Tia Williams spent fifteen years as a beauty editor at magazines including Elle, Glamour, and Essence before her novels made her one of the most reliable names in contemporary romance. Her books are funny, frank about desire, and grounded in the working lives of Black women — fashion offices, publishing houses, Brooklyn apartments where the rent is real and the love interests are complicated. If you are new to her, this guide — a companion to our Black romance books for beginners — lists the best Tia Williams books in publication order and tells you exactly where to start.
Tia Williams Books in Order
Williams’s novels are mostly standalones, so you can start almost anywhere. Publication order is still the best first path: it shows a writer moving from sparkling early chick lit to the richer, more emotionally ambitious romances of the 2020s. Tia Williams, born in 1975 in Fairfax, Virginia and a Brooklyn resident since graduating from the University of Virginia in 1997, has published eight books across adult and young adult fiction, plus a co-authored beauty guide. Here they are.
1. The Accidental Diva (2004) — the debut
Billie Burke is a beauty editor with a polished life and a lonely one, until an affair with a Brooklyn artist pulls her into something messier and more electric. Williams’s debut arrived during the resurgence of chick lit by and about Black women, and Publishers Weekly praised its “sexy if sometimes purple prose” and sharp new talent. It is lighter than her later work, but the voice — witty, fashion-literate, unafraid of wanting — is already fully formed. Read it to see where she started, not as your first Williams.
2. The Beauty of Color (2006) — co-written with Iman
Not a novel: the beauty guide Williams co-wrote with supermodel Iman, drawing on her years as a beauty editor. It belongs on a complete Williams shelf rather than a romance reading list, but it explains a great deal about her fiction. Her heroines notice lipstick shades, fabric, and the politics of a workplace dress code because Williams spent a career noticing them professionally.
3. It Chicks (2007) and Sixteen Candles (2008) — the YA years
Williams’s two young adult novels follow teen girls navigating friendship, first love, and the social warfare of high school. They are breezy, funny, and very much of their late-2000s moment. Adult readers coming to Williams through her romance novels can skip these without missing anything; teen readers, or completists, will find the same warmth and comic timing in a younger key.
4. The Perfect Find (2016) — the breakthrough
Jenna Jones, forty and starting over, takes a job at a fashion magazine and falls for her frenemy boss’s much younger son. The Perfect Find won the African American Literary Award for Best Fiction and the Independent Publisher Award for multicultural fiction, and it announced Williams as a romance writer of real ambition: the age-gap premise could have been pure farce, and instead it becomes a sharp, tender story about reinvention. Netflix adapted it into a 2023 film starring Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers. If you like your romance with workplace comedy and a heroine who has already lived a life, start here — it is the best of her early books by a clear margin.
5. Seven Days in June (2021) — the book most readers start with
Eva Mercy, a single mother and bestselling erotica writer, runs into Shane Hall — the reclusive, award-winning novelist she spent one torrid week with as a teenager — at a literary event in Brooklyn. Over seven days in a steamy summer, old chemistry, buried hurt, and fifteen years of secretly writing to each other in their books pull them back together. Seven Days in June was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Reese Witherspoon book club pick, and it remains the essential Williams: second-chance romance, publishing-world satire, frank and joyful sex writing, and a heroine living with chronic migraines — a condition Williams herself has. If you read one Tia Williams book, read this one. A television adaptation, from Will Packer Media and Kinetic Content for Prime Video with Williams as executive producer, is in development.
6. A Love Song for Ricki Wilde (2024) — romance with a little magic
Ricki Wilde, a Harlem florist’s daughter stifled by family expectations, falls for a mysterious musician who seems to belong to another era — and the novel lets a touch of the uncanny into Williams’s otherwise realistic world. Published in February 2024 by Grand Central, it was an instant USA Today bestseller. It is the Williams for readers who want their romance with atmosphere: Harlem at night, jazz, art, and a love story that asks what it costs a Black woman to choose her own strange, wonderful life. Fans of romantasy by Black authors who want the magic dialed down and the emotion dialed up will find it here.
7. Audre & Bash Are Just Friends (2025) — the YA return
Williams returns to young adult fiction through a door her adult readers will recognize: Audre is Eva Mercy’s teenage daughter from Seven Days in June, spending one messy summer in a bright, funny YA love story of her own. Published in 2025, it was an instant New York Times bestseller and a Good Morning America book club pick. You do not need to have read Seven Days in June to enjoy it, but the pleasure doubles if you have — Audre’s story is a generational echo of her mother’s, with the volume turned to teen frequency.
8. The Missed Connection (2026) — the newest release
Williams’s 2026 novel begins with a chance meeting on a flight and follows the chaos of trying to find the right person again after the moment passes. Released in June 2026, it is her most recent adult romance, and the natural next read for anyone who has worked through the backlist and wants the new book while it is still new. Read it after Seven Days in June and Ricki Wilde — it rewards readers who already know her voice.
Where to Start With Tia Williams
If you want the book most readers start with: Seven Days in June. It is her best-known, best-loved book for a reason, and it introduces everything she does well in one novel.
If you love fashion, work drama, and sharp humor: The Accidental Diva, then The Perfect Find. The fashion-magazine world is Williams’s home turf, and these two show her at her funniest.
If you want romance with a little magic: A Love Song for Ricki Wilde. It is her most atmospheric book, and the best bridge to the more fantastical end of our Black romance recommendations guide.
If you want teen stories first: It Chicks, then Sixteen Candles, then Audre & Bash Are Just Friends. The last of the three is the strongest and works on its own.
What Makes a Tia Williams Romance Work
Three things recur across the whole shelf. First, her heroines have jobs, and the jobs matter: beauty editing, publishing, floristry. Work is not background color; it is where her characters’ ambitions, humiliations, and triumphs happen. Second, desire is written frankly and joyfully, without apology and without reducing her heroines to it. Third, her books are about Black women being allowed to want things — pleasure, success, a second chance — and getting them without the story punishing them for it. That sounds simple. In romance, it is rarer than it should be, and it is why Williams’s readers stay loyal from book to book.
Williams still works as editorial director of the Estée Lauder Companies alongside her writing career, a double life that keeps her fiction grounded in the real texture of beauty and fashion work. It also means her books arrive on a working writer’s schedule — each one considered, each one worth the wait.
What to Read Next
After Williams, the natural next step is the wider field she belongs to. Our Black women writers guide places her among the contemporary voices reshaping American fiction, and our books by Black women in 2026 roundup puts The Missed Connection in the context of the year’s releases. Start with Seven Days in June, give it seven days, and see if you do not come back for the rest of the shelf.