Book Review: An Infinite Love Story by Chanel Cleeton

THIS. IS. ROMANCE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Hot DAMN I wish more romance novels had this kind of intense love on the page. Yes, there are Interstellar vibes at times - and they only make the romance that much more intense. This is true to the period in oh so many ways...

... and yet also has at least one jarring anachronism (and potentially more less jarring ones). Specifically in its criticism of era astronauts as "exclusively white men", a 2010s/ 2020s woke/ feminist phrasing not generally used in the era. Yes, there were some sporadic criticisms in the era of the astronaut corps being "white men", and yes, there were even non-NASA experiments putting women and black men through the same testing procedures NASA used to select the astronauts (and these tests did in fact show that in at least some ways, women in particular could be *better* suited to the rigors of space than men were), but for an "astro-wife" to be so blatantly biased against her own husband? Ummmm....

But seriously, this is romance absolutely up there among the best romances ever written - specifically *because* of what it does and how it does it. This isn't bubblegum fantasy "everything will work out". This is "shit is serious and I have nothing but my love of my husband to pull me through this".

It also has parallels to the *movie form* of For Love Of The Game, one of the better romances for men, in just how it chooses to tell its story in both present and flashback to how the romance built. (I specify movie form here because the book omits almost that entire plotline, and it is one of the elements of the movie that makes it among the all time greats - not just among Costner's movies (yes, better than Field of Dreams or Dances with Wolves) or Preston's movies, but among all movies Hollywood has ever produced. Meanwhile, the book is a decent baseball book... without the added depth the movie brings to the romance side, that then makes the baseball side work even better.)

Overall truly one of the best ROMANCE books I've read in quite some time, even if it has a few anachronistic/ woke elements that mar it a touch.

Very much recommended.

This review of An Infinite Love Story by Chanel Cleeton was originally written on July 16, 2026.