Love is not just sunshine and butterflies. The truth of the matter is that most books about love depict the good: passion, romance, seduction; and also the ugly things that arise in the absence and wake of love: betrayal, loss, contempt, grief, and heartbreak. Indeed, most fiction novels about love are manifestation of heartbreak and healing process. Nonfiction, however, offers a logical and lucid angle about love, offering you not just the thrill, but also a better understanding of love. So to help reignite love and romance in your heart, here are nonfiction books about love that are worth the read.

How to Fall in Love with Anyone by Mandy Len Catron

How to Fall in Love with Anyone is an insightful memoir from the author. This beautifully poignant book explores the common beliefs about attraction, romance, falling in love, and staying in love. The author deconstructs her own personal canon of love stories, delving way back to her grandparents’ love story to her own. Using thought-provoking anecdotes and research, How to Fall in Love with Anyone embarks on a journey to discovering why some relationships don’t last, does social media hurt the chances of finding love and happiness, and whether love can survive in the modern world and thinking.

The Color of Love by Raymond Quattlebaum

There are a lot of ways to interpret it, but at its core, love is everything and everywhere. The Color of Love by Raymond Quattlebaum celebrates the beauty of love in this wonderfully worded poetry. Quattlebaum’s moving poetry will tell you what no one else will: The Color of Love is life. It is inevitably beautiful and this is the essence of who we are. The poetry found within the pages of this books is spiritually divine and unbelievably beautiful that will make anyone dance in the spiral of life. The Color of Love is a heartwarming attempt to help readers that love is the most powerful emotion in the universe.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

Modern Romance is a hilarious yet insightful anecdote of actor and comedian Aziz Ansari about the complications of love. Ansari dives into the messy situation of dating, mating, and falling in love in the time of social media. Combine irreverent humor and cutting-edge social science and you’ll end up with an unforgettable journey to the new and frustrating romantic world. Modern Romance offers an engaging look at the often head-scratching behaviors that shape our love lives today.

The Chemistry Between Us by Dr. Larry Young and Brian Alexander

Oftentimes, people assume that love is determined by fate or destiny but Dr. Larry Young and journalist Brian Alexander thinks otherwise. They believe that love is driven by our brains and a few tiny molecules in them. In The Chemistry Between Us, the two writers explore a question people often ask: how does love begin? Covering a wide range of topics including physical attraction, parental bonding, jealousy and more to tease out the fog of mystery about love. The Chemistry Between Us is a bold attempt to conclude the grand unified theory of love.

The Mathematics of Love by Hannah Fry

How come people who once loved each other breakup? How come they now despise each other? Hannah Fry’s The Mathematics of Love explores the roller coaster of romance that seemed impossible to explain nor quantify. This book is a compulsive and readable examination of the equation behind love, from dating to divorce and everything in between. Fry uses mathematics as a tool for understanding love and to ultimately find the patterns involved. The Mathematics of Love takes readers on a fascinating journey through love patterns that just might help understand one’s own love life.