Best Age Gap M/M Romance Books of All Time
These are the absolute best age gap M/M romance books out there.
Often referred to as May-December romances, these guys are not even close to the same age. But that’s okay. It just makes these books even hotter.
From student/teacher relationships to dad’s best friend romances to son’s best friend flings to boss/employee trysts. These relationships are full of tension and excitement.
Continue below to check out the age-gap M/M romance books that you absolute have to read.
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Best Age Gap M/M Romance Books
The wedding is off, but the love story is just beginning.
Betrayed the night before his wedding by the supposed boy of his dreams, Ethan Robinson escapes the devastating fallout by going on his honeymoon alone to the other side of the world. Hard of hearing and still struggling with the repercussions of being late-deafened, traveling by himself leaves him feeling painfully isolated with his raw, broken heart.
Clay Kelly never expected to be starting life over in his forties. He got hitched young, but now his wife has divorced him and remarried, his kids are grown, and he’s left his rural Outback town. In a new career driving a tour bus on Australia’s East Coast, Clay reckons he’s happy enough. He enjoys his cricket, a few beers, and a quiet life. If he’s a bit lonely, it’s not the end of the world.
Clay befriends Ethan, hoping he can cheer up the sad-eyed young man, and a crush on an unattainable straight guy is exactly the safe distraction Ethan needs. Yet as the days pass and their connection grows, long-repressed desires surface in Clay, and they are shocked to discover romance sparking. Clay is the sexy, rugged man of Ethan’s dreams, and as the clock counts down on their time together, neither wants this honeymoon to end.
Honeymoon for One is probably my favorite Kiera Andrews book. And it has some serious competition for that spot (think Kick at the Darkness, Beyond the Sea, The Station, Reading the Signs, etc.).
Ethan and Clay have a connection that transcends age, location, disability, and all of the other factors that should have kept them from falling in love.
I enjoy Honeymoon for One so much that immediately after creating this book list I jumped into reading it. Again.
I also need to throw out there that Kiera Andrews has another ridiculously sweet age-gap romance! Flash Rip is 100% the book you will want to read after you wrap up Honeymoon for One.
Generation versus generation, traditional versus contemporary, these men are about to learn a lesson in architecture and love. Can they prove that the old and new can be the perfect design?
A successful New York architect, Thomas Elkin almost has it all. Coming out as gay and ending his marriage before his fortieth birthday, he needed to start living his life. Now, four years later, with his relationship with his son back on track, and after a few short-lived romances, this esteemed traditional draftsman thinks he knows everything about architecture, about life.
Cooper Jones, twenty-two years old, is about to take the architect world by storm. Talented, professional, driven and completely infuriating, Cooper is the definition of Generation Y. Starting an internship working with Thomas, Cooper is about to knock Tom’s world off its axis.
Tom can teach Cooper about the architecture industry, but Cooper is about to teach Tom what it means to live.
The Thomas Elkin Series from N.R. Walker is easily the best age-gap M/M romance book series out there.
The series follows architect Thomas Elkin as he falls in love with one of his son’s best friends, Cooper Jones. The same Cooper Jones that is now an intern at Thomas’s architecture firm.
Tom has every reason to stay away from Cooper, but their connection is undeniable.
I loved the unhurried pace of the series and the character development that is able to take place.
I couldn’t recommend the series more.
Laurence Dalziel is worn down and washed up, and for him, the BDSM scene is all played out. Six years on from his last relationship, he’s pushing forty and tired of going through the motions of submission.
Then he meets Toby Finch. Nineteen years old. Fearless, fierce, and vulnerable. Everything Laurie can’t remember being.
Toby doesn’t know who he wants to be or what he wants to do. But he knows, with all the certainty of youth, that he wants Laurie. He wants him on his knees. He wants to make him hurt, he wants to make him beg, he wants to make him fall in love.
The problem is, while Laurie will surrender his body, he won’t surrender his heart. Because Toby is too young, too intense, too easy to hurt. And what they have—no matter how right it feels—can’t last. It can’t mean anything.
It can’t be real.
For Real by Alexis Hall is one of my favorite M/M romance books of all time. It always will be.
Yes, there is an age gap between Laurie and Toby, but this book has about a million more layers to it beyond their age difference.
There is some kink to this book, but I always encourage people to give For Real a try even if that isn’t their thing. It is just that good.
Only love can heal an impossibly broken heart
There’d forever been a thread running through Trevor Estes’s life—his son, Riley, strong and constant like a heartbeat. But when Riley is killed in combat, everything in Trevor’s life unravels into a mess he doesn’t know how to mourn.
Then Jesse Byrne, Riley’s friend and platoon mate, arrives on Trevor’s doorstep with a box of Riley’s things. Jesse’s all-too-familiar grief provides an unlikely source of comfort for Trevor: knowing he’s not alone is exactly what he needs.
