Book picks similar to
In the Wake of Wanting by Lori L. Otto


college
romance
new-adult
contemporary-romance

Love Like Crazy


Megan Squires - 2014
    She’s not waiting on the handsome prince with his white horse to come to her rescue. But even though she’s not waiting on it, that doesn’t stop nineteen-year-old Lincoln Ross from driving straight into her heart with his teal and white campervan and his too tall stature and perpetually goofy grin.It’s difficult to believe in a happily ever after when a happy now is quite hard to find. But Lincoln gives Eppie hope that despite the odds, a true and unconditional love might actually be out there. A revised fairytale. A new kind of love story.But then again, that might just be plain crazy.(Love Like Crazy is an upper YA novel.)

Love Surfaced


Michelle Lynn - 2015
    We stayed on our designated sides of the relationship circle. Ignoring swarming butterflies.Brushing off skipped heartbeats.Settling on lingering stares.Here’s the secret … a hand extended over that invisible line once, exponentially changing the equation. I was convinced we could make our relationship work until Tanner broke the trust he embedded in me from the age of seven. One deceit of mega proportions and the relationship we built for that short month vanished. I swore never to speak to him again and it’s worked. Until now—two years later, when my brother’s wedding places me face-to-face with the best man—Tanner McCain. Leaving one equation to be solved. Can love surface twice?

Stripped


Brooklyn Skye - 2013
    I look away, down the rutted parking lot.“Don’t... waste those words on me.”He touches my cheek. “You just need someone to show you.”“No.” I ease back again. “I don’t. So please, Torrin, stop trying to swoop in and save me. I don’t need saving.” College freshman, Quinn Montgomery, will do anything to avoid the mistake her sister made — killing herself over a boy. But when she is forced into nude modeling at a local college to support her family after a bankruptcy, she begins to crack, just enough to let Torrin, the university’s top varsity oarsman, see that the real Quinn is not as feisty and unapproachable as she wants everyone to think. But letting someone in comes at a steep cost and, it turns out, Torrin is connected to Quinn’s family in more ways than she could ever imagine.

Life's A Cappella


Yessi Smith - 2013
    How I lived without regrets. With constant laughter. Without any tears. I want to tell you how I lived each moment to the fullest. How each breath I took was fresh and full of life. With eagerness. Without any fear.I want to tell you all of that, but then my story would be masked with lies and not worth telling.My life didn’t start until I left my past. And I left everything. My mother, my friends, my name.My new name, the name everyone knows me by is Erin Lewis.Four years after finding the courage to leave her hometown in Alabama, Erin is finally happy with where her life has led her. Not only is she secure in her environment, but the relationships she has formed center her, making her forget how damaged she once was. Before she can fully settle into her new life, her past crashes into her present, unraveling a set of events that destroy the very foundation she has built her new life on.

How to Say Goodbye


Amber Lin - 2014
    She doesn’t even know how to hug. Everyone thinks she’s smart, but straight A's are way easier than making friends. Then she meets Dane, a golden-haired surfer whose easy charm and hot touch teach her what she longs to know.Dane lives for the salty breeze and a sweet wave, because that’s all he has. He’s been on the streets since he was fourteen. A drifter. Homeless. Then he meets Amy. Smart and accomplished, she’s everything he’s not. He wants to be the sort of man who deserves her.Except that means facing down his past—and that past might very well swallow them both.

Skipping Stones


J.B. McGee - 2013
    Now available**They say there are five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance.Not everyone will grieve in this order, nor will everyone go through every stage. It’s during the stage of denial when Alex Hart meets Andrew Foster. He takes her one-step closer to acceptance: the stage when new, meaningful relationships are formed. The stage when the realization occurs that this is now the new state of normal.Just when Alex thinks she is on her way to healing, she enters the bargaining phase. That’s the phase where you wonder what you could have done differently. You wonder “what if?” Specifically, what if the ones you loved hadn’t left you?Leaving…this is what makes heading off to war so difficult and frightening for Alex. She knows all too well what it’s like to be the one on the losing end of life, which is why she’s made it her personal mission in life to save as many lives as possible. The extreme high she gets from treating trauma victims turns into Alex’s own form of therapy, or so she thinks.When faced with her world being turned upside down, Alex may just find that her true therapy is in the one who has always saved her.

Unfamiliar


Erica Cope - 2014
    From the way she wears her hair, to dating her childhood friend-turned high school sweetheart--she sticks with what she knows, and she’s convinced herself that this is what makes her happy. Chase Lancaster doesn’t play by the rules. He’s a classically trained pianist who rocks out in a punk rock band every weekend, and isn’t afraid of taking chances.When they are assigned to co-write a song for their college music class, Hailey can’t imagine anyone she has anything less in common with than Chase. She is a sweater-wearing, neat freak, and he is disheveled and rough around the edges. As they spend time together, they both find a place in each other’s lives—a place where they challenge each other to be different and to embrace the unfamiliar. Hailey never planned for a Chase Lancaster in her life, and she is about to find out that this walking contradiction will change her forever.

Luck of Love


Ashley Poch - 2013
    Starting a new life and moving forward never sounded so good. Living carefree with her best friend in Ocean City New Jersey gave her the freedom she had always hoped for. But sometimes life isn’t so carefree.When Blake finds herself torn between the affections of two men, emotions that have been buried for years will be exposed. Derrick, a powerful CEO of a popular casino resort, instantly captivates her. Being drawn into his domineering passion, she bares herself to him in a way she least expected. With Landon, a successful attorney, she can be someone new; someone free from her haunting past. Each man evokes a different side of Blake. As both relationships grow stronger, walls will slowly begin to crack.What will happen when the past slowly creeps its way into the present?With two worlds filled with secrets and lies, it’s only a matter of time before they crash and truths are revealed.

