It really is festival season in Toronto.

Immediately after bidding adieu to the whos-who of film at TIFF, the city is being filled with writers at the top of their game as it plays host to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA). From September 19 to 29, writers from around the world will converge to discuss their craft, hold readings, answer questions and tackle tough topics before a rapt audience.

This year the festival’s theme is “writing home,” examining books and stories about home and the ideas, cultures and conflicts that inform what home means to us. Lily Chu—a Canadian romance author known for heart-fluttering titles like The Stand-In and The Comeback, as well as audio stories with voice performances from Hamilton‘s Phillipa Soo and John Cho—sets her novels in Toronto, the city she calls home—something of a rarity the genre.

When we asked Chu what it was about Toronto that she found so inspiring, she quoted Canadian sci-fi writer William Gibson, who she had seen speak at a previous TIFA. “He was talking about walking through a city, and he was saying, ‘When I come to Toronto and I walk through the city, I look up at the second storey…because there’s an entirely different city [up there],’ which I’d never really thought about. So I started looking,” she recalls. “I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’ there is a whole different city, if you just raise your eyes 20 feet. He doesn’t remember this—it was some throwaway line that he said—but for me, it’s how I navigate urban spaces now.”

Chu also loves Toronto for it’s diversity. “There are just so many different things to experience and places to go to,” she says. “[Toronto has] so much to offer in terms of cuisine, in terms of shopping, there’s green space, there’s urban space, and I think that matches well with a festival that is also looking at a diversity of genres and people coming in.”

While romance has always been a favourite genre for readers, it historically hasn’t featured front and centre at writers festivals, so it’s refreshing to see Chu participating in two panels this weekend—one taking on tropes in a spirited debate and the other discussing strong Asian female characters in romance novels with fellow Toronto-based writer Jackie Lau.

With love on the brain ahead of the TIFA, we asked Chu to give us her Canadian romance novel recommendations for our reading lists. Unsurprisingly, her suggestions are cozy, diverse and full of heart.

Here’s what you should be reading this fall according to a Canadian author.

Love, Lies, and Cherry Pie, Jackie Lau

In this Bridget Jones’ Diary retelling, writer and barista Emily Hung desperately tries to fend off her meddling mother’s attempt to set her up. “[Jackie Lau] always has great family stuff,” says Chu. “She also has a Canadian Thanksgiving book called A Match Made for Thanksgiving. It’s part of her Holidays with the Wongs series and it’s the only Canadian Thanksgiving book I know of.”

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This Spells Love, Kate Robb

This friends to lovers romance novel involves a little bit of magic, making it perfect for spooky season. “[Gemma] accidentally puts a hex on her ex and ends up in an alternate timeline,” says Chu. “I actually read it on vacation in Italy and then sent [Kate Robb] a screenshot of me reading it in a Roman garden, so it has many happy memories for me.”

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Wild Life, Opal Wei

Chu describes this Bringing up Baby retelling as a “screwball comedy” centred around a cancer researcher and former C-pop star looking to open a wildlife sanctuary. The author, Opal Wei, may also be familiar to readers — Wei also writes under the name Ruby Lang and is the author of the Uptown series.

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Just Playing House, Farah Heron

“It is the sweetest thing you will read, but also super intense,” says Chu of this romcom for fans of the forced proximity, celebrity and second chance romance tropes. In this novel, a movie star reunites with his high school prom date, now a personal stylist about to have an elective double mastectomy. “This is just feelings and feelings and feelings, and they’re all intense and sweet and gentle and wonderful.”

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The Catch, Amy Lea

In this Amy Lea novel, Boston fashion influencer Melanie finds herself in a rural fishing village on the East Coast of Canada, where she butts heads with a burly and bearded bed-and-breakfast owner and fisherman, Evan Whaler. After a boating accident lands Evan unconscious in the hospital, Mel is mistaken for his fiancée and must keep up the ruse for his welcoming yet quirky family, who is embroiled in a long-standing feud over the B&B. “Amy’s characters are always so well done,” says Chu. “And the best friends are from the other two books in the series. So you get a lot of those friend dynamics, but you can read it as a standalone.”

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