diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst
index 32a2514b3b6a3..55300b6f24689 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst
@@ -414,6 +414,7 @@ I/O
 - :meth:`read_sql` returned an empty generator if ``chunksize`` was no-zero and the query returned no results. Now returns a generator with a single empty dataframe (:issue:`34411`)
 - Bug in :func:`read_hdf` returning unexpected records when filtering on categorical string columns using ``where`` parameter (:issue:`39189`)
 - Bug in :func:`read_sas` raising ``ValueError`` when ``datetimes`` were null (:issue:`39725`)
+- Bug in :func:`read_excel` not accepting ``skip_blank_lines`` argument (:issue:`39808`)
 
 Period
 ^^^^^^
diff --git a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
index 9ad589d4583c6..ed83522e5ae1f 100644
--- a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
+++ b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
@@ -204,6 +204,9 @@
     Detect missing value markers (empty strings and the value of na_values). In
     data without any NAs, passing na_filter=False can improve the performance
     of reading a large file.
+skip_blank_lines : bool, default True
+    If True, skip over blank lines in single-column spreadsheets rather than
+    interpreting as NaN values.
 verbose : bool, default False
     Indicate number of NA values placed in non-numeric columns.
 parse_dates : bool, list-like, or dict, default False
@@ -352,6 +355,7 @@ def read_excel(
     na_values=None,
     keep_default_na=True,
     na_filter=True,
+    skip_blank_lines=True,
     verbose=False,
     parse_dates=False,
     date_parser=None,
@@ -390,6 +394,7 @@ def read_excel(
             na_values=na_values,
             keep_default_na=keep_default_na,
             na_filter=na_filter,
+            skip_blank_lines=skip_blank_lines,
             verbose=verbose,
             parse_dates=parse_dates,
             date_parser=date_parser,
@@ -486,6 +491,7 @@ def parse(
         skiprows=None,
         nrows=None,
         na_values=None,
+        skip_blank_lines=True,
         verbose=False,
         parse_dates=False,
         date_parser=None,
@@ -598,6 +604,7 @@ def parse(
                     skiprows=skiprows,
                     nrows=nrows,
                     na_values=na_values,
+                    skip_blank_lines=skip_blank_lines,
                     parse_dates=parse_dates,
                     date_parser=date_parser,
                     thousands=thousands,
@@ -1166,6 +1173,7 @@ def parse(
         skiprows=None,
         nrows=None,
         na_values=None,
+        skip_blank_lines=True,
         parse_dates=False,
         date_parser=None,
         thousands=None,
@@ -1199,6 +1207,7 @@ def parse(
             skiprows=skiprows,
             nrows=nrows,
             na_values=na_values,
+            skip_blank_lines=skip_blank_lines,
             parse_dates=parse_dates,
             date_parser=date_parser,
             thousands=thousands,
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.ods b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.ods
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..df5fbcfaa0357
Binary files /dev/null and b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.ods differ
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xls b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xls
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..dcf2ebecded61
Binary files /dev/null and b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xls differ
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsb b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsb
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..9257d016c762a
Binary files /dev/null and b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsb differ
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsm b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsm
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..c249901ecc10e
Binary files /dev/null and b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsm differ
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsx b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsx
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000..2538e406d2e77
Binary files /dev/null and b/pandas/tests/io/data/excel/one_col_blank_line.xlsx differ
diff --git a/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py b/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
index 1c71666e88651..f12089702a268 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
@@ -1185,6 +1185,20 @@ def test_no_header_with_list_index_col(self, read_ext):
         )
         tm.assert_frame_equal(expected, result)
 
+    def test_one_col_skip_blank_line(self, read_ext):
+        file_name = "one_col_blank_line" + read_ext
+        data = [0.5, 1, 2]
+        expected = DataFrame(data, columns=["numbers"])
+        result = pd.read_excel(file_name)
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(expected, result)
+
+    def test_one_col_noskip_blank_line(self, read_ext):
+        file_name = "one_col_blank_line" + read_ext
+        data = [0.5, np.nan, 1, 2]
+        expected = DataFrame(data, columns=["numbers"])
+        result = pd.read_excel(file_name, skip_blank_lines=False)
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(expected, result)
+
 
 class TestExcelFileRead:
     @pytest.fixture(autouse=True)