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The best romance audiobooks, ranked by the data

Ranked by weighted listener rating, the best romance audiobook in our dataset is The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah — 4.68★ across 41 ratings and 16.6 estimated listening hours. We scored every published romance audiobook in our dataset: 147 qualify — romance-shelved titles with full pages here — carrying 15,216 listener ratings between them. The top 20 are below. No opinions: the formula in the method note decides the order.

147books qualify
15,216listener ratings behind the list
11.7avg hours (est.)

The top 20

  1. The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah

    16.6 hrs est. · 4.68★ · 41 ratings · weighted score 4.34

    About 17 days at an hour a day — 84% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  2. Queen of Shadows by Sarah J. Maas

    19.9 hrs est. · 4.63★ · 41 ratings · weighted score 4.31

    About 20 days at an hour a day — 121% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  3. Dork Diaries 7 by Rachel Renée Russell

    10.2 hrs est. · 4.38★ · 73 ratings · weighted score 4.25

    About 11 days at an hour a day — 13% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  4. Le Comte de Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

    17.5 hrs est. · 4.29★ · 194 ratings · weighted score 4.24

    About 18 days at an hour a day — 94% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  5. To All the Boys I've Loved Before by Jenny Han

    11 hrs est. · 4.37★ · 70 ratings · weighted score 4.24

    About 11 days at an hour a day — 22% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  6. Guess How Much I Love You by Sam McBratney

    0.9 hrs est. · 4.34★ · 86 ratings · weighted score 4.24

    About 1 day at an hour a day — 90% shorter than the average romance audiobook.

  7. The Selection (The Selection #1) by Kiera Cass

    9.7 hrs est. · 4.35★ · 72 ratings · weighted score 4.23

    About 10 days at an hour a day — 8% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  8. The Viscount Who Loved Me by Julia Quinn

    11.6 hrs est. · 4.41★ · 44 ratings · weighted score 4.22

    About 12 days at an hour a day — 29% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  9. Crown of Midnight by Sarah J. Maas

    13.2 hrs est. · 4.41★ · 44 ratings · weighted score 4.22

    About 14 days at an hour a day — 7% longer than the average fantasy audiobook.

  10. House of Hades by Rick Riordan

    17.7 hrs est. · 4.28★ · 119 ratings · weighted score 4.21

    About 18 days at an hour a day — 97% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  11. After (After Series, Book 1) by Anna Todd

    17.5 hrs est. · 4.33★ · 63 ratings · weighted score 4.21

    About 18 days at an hour a day — 94% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  12. Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers

    14 hrs est. · 4.37★ · 41 ratings · weighted score 4.20

    About 14 days at an hour a day — 56% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  13. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

    10.4 hrs est. · 4.21★ · 395 ratings · weighted score 4.19

    About 11 days at an hour a day — 16% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  14. Night by Elie Wiesel

    4 hrs est. · 4.33★ · 49 ratings · weighted score 4.19

    About 4 days at an hour a day — 56% shorter than the average romance audiobook.

  15. Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry

    27.9 hrs est. · 4.32★ · 50 ratings · weighted score 4.19

    About 28 days at an hour a day — 210% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  16. King of Wrath by Ana Huang

    13.5 hrs est. · 4.29★ · 62 ratings · weighted score 4.19

    About 14 days at an hour a day — 50% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  17. It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

    11.4 hrs est. · 4.19★ · 1,052 ratings · weighted score 4.18

    About 12 days at an hour a day — 27% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  18. Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros

    15.7 hrs est. · 4.25★ · 92 ratings · weighted score 4.18

    About 16 days at an hour a day — 74% longer than the average romance audiobook.

  19. The Fault in Our Stars by John Green

    9.4 hrs est. · 4.21★ · 214 ratings · weighted score 4.18

    About 10 days at an hour a day — right at the average romance length.

  20. The Princess Bride by William Goldman

    11.8 hrs est. · 4.24★ · 98 ratings · weighted score 4.18

    About 12 days at an hour a day — 31% longer than the average romance audiobook.

How this ranking works

Every published romance audiobook in our dataset qualifies — 147 books. Each is scored by its Open Library listener rating weighted by its rating count — score = (v·R + 50·C) ÷ (v + 50), where R is the book's rating, v its number of ratings, and C = 4.06★ the mean across all 500 published books we measured. Fewer ratings pull a score toward that mean, so a high rating on a handful of votes can't outrank a slightly lower one backed by hundreds. Genre shelves come from Open Library's subject data — a book qualifies when its subjects carry the romance signal. No editorial picks, no sponsored placement. Dataset build 2026-07-06; rankings recompute with every data refresh. Full methodology · All romance audiobooks we measured

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