Trevor never imagined he’d find someone who fills his heart with hope again. As the pair celebrate Riley’s memory, their unique bond deepens into something irreplaceable—and something neither man can live without.
But diving into a relationship can’t be so simple. Being together means Trevor risking the last link he has to his son…leaving Jesse to wonder if he’ll ever be enough, or if Trevor will always be haunted by the past.
Fair warning, Point of Contact is seriously painful to read.
We are told in the blurb that Trevor’s son dies, but the warning is just not enough to prepare you for the grief that Melanie Hansen will pull out of you.
I finished this book in one sitting in the middle of the night. I ended up sobbing myself to sleep at four in the morning.
While that may not sound like a glowing recommendation, you should take it as one!
Just keep my warning in mind if you want to jump into this amazing hurt/comfort, age-gap M/M romance.
Love will grow through the cracks you leave open.
Ranch hand Roe Davis absolutely never mixes business with pleasure—until he runs into his boss, Travis Loving, at the only gay bar within two hundred miles.
Getting involved with the ranch owner is a bad idea, but Roe’s and Travis’s bedroom kinks line up against one another like a pair of custom-cut rails. As long as they’re both clear this is sex on the side, no relationship, no interfering with the job, they could make it work.
Shut out by his family years ago, Roe survived by steadfastly refusing to settle into so much as a post office box. As his affair with Travis grows into more than just sex, Roe’s past catches up with him, threatening the thin ray of happiness he’s found, reminding him it’s well past time he went on his way.
But even a loner gets lonely, and at this point, there’s nowhere left to run. The shame and sorrow of what he’s lost will stay with Roe wherever he goes—until he’s ready to let love lead him home.
Nowhere Ranch is a fantastic cowboy, age-gap M/M romance book. It also one of the hottest books I’ve read.
The chemistry between Roe and Travis is insane. The two men try to keep it professional, as Travis is Roe’s boss, but that doesn’t last long.
WESTLY
The fall from NHL superstar to domestic disaster was swift and painful. When I became the legal guardian of my five younger siblings, I had no idea what I was doing.
One year later, I’m still lost.
Coaching CU’s hockey team might be the only thing I’m excelling at. But when our star forward is failing math, I have to do what it takes to keep him on the team. Even if it’s going head-to-head with Jasper Eckstein.
One minute I’m confronting the notorious hockey-hating professor, and the next I’m agreeing to be his date to his twenty-year high school reunion.
I don’t know how that happened.
JASPER
My rules are simple. I don’t give extra credit. Ever. No matter how entitled jocks think they are, I refuse to give them special treatment.
It’s not because I hate them. It’s not because a hockey player broke my nose in high school.
It’s fair.
But when Westly Dalton bursts into my office like a hurricane, all my principles fly out the window.
Suddenly I’m giving extra credit.
And I have a date to my reunion.
After one explosive night together, I want more, but his home life is a mess, and I don’t want to get in the way. If all we can have is quick thrills, I’m okay with that.
It’s not like I could ever fall for a jock.
Hockey! If you follow my blog at all, you already knew I would sneak at least one hockey book on this list!
Puck Drills & Quick Thrills is book five of the CU Hockey series from the dynamic duo of Eden Finely and Saxon James.
This book does a great job of tackling both enemies to lovers and an age gap.
The job at Sunday Orchard was supposed to be temporary.
A chance to gain some work experience. To have some fun. To get away from my overprotective brothers. To maybe, possibly encounter some lumberjacks in their natural habitat before moving on to the dream career that awaited me in the city.
I had not expected to be welcomed into a family of gorgeous and weirdly efficient lumberjack-types myself. Or to find a purpose in the tiny Vermont town whose claim to fame seemed to be apple-based products and copious amounts of charm.
And I most definitely hadn’t expected to fall for Knox Sunday, my grumpy, burly, fifteen-years-older, reluctant roommate, with his infuriating lectures, his hot-as-fire body, his superior attitude, his snarky humor, and his stealth cuddles.
Now I find myself making excuses to delay my big dreams… just for a little while.
But Knox has unfulfilled dreams of his own. A career he walked away from. A big city life in Boston he left behind when he returned to his hometown to help his family. He claims he’s not looking for anything permanent, and I’ve never been one to put down roots.
My big life is waiting for me somewhere other than Little Pippin Hollow. So why does it feel like I’ve finally found the home of my heart?
And how can I get Knox Sunday to… pick me?
Pick Me is the first book in the Sunday Brothers series from May Archer.
The romance between Knox and the much younger Gage was super sweet. Gage kept me laughing the entire book. You can’t help but root for him.
Book four in the Sunday Brothers series, Cherry Picked, is also an age-gap romance. This time of the brother’s best friend variety.
