Book picks similar to
Once an Ever After by Ashley Poston


once-upon-a-con
retellings
romance
short-stories

Cole… Meet Ali


Gena Showalter - 2014
    Published on Gena Showalter's blogI promised to rewrite the scene where Ali and Cole meet in Alice in Zombieland from Cole's point of view, and today I'm delivering.Are you curious to know what thoughts rolled through Cole's head when he first met Ali? Read on!

Ignite


Lily Paradis - 2014
    She’s used to living life for one person: herself. That is, until another family tragedy thrusts three children into her care and uproots her life in ways she could never imagine. Lauren's first instinct is to run, until she meets their striking, mysterious neighbor Dean Powell. Their immediate chemistry and his connection with her late father just might be enough to keep her in town long enough to uncover pieces of her past that she never had answers to. Dean’s shady past and her reluctance to trust him could cost her the life she's always been searching for, but will she run back to her old life? Or will she choose to stay and live the life her father always imagined for her?

Mistakes Were Made


Meryl Wilsner
    Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around and her friend drags her along to meet her mom—the hot, older woman Cassie slept with.Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior. In her defense, she hadn’t known Cassie was a student when they'd met. To make things worse, Erin’s daughter brings Cassie to breakfast the next morning. And despite Erin's better judgement—how could sleeping with your daughter’s friend be anything but bad?—she and Cassie get along in the day just as well as they did last night.What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost?

In Her Wake


K.A. Tucker - 2014
    Until one night when he makes a fatal, wrong decision…and loses everything.When a drunken night out at a Michigan State college party results in the death of six people, Cole must come to terms with his part in the tragedy. Normally, he’d be able to lean on his best friends—the ones who have been in his life since he could barely walk. Only, they’re gone. Worse, there’s the shattered body of a sixteen-year-old girl lying somewhere in a hospital bed, her entire life ripped from her because of a case of beer and a set of keys.Everyone assures him that they know it wasn’t intentional, and yet he can’t ignore the weight of their gazes, the whispers behind his back. Nor can he shake the all-consuming guilt he feels every time he thinks of that girl who won’t so much as allow him near her hospital room to apologize. As the months go by and the shame and loneliness festers, Cole begins to lose his grip on what once was important—college, his girlfriend, his future. His life. It’s not until Cole hits rock-bottom that he can begin to see another way out of his personal hell: forgiveness.And there’s only one person who can give that to him…

Wake the Bones


Elizabeth Kilcoyne
    The woods are shifting, the soil is dead under her hands, and her bone pile just stood up and walked away.After dropping out of college, all she wanted was to resume her life as a tobacco hand and taxidermist and try not to think about the boy she can’t help but love. Instead, a devil from her past has returned to court her, as he did her late mother years earlier. Now, Laurel must unravel her mother’s terrifying legacy and tap into her own innate magic before her future and the fate of everyone she loves is doomed.

Stay with Me


Nicole Fiorina - 2019
    Mia didn’t care. She needed feelings to care. She’d keep her head down, ignore everyone, and make it through the next two years effortlessly. Though Mia never anticipated Ollie Masters.With green eyes, tattoos, and the voice of a poet, she is quickly drawn to him. But because of her sociopath tendencies, she knows it could only end in one of two ways. Either he will be the one to free her from her past, or she will be the one to destroy him.

Forged


Jennifer Rush - 2013
    When Dani O'Brien entered the Branch, she planned to trade her freedom so that her family could have a better life. But joining up with the mysterious organization is more than she bargained for. Branch head Connor watches over her closely--too closely. The training is brutal, the experiments are secret, and the missions promise to be anything but ordinary. The only thing getting Dani through each day is the hope that she'll run into Sam--a young man, about her age, who wears the world on his shoulders.Find out how it all began in this short-story prequel to Jennifer Rush's thrilling and suspenseful Altered series.

Friends & Forever


J.M. Darhower - 2014
    Friends:One moment.One wrong choice.That was all it took to destroy a friendship.*takes place before Sempre*Forever:Halloween.With a three year old.'Nuff said.*takes place after Sempre: Redemption*

Rich Boys Don't Have Hearts


R. Scarlett
    Gabe's book.1st Book of American GodsComing 2019The rich, the corrupted, the dangerous.He was all of them.

The Mirror & the Maze


Renée Ahdieh - 2016
    With smoke billowing, fires blazing and his people fleeing, Khalid races back to defend his city, and protect his queen. But Khalid is too late to do either. He and his men arrive to find the city in ruins, nothing but a maze of destruction, and Shahrzad is gone. But who could have wrought such devastation? Khalid fears he may already know the answer, the price of choosing love over the people of Rey all too evident.

