Linda Holmes has two great books: Evvie Drake Starts Over and Flying Solo. She does a wonderful job of creating characters dealing with 30-40 something issues and weaving in romance against this backdrop. Really lovely books.

Diane Mott Davidson wrote a series of cozy mystery books set in Colorado about a divorced caterer with an 11 year old son. It has been a while since I read the series, but I pictured the main character as a woman in her 40's. Over the course of the series, the main character strikes up a romance with a local cop. There were some occasional steamy scenes in those books.

Olivia Dade usually has heroines that are well into their 30s or early 40s. I really liked 40-Love. Teach Me also has a middle aged couple.

Apples Should Be Red by Penny Watson has characters who both have adult children.

Mrs Martin’s Incomparable Adventure by Courtney Milan is F/F historical with senior characters. It’s got a beautiful cover.

It’s not a romance, but Killers of a Certain Age by Deanna Raybourn about a team of 4 assassins being retired was delightfully fun (if you can get over the fact that all the main characters are killers, which I totally could).

Just saw that Something to Remember by Mary Balogh is on one of the reddit lists. I think that a few of the books in that series have slightly older couples. One book is about the mother of the characters in the other books. It was funny to act like the guy "took liberties" with their mom.

Wow, thank you!

There's a goodreads list for literally everything!

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/75128.best_middle_age_romance

The reddit sub for romance books is also really great for recommendations.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RomanceBooks/comments/zj4kwc/female_main_character_who_finds_love_at_40/

https://www.reddit.com/r/RomanceBooks/comments/13w4h9r/actual_middle_aged_people/

https://www.reddit.com/r/RomanceBooks/comments/jxjzgb/middleagedmature_romance_recs_secondchance/

Don't want to clutter up the current romance threads. Any recommendations here? Bonus points for spicy.