Due to the noxious gas covering the planet, she can’t conceive a child, and the Council, determined to repopulate the planet, have ended her third - and most precious - relationship. The Barren Planet Romance Series from Rinelle Grey: Stranded on the dying planet of Zerris, Marlee longs for the one thing she can’t have…a family.

And she certainly never expected to discover she died in a transport crash en route to the planet. But she never expected she’d struggle with the requirement to shun these “ghosts.” She never expected to be so attracted to the charming Irishman assigned as her supervisor. Ghost Planet by Sharon L Fisher: Psychologist Elizabeth Cole prepared for the worst when she accepted a job on a newly discovered world - a world where every colonist is tethered to an alien who manifests in the form of a dead loved one. Here are some of the recommendations from other SFR readers (story synopsis will be from first book if this is a series): On the other hand, the alien Catten, not a corporation, and their heartless approach of just dropping human slaves onto the planet to see if they could survive are the root cause of the problems in Freedom’s Landing. Isn’t there always a bunch of corporate hacks at the bottom of the problems in a colony story? Think of Hadley’s Hope in the Aliens movie. I liked Petaybee more, mostly because I thoroughly enjoyed the way the feisty colonists pushed back against those “Powers That Be” in the big, cold hearted company.

Both deal with colonies and the people trying hard to make life work on those planets. I immediately flash back to two classic Anne McCaffrey series – the Petaybee Trilogy (with Elizabeth Anne Scarbrough) and the Freedom’s Landing books. So many books were mentioned that I’ve had to prune the list down a bit, and many drifted into alien abduction territory, which is another theme entirely. This sparked a lively discussion on Goodreads and in two Facebook groups devoted to SFR, so I thought I’d share some of the resulting recommendations here with this audience.

Recently in the online science fiction romance community, a reader asked for book recommendations where the colonization and homesteading tropes drove the story.

Colonization by Aubrie Dionne