Doctor Who is a show I’ve been binge-watching recently, not only for the plot and the antics, but also for the amazing love stories in the show. While most people probably don’t consider Doctor Who a romance, that is basically what it is. There are the main love stories, like the Doctor’s love with Rose Tyler, a woman he can never be with, and his marriage with River Song, a time-traveling femme fatale brain-washed to kill the Doctor but falling in love with him anyway. And who can forget Rory and Amy, who have to have the most ideal marriage ever? There are also the single-episode stories, like John Smith and Joan Redfern in “Human Nature” and the Doctor and Astrid in “Voyage of the Damned”. So here are ten books for Doctor Who fans who can’t get enough of these fantastic love stories.
1) Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
Like the Doctor appeared throughout Madame de Pompadour’s life in “The Girl in the Fireplace”, reluctant time traveler Henry DeTamble travels to the past and spends time with a young girl named Clare, who is his wife in the future. This is an epic and bestselling story about a time traveler and the woman he fell in love with, despite his rare disorder that makes him travel through time randomly against his will.
Buy Time Traveler’s Wife at your local independent bookstore.
2) Outlander by Diana Gabaldon 
The year is 1945. Claire Randall, a former combat nurse, is just back from the war and reunited with her husband on a second honeymoon when she walks through a standing stone in one of the ancient circles that dot the British Isles. Suddenly she is a Sassenach—an “outlander”—in a Scotland torn by war and raiding border clans in the year of Our Lord…1743.
Hurled back in time by forces she cannot understand, Claire is catapulted into the intrigues of lairds and spies that may threaten her life, and shatter her heart. For here James Fraser, a gallant young Scots warrior, shows her a love so absolute that Claire becomes a woman torn between fidelity and desire—and between two vastly different men in two irreconcilable lives.
Unfortunately, time cannot be rewritten for 18th century Scotland, like it can for the Doctor. But that doesn’t stop Claire from trying.
Buy Outlander at your local independent bookstore or on AllRomance.
3) Cinder by Marissa Meyer
Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.
Cinder, a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her past in order to protect her world’s future.
Doctor Who is no stranger to cyborg discrimination or plague. Between “A Town Called Mercy”, where a wronged cyborg was getting revenge on his maker, and the plague in “The Girl Who Waited”, which kept the Doctor confined to the TARDIS for most of the episode, I’d say Cinder would fit into the Doctor Who world quite nicely.
Buy Cinder at your local independent bookstore.
4) Ruby Red by Kerstin Gier 
Gwyneth Shepherd’s sophisticated, beautiful cousin Charlotte has been prepared her entire life for traveling through time. But unexpectedly, it is Gwyneth, who in the middle of class takes a sudden spin to a different era!
Gwyneth must now unearth the mystery of why her mother would lie about her birth date to ward off suspicion about her ability, brush up on her history, and work with Gideon–the time traveler from a similarly gifted family that passes the gene through its male line, and whose presence becomes, in time, less insufferable and more essential. Together, Gwyneth and Gideon journey through time to discover who, in the 18th century and in contemporary London, they can trust.
Fans of the Doctor’s and River’s love story will definitely love this story. A woman must figure out her mysterious past with a fellow time traveler? Doctor Who fans will definitely enjoy this book.
Buy Ruby Red at your local independent bookstore or on AllRomance.
5) The Here and Now by Ann Bradshares
Follow the rules. Remember what happened. Never fall in love.
This is the story of seventeen-year-old Prenna James, who immigrated to New York when she was twelve. Except Prenna didn’t come from a different country. She came from a different time—a future where a mosquito-borne illness has mutated into a pandemic, killing millions and leaving the world in ruins.
Prenna and the others who escaped to the present day must follow a strict set of rules: never reveal where they’re from, never interfere with history, and never, ever be intimate with anyone outside their community. Prenna does as she’s told, believing she can help prevent the plague that will one day ravage the earth.
But everything changes when Prenna falls for Ethan Jarves.
Nothing follows the rule about history being in flux better than this book. And believe me, it is all a huge pile of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey…. stuff. In fact, that was the name of the review I did on Ink and Paper.
Buy The Here and Now at your local independent bookstore.
