Book picks similar to
The Hambledown Dream by Dean Mayes


romance
reviewed
fantasy
australian-authors

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.

Close to Home


Janet Gover - 2021
    She's rarely left its comforting embrace. She knows everyone in it; in fact, she's related to most of them. All she wants is to keep her family safe and the town running exactly the way it always has. Her way. But when an exotic French artist comes to town, her hold begins to weaken...Lucienne Chevalier, once the toast of Europe, has come to Nyringa after a tragic loss to hang up her sequins and create a place for her circus family to rest between tours. With her is Simon, her grandson, recovering from an injury so damaging he can no longer perform. Lucienne fears he'll never embrace a new future. That is, until she notices the chemistry between him and the new schoolteacher... All they need is a push.Both grande dames think they know what's best, but with equal amounts of stubbornness on both sides, peace looks unlikely. Then a relationship between Alice's rebellious great-niece and a teenage acrobat sets the two communities on a collision course. But when the bakery starts making patisseries over lamingtons, the battle lines are truly drawn...A story of community and family. Of the love that brings them together ... and the fears that would tear them apart.

An Invincible Summer


Mariah Stewart - 2021
    Now, on the occasion of her fortieth high school reunion, she returns to her hometown on the Massachusetts coast, picking up right where she left off with dear friends Lydia and Emma. But seeing Brett Crawford again stirs other emotions. Once, they were the town’s golden couple destined for one another. He shared Maggie’s dreams—and eventually, a shattering secret that drove them apart.Buying her old family home and resettling in Wyndham Beach means a chance to start over for Maggie and her two daughters, but it also means facing her rekindled feelings for her first love and finally confronting—and embracing—the past in ways she never thought possible. Maggie won’t be alone. With her family and friends around her, she can weather this stormy turning point in her life and open her heart to the future. As for that dream shared and lost years ago? If Maggie can forgive herself, it still might come true.

A Simple Mistake


Andrea Grigg - 2012
    Nick is now a famous celebrity and Lainey is the girl he left behind. As a member of a highly successful band and with anemerging acting career, Nick can have any girl he wants.Now he wants Lainey back.Despite Nick's promise to keep in touch when he left to seek fame and fortune, Lainey never heard from him. Now that time has passed, she has moved on from what she felt. Or has she?After discovering what kept them apart for so long, they tentatively rekindle their past romance. The feelings are just as strong as before but can Lainey accept Nick's lack of faith? And can their new relationship survive Lainey's secret?

The Dinner List


Rebecca Serle - 2018
    That’s what Audrey says. She states it with a little bit of an edge, her words just bordering on cursive. That’s the thing I think first. Not: Audrey Hepburn is at my birthday dinner, but Audrey Hepburn is annoyed.At one point or another, we’ve all been asked to name five people, living or dead, with whom we’d like to have dinner. Why do we choose the people we do? And what if that dinner was to actually happen? These are the questions Rebecca Serle contends within her utterly captivating novel, The Dinner List, a story imbued with the same delightful magical realism as One Day, and the life-changing romance of Me Before You.When Sabrina arrives at her thirtieth birthday dinner she finds at the table not just her best friend, but also three significant people from her past, and well, Audrey Hepburn. As the appetizers are served, wine poured, and dinner table conversation begins, it becomes clear that there’s a reason these six people have been gathered together.Delicious but never indulgent, sweet with just the right amount of bitter, The Dinner List is a romance for our times. Bon appetit.

Cure for the Common Breakup


Beth Kendrick - 2014
    Flight attendant Summer Benson lives by two rules: Don’t stay with the same man for too long and never stay in one place. She’s about to break rule number one by considering accepting her boyfriend’s proposal—then disaster strikes and her world is shattered in an instant. Summer heads to Black Dog Bay, where the locals welcome her. Even Hattie Huntington, the town’s oldest, richest, and meanest resident, likes her enough to give her a job. Then there’s Dutch Jansen, the rugged, stoic mayor, who’s the opposite of her type. She probably shouldn't be kissing him. She definitely shouldn't be falling in love. After a lifetime of globe-trotting, Summer has finally found a home. But Hattie has old scores to settle and a hidden agenda for her newest employee. Summer finds herself faced with an impossible choice: Leave Black Dog Bay behind forever, or stay with the ones she loves and cost them everything...

Escape


Barbara Delinsky - 2011
    Emily Aulenbach is thirty-two, a lawyer married to a lawyer, working in Manhattan. An idealist, she had once dreamed of representing victims of corporate abuse, but she spends her days in a cubicle talking on the phone with vic­tims of tainted bottled water—and she is on the bottler’s side. And it isn’t only work. It’s her sister, her friends, even her husband, James, with whom she doesn’t connect the way she used to. She doesn’t connect to much in her life, period, with the exception of three things—her computer, her BlackBerry, and her watch. Acting on impulse, Emily leaves work early one day, goes home, packs her bag, and takes off. Groping toward the future, uncharacteristically following her gut rather than her mind, she heads north toward a New Hampshire town tucked between mountains. She knows this town. During her college years, she spent a watershed summer here. Painful as it is to return, she knows that if she is to right her life, she has to start here.

