7 Tiny Love Letters to My Favorite Fictional Couples

With a special guest appearance by a real one and a bonus list of fun YA love stories

Feb 14, 2025

It should surprise no one that I like Valentine’s Day. I’m a writer who’s published a deliciously sweet young adult romance, with another one coming. I’m a certified Lover Girl. I also really like flowers, handwritten cards and notes, love songs and romcoms—the only thing I don’t care much for is chocolate/candy.

This is all very on brand behavior.

On a day where we loudly love on each other, I figured I’d write some tiny love letters to my favorite couples. Most are fictional; one notable couple is very real.

Even if you’re not into the manufactured sweetness of it all, it’s always a good day to drop someone you care about a line, give a couple more hugs, and do a few extra kindnesses.

Lois Lane & Clark Kent

Y’all knew this one was coming, didn’t you? The picture of the mild-mannered boyfriend with a truly feral girlfriend stereotype aside, I love that across the decades, Lois and Clark are two distinct but frequently converging takes on what truth and justice mean. What it takes to get truth; what finding justice truly means. They both inhabit huge worlds—and in Clark’s case, universes—individually, and have important places in them, but somehow find a way to meet in the middle and create a world unique to just them.

Syd & Dre (Brown Sugar)

The reason why I once believed the highest form of love was someone reading and engaging with your words. My evidence for why friends-to-lovers is an undefeated trope. Why I have “The perfect verse over a tight beat” tattooed on my arm.

To hip-hop.

Zaf & Dani (Take a Hint, Dani Brown)

All I will say is: if there was hope for Dani Brown, there is hope for me.

Do with that information what you will.

Beth & Randall (This Is Us)

A relationship that’s tested a million times over, but firm in its foundation. Beth and Randall are all inside jokes, special moments, communication and empathy. Randall is tender, if sometimes self-involved, and Beth doesn’t need so smooth her rough edges. They constantly find ways to be soft with each other in circumstances that would otherwise bring out the sharpness in them. I love that they kept deciding to be on a team together, over and over again—even, and especially, when it was hard.

Corinne & Halti (Charming as a Verb)

This is the blueprint novel for thinking you know/understand someone, realizing you haven’t got a clue, and changing your mind so radically that you have to make space for love.

Bonus points for abrasive Black girls being loved on. Extra points because Black boys deserve all the love stories.

Raven & Devon (That’s So Raven)

I was a Raven and Devon shipper before I knew what a shipper was. I knew this was it when Raven made him that HUGEEE Valentine’s Day card and that teenaged boy said he loved it with his whole chest.

Never once did I think he was lying and literally anyone else would have.

No notes.

(If you comment and say Raven and Devon were divorced in Raven’s Home I am BLOCKING you.)

Hercules & Meg (Hercules)

Giving up immortality/godhood for the girl you’re in love with. It’s giving Percy Jackson before Percy Jackson was the one best known for this move.

(We are not talking about the actual Greek myth version. I know that story is violent and horrific. Please relax.)

Eric & Faye

The real reason I write love stories: I was raised by a great one. Childhood sweethearts turned long-lasting marriage.

My dad’s chronically ill, just turning a promising corner from a debilitating stretch that’s lasted about two years, but the whole ordeal years longer. He insisted on getting my mom a Valentine’s Day present this year. I got him ready and drove him to the stores yesterday to let him pick out some things for my mom: so many flowers, candy, a card, a gift…

He was exhausted and satisfied when we got back to the car, and delighted when he presented her with his selections.

I am the daughter of a certified Lover Boy. A Lover of Love.

We all truly deserve love letters.

If you want to read even more great love stories, especially YA ones, here are a few more in no particular order:

First Love Language, Stefany Valentine

You Should See Me In A Crown, Leah Johnson

Prince of the Palisades, Julian Winters

Something Like Right, H. D. Hunter

Twenty-Four Seconds From Now, Jason Reynolds

The Sticky Note Manifesto of Aisha Agarwal, Ambika Vohra

One True Loves, Elise Bryant

The Davenports, Krystal Marquis