6) The More I See You by Lynn Kurland
A wish upon a star transports the luckless-in-love Jessica Blakely back in time to the thirteenth century. But her desire for a fair and gallant knight yields the fearsome Richard De Galtres. And it will take her tender touch–and stubborn will–to pierce his armor-clad heart…
A wish upon a star? Sounds a lot like Amy Pond to me. And no one has a heart clad in armor as much as the Doctor does.
Buy The More I See You at your local independent bookstore or on AllRomance.
7) Son of the Morning by Linda Howard
A scholar specializing in ancient manuscripts, Grace St. John never imagined that a cache of old documents she discovered was the missing link to a lost Celtic treasure. But as soon as she deciphers the legend of the Knights of the Templar — long fabled to hold the key to unlimited power — Grace becomes the target of a ruthless killer bent on abusing the coveted force. Determined to stop him, Grace needs the help of a warrior bound by duty to uphold the Templar’s secret for all eternity. But to find him — and to save herself — she must go back in time . . . to fourteenth-century Scotland . . . and to Black Niall, a fierce man of dark fury and raw, unbridled desire. . .
I can’t tie this into any specific Doctor Who event, but it has the action worthy of a Doctor Who episode.
Buy Son of the Morning at your local independent bookstore or on AllRomance.
8) Roses in Moonlight by Lynn Kurland
Escaping Into The Past…
Derrick Cameron, antiquities dealer and adventurer, is furious when the priceless piece of Elizabethan lace he’s been pursuing slips right by him, in the improbable custody of a mousy textile historian! But he will retrieve it, even if it means dragging a very skeptical, albeit adorable, Samantha back in time with him. After all, he is used to living dangerously—in whatever century he finds himself.
Conscientious Samantha Drummond never dreamed the package her British employer gave her would lead her into places an ordinary gal should never go—like Elizabethan England!—or throw her into the company of one extremely attractive, but highly suspect Highlander who not only thinks she’s a thief, but insists on involving her in his mad schemes to retrieve his stolen treasure.
Can Lead You Straight Into Your Future…
Trapped first in Elizabethan England, then caught in a web of modern-day intrigues, Samantha and Derrick are forced into an unlikely alliance by peril, never imagining that what they’re forging is a timeless love…
The peril Samantha and Derrick fall into is a lot like the danger the Doctor and Rose faced in “The Impossible Planet”– the danger which made them start to acknowledge their feelings for each other.
Buy Roses in Moonlight at your local independent bookstore or on All Romance.
9) Rough and Ready by Sandra Hill
A MISSION OF NO MERCY
It takes nothing short of a miracle to catapult Lt. Torolf Magnusson and his team of Navy SEALs back in time to the eleventh-century Norselands. First on the agenda: destroy the evil villain who terrorized his family and a nation.
A SURRENDER SO SWEET
But when the sexy SEALs find they’ve landed in the middle of a sanctuary–filled with women–well, hoo-yah! Their plans are put on hold, much to the distress of Hilda, the head of the sanctuary. At first resistant to Torolf’s pursuits, she soon succumbs to his passionate advances. Suddenly the term “Special Forces” takes on a whole new meaning. But with victory in sight for Torolf, Hilda must face the fact that their love may not survive the test of time…
This is like any love connection the Doctor has ever. All of them face the obstacle of him being from a different time.
10) Phantom in Time by Eugenia Riley
- Beautiful and delicate, songbird Bella De La Rosa’s lilting soprano is music from heaven — but fear has kept her confined to the chorus. And now she is onstage at New Orlean’s St. Charles Opera House in rehearsal for Kaleidoscope — a re-creation of the infamous production during which the brilliant tenor and notorious rogue Jacques LeFevre was murdered a century ago.PHANTOM IN TIME
Surely she has gone mad — for Bella can feel Jacques’s presence and hear his voice. And suddenly she is with him — magically carried back in time to be passionately awakened in heart, body and soul by the dashing, misunderstood scoundrel. For some mysterious power has decreed that Bella must save the enigmatic, irresistible “phantom” — and that she, in turn, must be saved by Jacques’s glorious love.
This reminds me of Doctor Who in a couple ways. In one way, a phantom in time is the perfect way to describe the Doctor himself. In another, it’s a lot like “Hide” where two creatures in love were separated by time and space in a supposedly haunted house.
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