I recommend both!
Someone once told me I give Daddy Issues a bad name. I laughed at the time, but since I found myself living with my dad’s best friend, Stuart Wiseman, it doesn’t feel all that funny anymore.
Living with him is a nightmare. He’s super pedantic about everything. He took one look at me and decided I need help with adulting, and he seems absolutely positive he’s the man for the job. He’s hellbent on improving me, scolding me about this and correcting me on that.
Obviously I don’t take it lying down, I give as good as I get.
Things come to a head one night and I find myself staring down the barrel of a thick, angry index finger pointed close to my face.
“You’re playing with fire, Boy, and you’re headed for leather.”
Every schema I’ve ever used to make sense of the world implodes.
I’m furious. I hate it. Fully hate it. Hate every single thing about it.
Except that I don’t – and that makes it worse. Way worse. Some stupid part of me loves it. Some even stupider part craves it.
Lucky for me, Stuart knows a Daddy’s boy when he sees one. He offers to discipline and take care of me, to do the hard parts of adulting for me until I get back on my feet. Obviously, it isn’t a relationship. He’s literally old enough to be my father. So no, it’s not a relationship. Get your mind out of the gutter. It’s an arrangement…A Daddy Arrangement.
And that’s all it will ever be.
Right?
I am a huge Jesse H Reign fan and The Daddy Arrangement is some of her best work. This book is a dad’s best friend kink-filled dream.
You could read this book as a stand alone. But I wouldn’t as the first two books in The Situationship Series are absolutely amazing. I couldn’t recommend the entire series enough.
You can check out my review of The Daddy Arrangement here.
A drifter since his teens, Jimmy Dorsett has no home and no hope. What he does have is a duffel bag, a lot of stories, and a junker car. Then one cold desert night he picks up a hitchhiker and ends up with something more: a letter from a dying man to the son he hasn’t seen in years.
On a quest to deliver the letter, Jimmy travels to Rattlesnake, a small town nestled in the foothills of the California Sierras. The centerpiece of the town is the Rattlesnake Inn, where the bartender is handsome former cowboy Shane Little. Sparks fly, and when Jimmy’s car gives up the ghost, Shane gets him a job as handyman at the inn.
Both within the community of Rattlesnake and in Shane’s arms, Jimmy finds an unaccustomed peace. But it can’t be a lasting thing. The open road continues to call, and surely Shane—a strong, proud man with a painful past and a difficult present—deserves better than a lying vagabond who can’t stay put for long.
Rattlesnake by Kim Fielding was somehow one of the first books I ever read when I stumbled into M/M romance.
It was one of the books that solidified my inability to return to reading M/F romance books.
Jimmy and Shane are unforgettable. While they don’t have the largest age-gap, it definitely comes into play as these two try to navigate falling in love.
Read this one for all of the feels.
Micah Avery has called Split Rock Ranch home for most of his life—it’s one of the few places he can be totally himself without worry or judgment. The ranch, the horses, and the people are Micah’s future, and he couldn’t be happier. The fact that it’s also home to the ranch manager he’s determined to marry one day is icing on the cake . . . all he needs is for Ryan to notice him.
Ryan Astor came to Split Rock Ranch at a time when he was desperate to start over. It was just supposed to be a stop on the road, but instead he found a home and a family—that family includes Micah, the sweet kid who’s been the ranch mascot since before he was tall enough to see over the stall doors. Ryan’s finally found his place, and he can’t imagine wanting anything to change.
Then little Micah Avery grows up. And Ryan’s suddenly confronted with a whole mess of feelings and desires he never expected. Now he needs to decide if he can give in to what they both want without jeopardizing everything they have.
Something Undeniable is an interesting book. It is actually a prequelish novella to an M/M/M book, but don’t let that deter you!
I recommend reading this book as a stand alone and enjoying it for what it is.
Professor Derek Rutledge is hated and feared by all of his students. Strict, reserved, and ruthless, he doesn’t tolerate mistakes and has little patience for his students.
Shawn Wyatt is a twenty-year-old struggling to provide for his younger sisters after the death of their parents. On the verge of losing his scholarship, Shawn becomes desperate enough to go to Professor Rutledge.
Everyone says Rutledge doesn’t have a heart. Everyone says he’s a ruthless bastard. Shawn finds out that everyone is right. He strikes a deal with Rutledge, but unexpectedly, the deal turns into something so much more.
Something all-consuming and addictive. Something neither of them wants.
Just a Bit Twisted is the first book in the Straight Guys series from Alessandra Hazard.
In it we get Shawn Wyatt willing to do anything to get his professor to not fail him. Professor Rutledge is not a nice man, but that doesn’t stop Shawn from slowly falling for him.
This is solidly in the realm of enemies to lovers and a great addition to this list.