Naughty Brits


Sarah MacLean - 2020
    But their lazy days and lush nights aren’t as far from the spotlight as Lilah thinks, and Max will have to reveal the truth if he is going to convince Lilah that some dukes are worth the risk.Sophie Jordan - Better with You:When the author of a controversial self-help book starts receiving threats, she has no choice but to accept a bodyguard on her UK book tour. Vee Mathers is famous for asserting that women don’t need men—especially for sex!—but at security specialist Luca Moretti’s first, burning touch, she starts to think she might need to revise her theory...Louisa Edwards - Not a Bad Boy:Writer Mallory Pritchard moved to London for research—and to get over a bad breakup. When she (literally) runs into Hollywood’s hottest action hero, Ian Hale, at a dog park, she realizes her heart isn’t as broken as she thought! Ian is even more devastatingly sexy in person, which makes Mallory wonder...is there room for a regular girl in his glamorous movie-star world?Tessa Gratton - Songbird:Former American soldier Daniel Kelly’s mission is simple: close the deal to buy a Welsh pub on behalf of his family’s corporation, and survive another anniversary of the worst day of his service. Too bad that from the moment he sees the pub’s owner, Elspeth Gwenlan is the only thing Daniel wants to conquer—even if it means lying to her about his agenda. Sierra Simone - Supplicant:After being left at the altar by her cold and brilliant professor, Church Cason, Charlotte Tenpenny had to leave school to take care of her younger brother. But a fateful night brings Church—and his delicious, drugging kisses—back into Charlotte's life. And it stirs up a reckoning years in the making . . .

Long Story Short


Serena Kaylor
    She always thought the hardest part would be getting in, not convincing her parents to let her go. But while math has always made sense to Beatrice, making friends is a problem she hasn’t been able to solve, so her parents are worried about sending her halfway across the world. The compromise: the Connecticut Shakespearean Summer Academy and a detailed list of teenage milestones to check off. She has six weeks to show her parents she can pull off the role of "normal" teenager and won't spend the rest of her life hiding in a library.Unfortunately, hearts and hormones don't follow any rules, and there is no equation for teenage interactions. When she's adopted by a group of eclectic theater kids, and immediately makes an enemy of the popular—and, annoyingly gorgeous—British son of the camp founders, she realizes that relationships are trickier than calculus. With her future on the line, this girl genius stumbles through illicit parties, double dog dares, and more than your fair share of Shakespeare. But before the final curtain falls, will Beatrice realize that there’s more to life than she can find in the pages of a book?In this sparkling debut from Serena Kaylor, Long Story Short is a YA rom-com about a homeschooled math genius who finds herself out of her element at a theater summer camp and learns that life—and love—can’t be lived by the (text)book.

Diary of the White Witch


Melissa de la Cruz - 2012
    The exciting prequel to the Witches of East End series from Blue Bloods author, Melissa de la Cruz.

Right Where I Left You


Julian WintersJulian Winters - 2022
    His last before heading off to college in the fall where he won’t have his best friend, Diego. Where—despite his social anxiety—he’ll be left to make friends on his own. Knowing his time with Diego is limited, Isaac enacts a foolproof plan: snatch up a pair of badges for the epic comic convention, Legends Con, and attend his first ever Teen Pride. Just him and Diego. The way it should be. But when an unexpected run-in with Davi—Isaac’s old crush—distracts him the day tickets go on sale, suddenly he’s two badges short of a perfect summer. Even worse, now he’s left making it up to Diego by hanging with him and his gamer buddies. Decidedly NOT part of the original plan. It’s not all bad, though. Some of Diego’s friends turn out to be pretty cool, and when things with Davi start heating up, Isaac is almost able to forget about his Legends Con blunder. Almost. Because then Diego finds out what really happened that day with Davi, and their friendship lands on thin ice. Isaac assumes he’s upset about missing the convention, but could Diego have other reasons for avoiding Isaac?

As Seen On TV


Meredith Schorr
    If she's learned anything from made-for-TV romance movies, it's that she'll find love in a small town - the kind with harvest festivals, delightful but quirky characters, and scores of delectable single dudes. So when a big-city real estate magnate targets tiny Pleasant Hollow for development, Adi knows she's found the perfect story - one that will earn her a position at a coveted online magazine, so she can finally start adulting for real...and maybe even find her dream man in the process.Only Pleasant Hollow isn't exactly "pleasant." There's no charming bakery, no quaint seasonal festivals, and the residents are more ambivalent than welcoming. The only upside is Finn Adams, who's more mouthwatering than the homemade cherry pie Adi can't seem to find - even if he does work for the company she'd hoped to bring down. Suddenly Adi has to wonder if maybe TV got it all wrong after all. But will following her heart mean losing her chance to break into the big time?