Is this erotic Veggie Tales fanfic? Stipulated, but it’s also a lot more than that! This book follows Emily to her new job in a church kitchen. Working at the church are two priests, Robert and Laurent (note the Veggie Tales connection if you dare). Through some wild circumstances, Robert and Laurent occasionally shapeshift into a tomato and a cucumber. Emily, not knowing these vegetables have sentience, uses them as sex toys. It’s a wild story, but at heart it’s about how embracing one’s sexuality can be deeply healing. This one’s for the folks with religious trauma.

How about a sentient hot dog romance? Nadine gets a job at First Base Stadium. Where better than a baseball stadium to enjoy day drinking and a glizzy or two? Then she meets Frankie, a very tall hotdog man, and she feels sparks. Again, there’s a lot of humor and absurdity to the story. But Frankie has more emotional depth than plenty of non-hotdog love interests you might come across, so you should give him a try.

If you’re a fan of sentient object romances, head over to Ghostlight Falls. It’s a fictional Pacific Northwest town and the setting for a variety of romance authors to play with the subgenres of monster, paranormal, and sentient object romances. This one from the series–which can be read in any order–features Shirley, a teacher who finds a sentient dictionary in a basement. His name is Richard! They’re a grumpy/sunshine pair! She bangs him and uses him to solve a mystery. Romance novels remain undefeated.

Richard (not the aforementioned sentient dictionary), a selfish man who lived in the 1200s, cared little for the pleasure of his sexual partners. Naturally, he was cursed to spend eternity as a dildo, purely existing for others’ pleasure. Enter Felicity, who’s writing about the history of sex toys. Her agent sends her a gift; turns out it’s Richard. Can they break the curse? It will require character growth on Richard’s part, and that’s why I chose this book for the list.

Anyone who knows a thing or two about out-there romances has read a Tingler. There are, of course, dozens upon dozens to choose from. But I chose Pounded in the Butt by My Own Butt because it begins a series of books Chuck Tingle used to explore identity, reality, desire, and more. The books in the series get recursive, with titles like Pounded In The Butt By My Book “Pounded In The Butt By My Book ‘Pounded In The Butt By My Own Butt.’” Chuck Tingle is always ready to be hilarious, absurd, wholesome, and horny all at once, and he’s out there proving love is real. How? By starting with a narcissistic man in love with a winged version of his own butt.

Lest you worry that there aren’t any sapphic sentient-object romances, I give you this recommendation. A witch casts a drunken spell on three pumpkin seeds and accidentally summons three demon princesses from hell. The result is silly, sexy, and healing. This book is also part of the Monster Smash collection, which is a collection of five sapphic monster romances from a variety of authors. ‘Tis the season!