Fireflies


Melissa Koberlein - 2013
    Things change when a close encounter of the third kind leaves a glowing mark on her shoulder, and a new boy shows up at school. A peculiar green glimmering in his eyes reminds her of fireflies, both captivating and scaring her right out of her boots. When he reveals that he's a host for alien symbiotes, it sends her running in the opposite direction…that is, until he catches her.Meanwhile…Will is entering yet another school midyear. He has all his usual problems: acclimate to a new school, deal with his assigned FBI agent, track a compatible human, all the while appearing the normal teenage boy. He can’t believe his luck when his search leads him to Marley, a girl more agile in the woods than in a mall. He reminds himself that he can’t let what happened to his last assignment happen in Pine Grove, not to her…

Sundays at Tiffany's


James Patterson - 2008
    Her mother, the powerful head of a Broadway theater company, has no time for her. She does have one friend-a handsome, comforting, funny man named Michael-but only she can see him. Years later, Jane is in her thirties and just as alone as ever. Then she meets Michael again-as handsome, smart and perfect as she remembers him to be. But not even Michael knows the reason they've really been reunited.SUNDAYS AT TIFFANY'S is a love story with an irresistible twist, a novel about the child inside all of us-and the boundary-crossing power of love.

My Name Is Memory


Ann Brashares - 2010
    Life after life, crossing continents and dynasties, he and Sophia (despite her changing name and form) have been drawn together-and he remembers it all. Daniel has "the memory", the ability to recall past lives and recognize souls of those he's previously known. It is a gift and a curse. For all the times that he and Sophia have been drawn together throughout history, they have also been torn painfully, fatally, apart. A love always too short.Interwoven through Sophia and Daniel's unfolding present day relationship are glimpses of their expansive history together. From 552 Asia Minor to 1918 England and 1972 Virginia, the two souls share a long and sometimes torturous path of seeking each other time and time again. But just when young Sophia (now "Lucy" in the present) finally begins to awaken to the secret of their shared past, to understand the true reason for the strength of their attraction, the mysterious force that has always torn them apart reappears. Ultimately, they must come to understand what stands in the way of their love if they are ever to spend a lifetime together.

The Next Always


Nora Roberts - 2011
    Now it’s getting a major facelift from the Montgomery brothers and their eccentric mother. Beckett is the architect of the family, and his social life consists mostly of talking shop over pizza and beer. But there’s another project he’s got his eye on: the girl he’s been waiting to kiss since he was fifteen.After losing her husband and returning to her hometown, Clare Brewster soon settles into her life as the mother of three young sons while running the town’s bookstore. Busy, with little time for romance, Clare is drawn across the street by Beckett’s transformation of the old inn, wanting to take a closer look . . . at the building and the man behind it.With the grand opening inching closer, Beckett’s happy to give Clare a private tour - one room at a time. It’s no first date, but these stolen moments are the beginning of something new - and open the door to the extraordinary adventure of what comes next . . .

The Five Year Plan


Jodi Gibson - 2021
    She’s moved in with her boyfriend Wil, and is waiting patiently for her father to retire so she can take over the running of the family café.But when her father blindsides her by handing the café to her older brother Nick, and she suspects Wil might be cheating on her, Demi’s five year plan crumbles like crostoli.Determined to get things back on track, Demi travels to Italy to learn more about her Italian heritage, and to give her and Wil some much needed space. And also in the hope that while she’s away, her father will come to his senses.But her travels don’t go to plan either. Long held family feuds, a love triangle from the past, and an unexpected new friend in Leo, all come together to make Demi question everything – especially her five year plan.Will Demi get her plan back on track?Or will she realise that sometimes fate has other ideas?The Five Year Plan is contemporary women’s fiction novel with a touch of humour and a lot of heart. It will appeal to readers who want to be whisked away from their day to day life and immersed in a feel-good story of food, travel, and romance.

Turning Back Time: Sweet and Wholesome with a Fun Matchmaking Twist (Crestfield Inn, #1)


Elsie Davis - 2020
    He’s intent on filling in the missing links on his family tree. When they both end up researching the early 1800s, will history get in the way of the future?All Sarah’s life, stories had been told—handed down from generation to generation. Captain Tremont had gone to his watery grave committing a crime…bootlegging. But a message discovered in her grandmother’s trunk addressed to her great-grandfather six times removed, leads Sarah to believe there is another explanation.Blake is delivering a load of antiques to the local B&B when a gorgeous woman just about knocks him off his feet—literally and figuratively. An antique lamp gets broken and the air is rife with tension, but when they meet again at the library, Blake offers to team up in their research efforts by way of apology. Strictly business of course.But as they wind their way through history, it would seem there are some strange things happening when the resident spirit gets involved. Will the truth bring them happiness or drive them apart forever?

What Nora Knew


Linda Yellin - 2014
    For the past four years Molly’s been on staff for an online magazine, covering all the wacky assignments. She’s snuck vibrators through security scanners, speed-dated undercover, danced with the Rockettes, and posed nude for a Soho art studio. Fearless in everything except love, Molly is now dating a forty-four-yearold chiropractor. He’s comfortable, but safe. When Molly is assigned to write a piece about New York City romance “in the style of Nora Ephron,” she flunks out big-time. She can’t recognize romance. And she can’t recognize the one man who can go one-on-one with her, the one man who gets her. But with wit, charm, whip-smart humor, and Nora Ephron’s romantic comedies, Molly learns to open her heart and suppress her cynicism in this bright, achingly funny novel.

Evenfall


Liz Michalski - 2011
    In death, he'll try to win back the one that mattered...Frank Wildermuth always regretted a mistake he made as a teenager: choosing Clara Murphy over her sister Gert. And like a true Murphy woman, Gert got on with her life, never admitting to heartbreak. Not even now, decades later, with Frank dead-dead, that is, but not quite gone. Now, Frank's niece, Andie Murphy, is back in town to settle his estate, and she sees that things have changed in Hartman, Connecticut. Aunt Gert still drives her crazy, but Cort, the wide-eyed farmboy she used to babysit, is all grown up-with a whole new definition for the word "sleepover." Even freakier are the whispers. Either Andie's losing her mind, or something she can't see is calling out to her-something that insists on putting right the past.