Timothy Janovsky Books in Order

Timothy Janovsky is a queer, multidisciplinary storyteller based in New Jersey. His novels are romantic comedies built around big feelings, awkward timing, and characters trying to figure out what they want before life makes the decision for them.

Before publishing fiction, Janovsky trained in theatre and dance at Muhlenberg College, graduating in 2019. That performance background still shapes his process. He has described writing in first-person present tense as a way to step into a character’s shoes, identify what they want, and see what stands in their way.

It’s a practical approach to romance: give someone a goal, complicate it, then make them talk.

For a time, writing sat on the back burner while Janovsky taught dance and pursued performing. When the pandemic shut down auditions and cost him his teaching job, he had unexpected time to write. He began what became You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince, a warm holiday story he saw as a comfort project.

A publisher liked the manuscript but suggested that a debut not be a Christmas novel. While quarantining with his partner in Pennsylvania, Janovsky visited a drive-in theater and found the setting for Never Been Kissed. The 2022 debut follows Wren Roland, whose impulsive emails to old crushes bring his first love back into his life at a struggling drive-in.

That book set the tone for much of Janovsky’s work. His characters often want a movie-perfect answer to love, work, or adulthood, only to discover that real life is messier and more interesting. New Adult gives that idea a time-jump twist as a young comedian wakes up seven years into the future. The (Fake) Dating Game turns a reality-game-show audition into a fake relationship, while You Had Me at Happy Hour pairs a tightly controlled sommelier with a more outgoing mixologist.

He also likes a holiday premise with rules that are just strange enough to work.

In The Merriest Misters, a married couple must take over the jobs of Santa Claus and the first Merriest Mister. A Mannequin for Christmas begins when a lonely shop manager’s display mannequin comes to life. Later books keep reaching for playful setups, from a fairy-tale resort romance in Once Upon You and Me to an Italian chocolate-heir competition in One Week to Win the Chocolate Maker.

Janovsky has said he writes the queer romantic comedies he wished he could have read as a teenager. Across his books, that means queer men get to be funny, anxious, ambitious, imperfect, and hopeful, with room for both flirting and hard conversations. His work has also moved between sweeter, closed-door stories and more openly sensual adult romances.

His books have found a broad readership, and The Merriest Misters became a USA Today bestseller. He continues to write from New Jersey, adding new takes on familiar rom-com ingredients: forced proximity, second chances, holiday chaos, workplace friction, and the possibility that a strange detour might lead somewhere good.