Book picks similar to
All We Never Knew by Elena Aitken


cheating
elena-aitken
heartbreaking
fiction

We Said Forever


Marie James - 2017
    Second chances are meant only for those that deserve them.Love isn’t enough to heal when you’ve shattered a heart.Love isn’t enough to make you forget.Love isn’t enough to make you look back when you’re supposed to be moving forward.Love just—isn’t enough.I broke Fallyn McIntyre, and in doing so I broke myself.Betrayal, addiction, and years separate us.I’m no longer the man I used to be.But I’m still not sure I’m man enough.

Kiss Me Like You Mean It


J.R. Rogue - 2018
    His kiss is mine. “The first time he saw me I was shattered glass, and he was a shadow. If I had stayed, he would have just faded away.”It’s strange how easy it is to tell our stories to a stranger’s eyes. The truth about Connor Stratford and I had always been a sad tale. Over ten years of chasing, tears, lies, vows, and leaving. Two people who never loved each other at the same time, but couldn’t let each other go.Now here I was telling our story over drinks midday in an airport bar with my old diary clutched in my hand. Telling some version of our story, anyway.I left him once with no goodbye. Now I was returning home to give him what he needed to move on.“It’s important. It’s what you’re thinking.”I knew what his message meant, sent in the middle of the night after I woke from a fever dream. He was finally ready, and so was I. I just needed to finally give him the kiss he begged for. The one that meant goodbye.

The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You


Amulya Malladi - 2019
    The best Zara store is in BCN (Barcelona, Spain). The best airport to buy whiskey at is ARN (Stockholm, Sweden). When stopping at CDG (Charles de Gaulle Airport, Paris), you must have a long layover because of those damn funiculars; and never forget that the international terminal in ORD (Chicago) has no food after ten in the evening. Airplanes, airports, and hotel lobby bars make Asmi feel just as much at home as her apartment in Laguna Beach does. A marketing director in a biotech company, Asmi rose through the corporate ranks and never really took the time to think about couple-hood. She has good friends, a terrific sister who lives close by, and a married on-again, off-again lover in Paris she sees while she travels around the world for work.But as Asmi reaches the big 4-0 and contemplates making some life choices; her boss announces he is retiring, and she is suddenly thrown into a corporate Hunger Games against her nemesis Scott Beauregard III to win a promotion.Worried that her inability to commit to a real relationship with a man is a personality flaw and afraid that she’s unqualified for the job she desperately wants, Asmi must learn to lean in to have the career and life she wants and deserves, without worrying about what society expects from her.

His Other House


Sarah Armstrong - 2015
    He'd always thought of it as a decisive abandonment of the truth. Instead, he realised, it was simply a matter of one word slipping into the place of another.'Dr Quinn Davidson and his wife Marianna have endured years of unsuccessful IVF and several miscarriages, and Quinn can't face another painful attempt to conceive. Marianna is desperate to be a mother and their marriage is feeling the strain. At a small-town practice a few hours from their home, Quinn meets Rachel, the daughter of one of his patients. Drawn to each other, it's not long before they find themselves in a passionate affair and Quinn realises he must choose between the two women. Then Marianna announces a surprise natural conception, news that will change the course of all their lives.Set in the lush Australian subtropics, this taut emotional drama poses questions about moral courage and accountability, and asks whether love means always telling the truth.

Justice, Book One


Lauren Landish - 2016
    Ass. B*tch.The daughter of a hitman, I take sh*t from no one, even if it's a guy that's six-foot-five and looks like the hulk.Only the biggest and strongest man can handle me, but little did I know he was under my nose my entire life.CarterPrideful. Patriotic. Protector.I take no prisoners. You mess with me, my family or my city, you're going down. I'm as hard as stone, as sharp as steel.But when it comes to my childhood friend Andrea, I might've just met my match.  Sexy and stubborn to boot, there's only one type of man that can handle a woman like her and do her body JUSTICE.

Tainted by Love


Gillian Jones - 2017
    We loved hard.But our love was tainted.My name is Trinity Adams.When I was twenty-seven, I fell in love with a boy.We loved fast. We loved hard.It’s too bad my blood was tainted. Warning: Not your traditional HEA. May contain emotional triggers for some. There will be things that you won't like and some you will, but I hope you have fun finding out!

No Safe Secret


Fern Michaels - 2016
    Married to Tanner, a top cosmetic dentist, she has a wonderful daughter finishing high school and twin stepsons from Tanner's first marriage. No one in her exclusive neighborhood in Goldenhills, Massachusetts, knows what living with the demanding Tanner is really like. They know even less about the life she left behind in Florida almost two decades ago. Back then, Molly was Maddy Carmichael, living with her twin brother and neglectful mother in a run-down trailer park amid the orange groves of Florida. After the terrible events of her high school prom night—and the act of vengeance that followed—she fled north and reinvented herself. But the veneer of Molly's polished existence is finally cracking. As secrets old and new are revealed, Molly must face painful truths and the choices she made in their wake—and find the strength to become the woman she once hoped to be.

A Most Desirable Marriage


Hilary Boyd - 2014
    Even after thirty years they have lots to say to each other, many interests in common and, until recently, a good sex life.But Lawrence seems wary and restless. Something’s wrong. Just how wrong, Jo is about to discover…Can they use their years of history–all the things they’ve shared–to overcome a devastating betrayal?

