than risk losing any of it.
More MM sports romance
If this section is the one you came for, my MM sports romance list has the rest of the locker room, Heated Rivalry included.
Slow Burn MM Mysteries
Hazard has to work with the man who bullied him at school, and Adrien is the main suspect for the cop he ends up falling for. Each book brings a new case, and the romance takes the whole series.
Pretty Pretty Boys
Emery Hazard comes back to the small Missouri town where he grew up, as a detective now, and finds himself partnered with John-Henry Somerset, who made his high school years hell. Hazard still suspects Somerset had something to do with the death of his first boyfriend. When a case lands on their desk, they have to work the case together anyway.
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Fatal Shadows
Adrien English runs a mystery bookshop in Los Angeles and writes mystery novels on the side. When Robert, an old friend who worked for him, is found dead, Adrien becomes a suspect, and Jake Riordan, the homicide detective on the case, is not inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.
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Slow Burn in the Dark: Horror and the End of the World
Immersed traps Levi in a VR horror game that never ends, and All That’s Left in the World follows two boys heading south after a pandemic has wiped out almost everyone. In both, the romance grows out of trying to stay alive.
Immersed
Levi Mercer only meant to stream a few hours of a VR horror game for charity, in memory of his brother. The game never ends. Every time he loses, the scenario starts over, but the obsession of the man hunting him keeps growing, and from the forest to the haunted hospital their encounters change: they last longer and turn into lingering touches, and his pursuer starts protecting him from the other threats.
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All That’s Left in the World
A pathogen has killed nearly everyone, and Andrew turns up at Jamie’s door starving, injured, and with a story that does not quite hold together. Jamie takes him in because the alternative is being alone. When other survivors find the house, the two of them head south together, each carrying a secret the other would want to know, and Jamie’s is that he has stopped thinking of Andrew as a friend.
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My Top Three MM Slow Burn Books
Choosing was very hard, because every book above is excellent. But here are my three.
Captive Prince · C.S. Pacat
The relationship builds across three books, from pure hostility to a trust that costs them both a lot, in the middle of political intrigue that is really well done. For me it is the reference for slow burn enemies to lovers.
Leo Loves Aries · Anyta Sunday
Theo and Jamie have great chemistry, and Theo’s scheming made me laugh from start to finish. It is the one I recommend to anyone who wants to try a slow burn without much angst.
The Lightning-Struck Heart · TJ Klune
My comfort read, the one I pick when I want a slow burn that makes me laugh. Sam is a lovable disaster, and I adore the gang around him.
Slow Burn MM Romance: Your Questions
What makes a good slow burn?
Something has to move, even slowly, like a softer look or a protective gesture. The reasons for the wait have to be real, like a painful past or a secret. One misunderstanding stretched over ten chapters just gets tiring. When it finally happens, you have to feel it was worth waiting for.
Are slow burn MM books spicy?
Slow burn is about the pace of the relationship. There can be plenty of smut, it just arrives once the relationship is ready. On this list, All That’s Left in the World is closed door, while The Fall, Carry the Ocean and Immersed are explicit. The chillies on each book tell you where it sits.
What is the slowest burn MM book?
On this list, The Foxhole Court, Pretty Pretty Boys and Luck in the Shadows, where the couple only gets together several books in. They carry the “Series-Long Burn” tag, along with Captive Prince, Fatal Shadows, Heaven Official’s Blessing and Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation.
Where should I start if I’m new to slow burn MM romance?
Leo Loves Aries if you want something light and funny. Captive Prince if you want the classic everyone talks about, and Heaven Official’s Blessing if you want to try danmei.
Before You Go
Eighteen books, from the court of Vere to a hockey rink and a bookshop in 1968, and in every one of them the two men take their time. Some make you wait for one book, others for a whole series.
So, one book or a whole series tonight?
New to MM romance? Start with the map.
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