Fate


Elizabeth Reyes - 2013
    But this wasn’t just any guy. This was the exciting, sexy as sin, way out of her league black sheep of his family--Vincent Moreno. Even more surprising, this heart-stopping bad boy seemed interested in her. Fate always had a way of interfering in Vince’s best-laid plans. His forced attendance to his annoyingly perfect cousin’s baby shower was no different. He was sure to be bored out of his skull, but instead, he met sweet little Rosie Zendejas. What begins as a unlikely friendship between two very different people turns into one of the most intense and passionate relationships that neither ever saw coming. But just like it had so many times in Vince’s troubled past, Fate steps in once again, threatening to take away the one thing he can’t seem to even breathe without now—Rose. Mature YA - New Adult. Fate is a Moreno Brothers spinoff series. All books in the series are stand alone and can be read separately without the need to read the others in the series.

Catch My Fall


Ella Fox - 2013
    In need of a fresh start, she settles into a new town and begins to make a new life. Tristan Chamberlain has always kept girls at arm's length and he has no intention of changing. He’s caring, smart, handsome, but he’s also dealing with a lifetime of guilt that’s slowly but surely destroying him.Sometimes what you run from is the one thing that will save you.Separately, they’re both free-falling. Together, they’re about to find that love can create the strongest safety net of all.

Where I End and You Begin


Andra Brynn - 2013
    It may tangle, it may knot, it may stretch or fray, but it will never break. It is a future as indelible as the past.I hope that isn't true. I pity anyone destined to meet me.----For Bianca Ray, the past is always catching up, one way or another. Now in her third semester at college, it's doing it again. Too much drinking has led to plummeting grades and rising absences, putting her scholarships in peril. When she makes it clear that she needs help—all over the floor of her history class—she’s given one last chance to shape up: seek therapy and bring her grades up by the end of the semester, or she’s out.Enter Catholic seminarian Daniel McGuire. The last thing Bianca wants is an aspiring priest to counsel her on how to live her life, but the handsome graduate student is different from the holy rollers she fled from at home. Gentle and unobtrusive, he helps her pick up the pieces and find a new way to live: not running from the past, but facing it head on. But opening up her heart to release the pain means that something else can come in. As Bianca and Daniel grow closer, their relationship moves onto dangerous ground and the fragile courage Bianca has built up threatens to fail her. Can she exorcise the ghosts of her past, or will they catch hold and drag her down where not even Daniel can reach her?

Kiss This


Hadley Quinn - 2013
    When she meets Teague, their attraction to one another is off the charts, and for the first time in two years, she wants to disregard her rule. But Camryn makes a bet that he can't go just one week without kissing her. She's protecting her own fragile heart, but her wit and smart mouth end up driving Teague crazy. When Teague is equally skilled at her challenge, their friendship turns complicated. He's not at all what she assumed, and he makes her feel things she never expected to feel. But sharing her true reasons for the no-kiss bet hurts too much and she keeps him in the dark. Teague has his own secrets to hide, starting with his last name. It's the reason he left town--to lick his wounds until he can piece his life back together. His time with Camryn proves that it might actually be possible, but with the threat of his family and his past ruining all that he's finally gained, can he really take that risk again?Loving might be easy; learning to trust again could be too difficult to achieve...

After the Sky Fell Down


Megan Nugen Isbell - 2012
    But when tragedy strikes, she is left to pick up the pieces of her now shattered life. As she tries to make sense of her new reality, life takes another startling turn, leading her down a path she never imagined. Through it all she finds comfort in a surprising companion who becomes her best friend and rock as she tries to rebuild her life. But when she unexpectedly meets someone, whose kindness and understanding offers her a chance at a fresh start, she struggles to move forward, afraid to leave her past behind. Will she be able to move on and find peace with her past in order to discover her future or will she let her past condemn her to a life of loneliness, unable to let go of a life that can never be?

Without You


Kelly Elliott - 2014
    Getting caught prematurely causes them to admit their love for each other to their parents. One decision made by Alex's father changes her entire world, shattering her plans for the future. Alex always thought Will was the very air she breathed, but life has a way of causing doubts for the one thing she thought was absolute…their love. Can Will's promise to Alex be enough for her to hold on to or will she find herself moving down a different path that she never imagined for herself? Without You is book one in the Love Wanted in Texas series.

One & Only


Viv Daniels - 2013
    Tess McMann lives her life according to the secrets she's sworn to keep: the father who won't acknowledge her, the sister who doesn't know she exists, and the mother who's content playing mistress to a prominent businessman. When she meets the distractingly cute Dylan Kingsley at a prestigious summer program and falls in love, Tess allows herself to imagine a life beyond these secrets. But when summer ends, so does their relationship -- Dylan heads off to Canton College while Tess enrolls at the state university. One love they can't ignore... Two years later, a scholarship brings Tess to Canton and back into Dylan's life. Their attraction is as strong as ever, but Dylan has a girlfriend…who also happens to be Tess's legitimate half-sister. Tess refuses to follow in her mother's footsteps, which leaves her only one choice: break the rules she’s always followed, or allow Dylan to slip away for a second time. ...And only one chance to get things right.