Lieutenant Apollo Floros can ace tactical training missions, but being a single dad to his twin daughters is more than he can handle. He needs live-in help, and he’s lucky a friend’s younger brother needs a place to stay. He’s surprised to see Dylan all grown up with a college degree…and a college athlete’s body. Apollo’s widowed heart may still be broken, but Dylan has his blood heating up.
It’s been eight years since the teenage Dylan followed Apollo around like a lovesick puppy, and it’s time he showed Lieutenant Hard-to-Please that he’s all man now—an adult who’s fully capable of choosing responsibility over lust. He can handle Apollo’s muscular sex appeal, but Apollo the caring father? Dylan can’t afford to fall for that guy. He’s determined to hold out for someone who’s able to love him back, not someone who only sees him as a kid brother.
Apollo is shocked by the intensity of his attraction to Dylan. Maybe some no-strings summer fun will bring this former SEAL back to life. But the combination of scorching desire and warm affection is more than he’d expected, and the emotion between them scares him senseless. No fling lasts forever, and Apollo will need to decide what’s more important if he wants to keep Dylan in his life—his past or his future.
At Attention from Annabeth Albert is a fun and sweet military age-gap romance.
In this book we get the ‘falling for my kids’ nanny’ trope executed perfectly. Made even better by the fact that Dylan is the little brother of one of Apollo’s good friends.
This is a super easy, light read. You don’t have to read the other books in the Out of Uniform series, but you would probably enjoy yourself if you did!
LEOPOLD GIDEON spent his childhood as the poor kid in a rich school until he met an older man who took him under his wing and into his bed, teaching him to not only survive but thrive among the elite and to never submit to anybody…except him. For fifteen years, Gideon had everything, but then tragedy strikes, leaving him alone once again.
CALLUM WHYTE was raised with every conceivable luxury but one: loving parents. When his father is indicted for federal crimes and his assets frozen, Cal has to learn to survive with nothing. When a friend offers him money to spend the night with a hot older man, Cal has no choice but to say yes or literally risk going without medication he needs to stay alive.
One night with Gideon leaves Cal’s head spinning and his body longing for something he never thought he’d want: discipline. Too bad Gideon never plays with the same boy twice, not even ones who beg as sweetly as Cal.
Just when Cal thinks all hope is lost, he discovers Gideon is the new headmaster for his school, leading him to devise a plan to get what he wants by blackmailing the older man into spending the next six weeks with him. But Cal is about to learn it doesn’t pay to blackmail someone who doles out his punishments.
Disciplinary Action is so unassumingly good.
This isn’t your typically student/teacher relationship book. There is some really good depth and symmetry that will leave you thinking about this book long after you finish it.
Disciplinary Action is Onley James at her very best.
Bilson
The idea of moving away from Seattle was a joke at first.
I have too many failed relationships here. Too much baggage.
So when I find myself signing with Nashville and leaving everything behind, I’m hopeful a new start will cure me of my attachment problems.
I fall fast and hard, and I’m quickly realizing it’s not so easy to escape my emotional damage. That follows no matter where I go.
When my new teammate, rookie goalie Miles Olsen, attaches himself to my side, the media are excited to exploit our bromance. Little do they know, he’s doing me a favor by keeping me away from making mistakes with women.
That’s the deal we made at the beginning of the season, but as time goes on, and we’re both going through a dry spell, Miles suggests a different arrangement. One I’ve never contemplated. One I shouldn’t consider.
One I can’t stop thinking about.
Miles
My first day as starting goalie for Tennessee is made mildly more terrifying by coming face to face with NHL veteran Cody Bilson. Hero worship? Me? Never!
He reminds me of my old frat buddies; loyal, kind, easy to trade banter with. But my dude is lost and trying to find himself again–without getting married this time.
I want to help him, and while my suggestion might not be conventional, it sure as hell is effective. The only way to make sure he doesn’t marry a woman again? Blow off steam with a man instead.
We’re both straight, we’re both single, and we’re both down for a good time.
After all, what are teammates for?
Lastly we have the newest release on the list. Bromantic Puckboy is the sixth book in the Puckboys series from Eden Finley and Saxon James.
It also happens to be my new favorite!
This book is seriously amazing. It was everything that I had hoped for and more.
The age gap isn’t crazy between the men, but Miles will never let Bilson forget that he is a ridiculous old man.
Read this one for the hockey and the hilarity.
Definitely be on the lookout for a review on this book because I cannot stop thinking about it.
Alright, that’s all I have for you.
I really hope that you enjoy these books. I love them.
The amount of these age-gap books that are also on my Best M/M Romance Books of All Time list is wild.
Hey, I’m Heather!
I read M/M romance books exclusively, and I help other readers find their next great M/M romance read.
