It might be helpful to know what she normally enjoys reading.
There's a whole sub-genre of science-fiction romance (SFR) that goes from one end of the spectrum (almost all SF, little romance) to the other (mostly romance that pretends to be in a SF universe but no real science - and maybe not even very good world-building, generally known as "futuristics").
Linnea Sinclair writes what I consider to be a pretty even split between romance and space opera science fiction. Fans on her board who like sci-fi enjoy the sci-fi and tolerate the romancy stuff. Romance lovers might skim the laser fights for the next interpersonal scene.
I'm at work, so I'm trying to remember her titles off the top of my head:
Command Performance,
Gabriel's Ghost,
Down Home Zombie Blues (this is actually set on earth, it's the only one - and it really has nothing to do with horror zombies, the space alien robots are called zombies),
Accidental Goddess (woman in space in statis for a long time wakes to find the culture has deified her),
Finders Keepers...ooh, there are more that are sequels to
Gabriel's Ghost, but I'm not remembering the titles...
Susan Grant writes SFR that mostly is more romance, but I trust her science as well (she was/is a pilot - no dummy about tech stuff). My absolute favorite of hers was
Contact. She's had a series of lighter (more humor, definitely more romance) books published by Harlequin, but once again, the titles aren't coming to my mind. Her oldest books were self republished recently (I think they were self published) -
Star King, Star Prince, Star Queen, Star Princess. I remember thinking these were more in the "futuristic" genre, but that they had more brains than most.
If she likes romance and would like to dip her toes in SFR, let me know, and I'll check my book list at home. I like the genre, and I have more names and titles I can look up (again, they may range up and down the spectrum, with some being more intelligent than others).
Oh...and if you're really hoping to get her to read "normal" SF (no romancy stuff), these might be her gateway drug if she likes the SF part of the SFR enough.
