Book picks similar to
Love Potions by Christina Jones
chick-lit
romance
magic
fantasy
Your Perfect Life
Liz Fenton - 2014
While workaholic Casey rubs elbows with celebrities daily as the host of Gossip TV and comes home nightly to an empty apartment, stay-at-home mom Rachel juggles an “oops” baby, two fiery teenagers, and a husband who barely seems the man she fell in love with two decades before. After an argument at their twentieth high school reunion, Casey and Rachel throw back shots to get the night back on track. Instead, they get a life-changing hangover.Waking up in each other’s bodies the next morning, they must figure out how to navigate their altered realities. Rachel is forced to confront the reason she gave up her broadcasting dreams when she got pregnant in college, and Casey finally steps out of the spotlight to face the truth about why she’s alone. And they soon discover that they don’t know themselves—or their best friend—nearly as well as they thought they did.Liz Fenton and Lisa Steinke bring humor and heart to every page of this novel that is sure to please fans of In Her Shoes and The Opposite of Me. Your Perfect Life is a story about two very different women, what they didn’t know about each other, and how, by switching lives, they each learn to appreciate their own.
The Summer of Impossible Things
Rowan Coleman - 2017
Something she’s only prepared to reveal after her death. Now Luna and her sister have a chance to go back to their mother’s birthplace and settle her affairs. But in Brooklyn they find more questions than answers, until something impossible – magical – happens to Luna, and she meets her mother as a young woman back in the summer of 1977. At first Luna’s thinks she’s going crazy, but if she can truly travel back in time, she can change things. But in doing anything – everything – to save her mother’s life, will she have to sacrifice her own?
The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe
Mary Simses - 2013
Ellen leaves Manhattan and her Kennedy-esque fiance for Beacon, Maine. What should be a one-day trip is quickly complicated when she almost drowns in the chilly bay and is saved by a local carpenter. The rescue turns Ellen into something of a local celebrity, which may or may not help her unravel the past her grandmother labored to keep hidden. As she learns about her grandmother and herself, it becomes clear that a 24-hour visit to Beacon may never be enough. The Irresistible Blueberry Bakeshop & Cafe is a warm and delicious debut about the power of a simpler life.
Between the Lines
Jodi Picoult - 2012
Between the Lines may be a fairy tale, but it feels real. Prince Oliver is brave, adventurous, and loving. He really speaks to Delilah.And then one day Oliver actually speaks to her. Turns out, Oliver is more than a one-dimensional storybook prince. He’s a restless teen who feels trapped by his literary existence and hates that his entire life is predetermined. He’s sure there’s more for him out there in the real world, and Delilah might just be his key to freedom.A romantic and charming story, this companion novel to Off the Page will make every reader believe in the fantastical power of fairy tales.
Sorry Not Sorry
Sophie Ranald - 2019
I scraped the last dregs of Caramel Chew Chew ice cream out of the bottom of the tub with my finger and licked it. It left a sticky smear on my phone’s screen when I typed into Google, “How to find love, sex and happiness.” Charlotte has always been a good girl. She sorts her paper from her plastic. She eats her greens (even Spirulina, whatever that is). Boozy brunches with her best friends on the third Sunday of every month are about as bad as she gets. But being good is getting boring… Charlotte’s not just stuck in a rut – she’s buried in it up to her chin. The only company she has in bed is the back catalogue of Netflix and falling in love feels like the stuff of fairy tales. So when she stumbles across a popular podcast, Sorry Not Sorry, which challenges women to embrace their inner bad girl, she jumps at the chance to shake things up. Old Charlotte would never ask for a stranger’s number, go on a blind date or buy lacy lingerie… But New Charlotte is waving goodbye to her comfort zone (with a side order of margaritas). And it turns out that good things happen to bad girls, as Charlotte finally finds her Mr Right – or so she thinks… Is falling in love too tough a challenge even for Charlotte? Fans of Sophie Kinsella, Mhairi McFarlane and Matt Dunn will love this fabulously feel-good novel that will make you laugh till you cry and leave you living life to the full, margarita in hand!
The Dirty Book Club
Lisi Harrison - 2017
M.J. Stark’s life is picture-perfect—she has her dream job as a magazine editor, a sexy doctor boyfriend, and a glamorous life in New York City. But behind her success, there is a debilitating sense of loneliness. So when her boss betrays her and her boyfriend offers her a completely new life in California, she trades her cashmere for caftans and gives it a try. Once there, M.J. is left to fend for herself in a small beach town, with only the company of her elderly neighbor, Gloria, and an ocean that won’t shut up. One afternoon, M.J. discovers that Gloria has suddenly moved to Paris with her friends to honor a fifty-year-old pact. And in lieu of a goodbye, she’s left a mysterious invitation to a secret club—one that only reads erotic books. Curious, M.J. accepts and meets the three other hand-selected club members. As they bond over naughty bestsellers and the shocking letters they inherited from the original club members, the four strangers start to divulge the intimate details of their own lives… and as they open up, they learn that friendship might just be the key to rewriting their own stories: all they needed was to find each other first.
Two by Two
Nicholas Sparks - 2016
He is living the dream, and his marriage to the bewitching Vivian is the center of that. But underneath the shiny surface of this perfect existence, fault lines are beginning to appear...and no one is more surprised than Russ when he finds every aspect of the life he took for granted turned upside down. In a matter of months, Russ finds himself without a job or wife, caring for his young daughter while struggling to adapt to a new and baffling reality. Throwing himself into the wilderness of single parenting, Russ embarks on a journey at once terrifying and rewarding—one that will test his abilities and his emotional resources beyond anything he ever imagined.