I Adopted My Mom at the Bus Station


Savannah Hendricks - 2020
    Having a fear of germs is inconvenient when you’re on a road-trip adventure. However, needing to know what it’s like to have a mom, and to finally see the beach means more than anything to an eleven-year-old.Some twenty years later, a man Sandy never wanted to see again shows up at her doorstep. When Sandy’s best friend places an ultimate life-changing decision in her hands, Sandy must venture back down the road, this time with the father she hates.Making these decisions will be much easier with Justin, a long-time friend, by Sandy’s side. Yet, Justin’s help only leads to continued mixed emotions Sandy has been fighting for some time.Sandy is searching for what she lost, but will she accept what she finds? A journey rich in history, the truth, and determining forgiveness with a touch of humor is the portrait of life.

Forever & Always


Jasinda Wilder - 2013
    Even if it’s just random stuff, nothing important, they’re important to me. Gramps is great, and I love working on the ranch.But…I’m lonely.I feel disconnected, like I’m no one, like I don’t belong anywhere. Like I’m just here until something else happens. I don’t even know what I want with my future. But your letters, they make me feel connected to something, to someone. I had a crush on you, when we first met. I thought you were beautiful. So beautiful. It was hard to think of anything else. Then camp ended and we never got together, and now all I have of you is these letters.S**t.I just told you I have a crush on you. HAD. Had a crush. Not sure what is anymore. A letter-crush? A literary love? That’s stupid. Sorry. I just have this rule with myself that I never throw away what I write and I always send it, so hopefully this doesn’t weird you out too much. I had a dream about you too. Same kind of thing. Us, in the darkness, together.Just us.And it was like you said, a memory turned into a dream, but a memory of something that’s never happened, but in the dream it felt so real, and it was more, I don’t even know, more RIGHT than anything I’ve ever felt, in life or in dreams. I wonder what it means that we both had the same dream about each other. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. You tell me.Cade----------------------------------------------------------------Cade,We’re pen pals. Maybe that’s all we’ll ever be. I don’t know. If we met IRL (in real life, in case you’re not familiar with the term) what would happen? And just FYI, the term you used, a literary love? It was beautiful. So beautiful. That term means something, between us now. We are literary loves. Lovers? I do love you, in some strange way. Knowing about you, in these letters, knowing your hurt and your joys, it means something so important to me, that I just can’t describe. I need your art, and your letters, and your literary love.If we never have anything else between us, I need this. I do. Maybe this letter will only complicate things, but like you I have a rule that I never erase or throw away what I’ve written and I always send it, no matter what I write in the letter. Your literary love,Ever

Dreams for Stones


Ann Warner - 2007
    It will take all the magic of old diaries and a children's story to heal these two. Caught in grief and guilt over his wife's death, English professor Alan Francini is determined never to feel that much pain again. He avoids new relationships and keeps even his best friend at arms' length. His major solace is his family's ranch south of Denver. Children's book editor Kathy Jamison has learned through a lifetime of separations and a broken engagement that letting go is easier than hanging on. Then she meets Alan, and for once, begins to believe a lasting relationship is possible. But Alan panics and pushes her away into the arms of his best friend. Now the emotions of three people are at stake as they struggle to find a way to transform their broken dreams into a foundation for a more hopeful future.

Arsen: A Broken Love Story


Mia Asher - 2013
    The other sets me on fire.One is my rock. The other is my kryptonite.I'm broken, lost, and disgusted with myself.But I can't stop. This is my story.My broken love story.

Slip of the Tongue


Jessica Hawkins - 2016
    Nathan Hunt has her coffee waiting every morning. He holds her hand until the last second. He worships the Manhattan sidewalk she walks on. Until one day, he just…stops. And Sadie finds herself in the last place she ever expected to be. Lonely in her marriage.When rugged and sexy Finn Cohen moves into the apartment across the hall, he and Sadie share an immediate spark. Finn reveals dreams for a different life. Sadie wants to save her marriage. Their secrets should keep them apart, not ignite a blistering affair. But while Sadie’s marriage runs colder by the day, she and Finn burn hotter.Her husband doesn’t want her anymore.The man next door would give up everything to have her.Slip of the Tongue is a standalone contemporary romance. The second book in the series, The First Taste, is a standalone about a different couple.

Sins of Sevin


Penelope Ward - 2015
     What happens when the one you want is the only one you can’t have? My name is Sevin. Homeschooled and sheltered by my ultra-religious family, I was always taught that lust was a sin. Elle was the girl who’d been carefully chosen for me. After a long-distance courtship, I’d be moving into her family’s guesthouse so that we could get to know each other in the months before the wedding. Boundaries were set: no inappropriate touching, no kissing, no sex before marriage. I’d accepted those rules and my fate. Until I met the one I wanted to sin with. That was when restraint became a problem…especially since THE ONE wasn’t Elle. It was her sister, Evangeline. You know what they say about best laid plans. My name is Sevin, and I have sinned. **Told in alternating points of view, Sins of Sevin is a full-length standalone novel. Contains graphic sexual content and harsh language. Only appropriate for adult readers age 18+.

The Ingredients of Us


Jennifer Gold - 2019
    But when she discovers her husband’s infidelity, she doesn’t know what to make of it. Jam, maybe? Definitely jam.Fed up with the stale crumbs of her marriage, Elle revisits past recipes and the events that inspired them. A recipe for scones reminds her of her father’s death, cinnamon rolls signify the problematic courtship with her husband, and a batch of chocolate cookies casts Elle in a less-than-flattering light. Looking back, Elle soon realizes that some ingredients were missing all along.After confronting her husband, Elle indulges her sweet tooth in other ways, including a rebound that just leaves her more confused. As secrets from the past collide with the conflicts of the present, Elle struggles to manage her bakery business and maintain the relationships most important to her. In piecing her life back together, will Elle learn to take the bitter with the sweet?