diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst
index fb8eecdaa275e..be3fce6f8c5d0 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v1.3.0.rst
@@ -533,6 +533,7 @@ 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` dropping empty values from single-column spreadsheets (:issue:`39808`)
 
 Period
 ^^^^^^
diff --git a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
index 9ad589d4583c6..2bf70a18e810f 100644
--- a/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
+++ b/pandas/io/excel/_base.py
@@ -598,6 +598,7 @@ def parse(
                     skiprows=skiprows,
                     nrows=nrows,
                     na_values=na_values,
+                    skip_blank_lines=False,  # GH 39808
                     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
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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..cdcbc502b90d9 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/io/excel/test_readers.py
@@ -1185,6 +1185,14 @@ def test_no_header_with_list_index_col(self, read_ext):
         )
         tm.assert_frame_equal(expected, result)
 
+    def test_one_col_noskip_blank_line(self, read_ext):
+        # GH 39808
+        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)
+        tm.assert_frame_equal(result, expected)
+
 
 class TestExcelFileRead:
     @pytest.fixture(autouse=True)