The Night Garden
Lisa Van Allen - 2014
Local legend says that a visitor can gain answers to life’s most difficult problems simply by walking through its lush corridors. Yet the labyrinth has never helped Olivia Pennywort, the garden’s beautiful and enigmatic caretaker. She has spent her entire life on her family’s land, harboring a secret that forces her to keep everyone at arm’s length. But when her childhood best friend, Sam Van Winkle, returns to the valley, Olivia begins to question her safe, isolated world and wonders if she at last has the courage to let someone in. As she and Sam reconnect, Olivia faces a difficult question: Is the garden maze that she has nurtured all of her life a safe haven or a prison?
If This is Paradise, I Want My Money Back
Claudia Carroll - 2009
Namely that she's made a complete mess of her short time on Earth, and don't even get her started on the five precious dating years she's just wasted on the worthless, faithless James Kane.But after a quick peek at the afterlife, she decides that it's not all it's cracked up to be either. Kind of like a big retirement home in the sky, with an awful lot of bingo and bridge and absolutely no sign of Elvis/Princess Di/Kurt Cobain or anyone it would actually be nice to spend eternity with. So when Charlotte is offered a chance to go back to Earth, this time as a bonafide angel, she jumps at it.But there's a catch. The person she's assigned to watch over is . . . a certain James Kane. Which is where the fun really starts. Well, just because she's passed on doesn't necessarily mean she's moved on, does it?
Love Fortunes and Other Disasters
Kimberly Karalius - 2015
After all, generations of Duprees have successfully followed the (100% accurate!) love fortunes from Zita’s famous Love Charms Shop to happily marry their high school sweethearts. It’s a tradition. So she is both stunned and devastated when her fortune states that she will NEVER find love.Fortunately, Fallon isn’t the only student with a terrible love fortune, and a rebellion is brewing. Fallon is determined to take control of her own fate—even if it means working with a notorious heartbreaker like Sebastian.Will Fallon and Sebastian be able to overthrow Zita’s tyranny and fall in love?
Pack Up the Moon
Anna McPartlin - 2006
But Can She Find The Courage To Live It?Emma is twenty-six, pretty, intelligent, and happily living with her childhood sweetheart John in a cute little Dublin apartment. Her biggest problem is that her mother won't stop nagging her to get married already. Emma and John feel like the perfect couple, their future alive with possibilities. But out of the blue, a tragedy throws her life into disarray, and Emma is suddenly, incomprehensibly, alone. As she emerges from grief, Emma has to find a whole new way of living, and her loyal friends rally round in an attempt to help. Clodagh, Emma's lifelong friend, with whom she's shared everything from mud pies to dating disasters. Anne and Richard, more-or-less happily married and debating a move to the country. Emma's brother Noel, the young Catholic priest, finding his own faith tested even as he tries to comfort Emma. Sean, the gorgeous bad boy of a thousand one-night stands, uncomfortably aware of his and Emma's growing connection. Witty, acerbic, and sometimes downright shocking, Emma documents the stories of her friends and her own recovery from grief with a candor that engages the reader from the very first page. With an amazing insight into the power of friendship and a wry, irreverent humor that considers no subject off-limits, talented new Irish writer Anna McPartlin tells a heartwarming story of the courage it takes to move past loss and learn to live.
Batter Up
Robyn Neeley - 2014
A delicious premonition she shares every Monday evening with the bachelors of Buttermilk Falls as they gather at the Sugar Spoon bakery for Batter Up night. Investigative reporter Jason Levine just found himself as the man candy for a bachelorette party in Las Vegas. Roped into attending the Vegas nuptials, was he hearing things when the groom shares that the only reason he’s getting married is because a small town baker conjured up the name of his soulmate in her cake batter? Sparks fly when Jason tries to expose Emma as a fraud, but reality and logic go out the window as he begins to fall under her spell.
Spellbook of the Lost and Found
Moïra Fowley-Doyle - 2017
It starts with simple items like hair clips and jewellery, but soon it’s clear that Rose has lost something bigger; something she won’t talk about.Then Olive meets three wild, mysterious strangers: Ivy, Hazel and Rowan. Like Rose, they’re mourning losses - and holding tight to secrets.When they discover the ancient spellbook, full of hand-inked charms to conjure back lost things, they realise it might be their chance to set everything right. Unless it’s leading them towards secrets that were never meant to be found . . .
Blind Date
Emma Hart - 2015
He’s temptation personified, and his best friend is definitely his cock. Carter Hughes gave me a taste of my own medicine. He wham, bam, thank you ma’amed me into oblivion, and I hell yes, oh God, right there’d him into paradise. I thought that would be the end—until my mother’s double booking for a consultation winds me right back up at the place I swore I’d never go again. Now I’m fighting for an interior design contract I don’t even want... Just to make a point. If I get it, the date won’t be the devil. Carter Hughes will be. (Disclaimer: BLIND DATE was originally published as a short story in the ONE anthology. It has now been expanded into a longish novella, approx. 47k words.)
The Love That Split the World
Emily Henry - 2016
Natalie’s last summer in her small Kentucky hometown is off to a magical start... until she starts seeing the “wrong things.” They’re just momentary glimpses at first—her front door is red instead of its usual green, there’s a pre-school where the garden store should be. But then her whole town disappears for hours, fading away into rolling hills and grazing buffalo, and Nat knows something isn’t right. That’s when she gets a visit from the kind but mysterious apparition she calls “Grandmother,” who tells her: “You have three months to save him.” The next night, under the stadium lights of the high school football field, she meets a beautiful boy named Beau, and it’s as if time just stops and nothing exists. Nothing, except Natalie and Beau. Emily Henry’s stunning debut novel is Friday Night Lights meets The Time Traveler’s Wife, and perfectly captures those bittersweet months after high school, when we dream not only of the future, but of all the roads and paths we’ve left untaken.