All You Need Is Love is a new contemporary romance novel set in Ann Arbor from Meg Macy, author of the Shamelessly Adorable Teddy Bear series. Clearly a genre pivot for the author, at its centre is Jack Riley, a former actor determined to rebuild his life by opening a café with his best friend. On opening day, a single reckless act—kissing his friend’s wealthy cousin in front of the crowd—sparks the opposites attract style of romantic tension we all love. What follows is equal parts found-family, small-business romance, and slow burn in one book.
Our protagonist, Jack, is a very well-rounded character by LGBT fiction standards. He grew up bouncing through foster homes, found stability only briefly with a supportive foster family, and later built a short-lived modeling career in New York that he abandoned in frustration. His deepest trauma comes from the death of Drew, a paramedic who once saved Jack’s life and later became his mentor. At the start of the book, Jack returns to Michigan determined to build something of his own. With his best friend Jules, he opens a breakfast café called Here Comes the Sun. Jules is spontaneous, impulsive, and obsessed with horoscopes, while Jack is caustic and sceptical. Their banter captures the rhythm of best friends: “Your Gemini says ‘embrace spontaneity today,’” she insists. “I swear, you’re obsessed with those fucking horoscopes,” he shoots back.
The romance enters when Jules’s cousin Reese arrives at the café’s opening. Reese is everything Jack isn’t—wealthy, guarded, carefully respectable, and still closeted. Jack, impulsive as ever, kisses him in front of the crowd: “On impulse, Jack grabs him by his tie and tugs him down… Damn, that kiss was fantastic. Too brief as well, but he isn’t about to push his luck” (p. 36). The romance that follows is a slow burn, driven by believable obstacles and exploring familiar tropes with a new lens. Jack’s tendency to leap before he looks collides with Reese’s cultivated caution, their class difference humming beneath every interaction.
What makes All You Need Is Love stand out is that it doesn’t follow the bleak path so many queer romances have taken in the past. There’s no tragic ending waiting in the wings, no inevitable punishment for choosing love. While Jack and Reese face obstacles—family expectations, fear, and the weight of past wounds—not everyone they meet is a homophobe, and not every moment is defined by prejudice. The café staff, friends, and much of their community show up with warmth and support, creating space for a story that’s about resilience and connection rather than despair.
Macy’s writing style is warm, detailed, and grounded in lived-in realism, jumping between the heads of our three main characters in a way that keeps pacing fresh. There’s a few spicy moments, but mostly it falls on the milder side of the spectrum of LGBT fiction. The dialogue itself is pretty believable, with a lot of pop culture references, “Everyone always notices you. You’re so hot, since you resemble Brad Pitt and Austin Butler combined.” Dialogue snaps with authenticity; characters interrupt each other, joke crudely, and say the wrong things at the wrong moments in ways that feel true to life. The café setting comes alive through sensory detail: the sizzle of bacon on the griddle, the smell of fresh sourdough, the gleam of teal booths under bright light. Musical touches, especially Beatles references (obviously, the title), are scattered through the story.
If the book has flaws, they are minor. Some passages linger a little too long on café operations, and Jules’s subplot is potentially not as interesting as the two guys. There are some darker themes, but generally the novel is pretty light, maybe excessively for some. But these are small personal preferences in a novel that I genuinely enjoyed throughout and found easy to read and well-edited. The novel’s ending is hard-won but satisfying, with plenty of memorable moments beforehand.
By the final page, All You Need Is Love has delivered a romance that entertains without sacrificing depth, with characters the reader will be rooting for and not want to say goodbye to. For readers drawn to the writing style of TJ Klune or the unabashed optimism of the Heartstopper series, Macy’s latest is a deeply satisfying addition to contemporary queer romance. It’s the kind of late-summer escape that proves queer romance can be both tender and joyful.
You can get your copy of “All You Need Is Love” here!
