Book picks similar to
Second Chances by Rachel Cullen
books-with-less-than-300-reviews
fiction
standalone-novels
straight-contempo-rom-novels
Play Me
Kelly Elliott - 2019
He is a coach who knows how to use his equipment. Neither is looking for love. Should be easy, right? Wrong. This might be the most important game Kendall Wales and Hunter Owens have ever played where everything is on the line. With one wrong play, they could lose it all. Hopefully, the game clock doesn’t reach zero before it’s too late. *Play Me is a standalone novel*
The Family
Marissa Kennerson - 2014
She has a caring mother and a controlling father. Her brothers and sisters are committed to her family’s prosperity… All one hundred eighty-three of them. Twig lives in the Family, a collective society located in the rainforest of Costa Rica. Family members coexist with values of complete openness and honesty, and they share a fear of contagious infection in the outside world. Adam—their Father, prophet, and savior—announces that Twig will be his new bride, and she is overjoyed and honored. But when an injury forces her to leave the Family compound, Twig finds that the world outside is not as toxic as she was made to believe. And then she meets Leo, an American boy with a killer smile, and begins to question everything about her life within the Family and the cult to which she belongs. But when it comes to Family, you don’t get a choice.Praise for The Family: “Fascinating and chilling, THE FAMILY takes you past the armed guards of a secluded compound where individualism is punished, technology is forbidden, and a charismatic leader plays God through terror and control. The novel’s relentless plot and vividly drawn characters will suck you in, but be warned: once you’re in the Family, it’s almost impossible to escape.” —Anna Schumacher, author of End Times “Eerie and suspenseful, Kennerson gives us a fascinating look into the psychology of cults and the meaning of Family.” —Bianca Turetsky, author of The Time-Traveling Fashionista
One Day In Summer
Shari Low - 2020
It’s her turn, her time but will she have the courage to start again?Ten years ago, Mitchell McMaster divorced Agnetha and married her best friend, Celeste. Now he suspects his second wife is having an affair. This is the day he’ll discover if karma has come back to bite him.Thanks to a DNA test, this is the day that Hope McTeer will finally meet her biological father. But will the reunion bring Hope the answers that she’s looking for?Three people. Twenty-four hours. A lifetime of secrets to unravel.
Better Than This
Cathy Zane - 2018
Her quirky best friend and fellow high school teacher, Maggie, marvels at her luck—and envies her happiness. But Sarah is far from happy. She feels empty and on edge, harangued by a critical inner voice—and as the truth about her marriage and details of her past emerge, her “perfect” life begins to crumble. But just when it seems all is lost, a long forgotten, unopened letter changes everything, and with the support of friends, Sarah begins to rebuild her life. Can she quiet the critical voice in her head and learn to value herself instead?
The One I Was
Eliza Graham - 2014
When her nursing job brings her back to Fairfleet, her childhood home, to care for an elderly refugee, she is forced to confront the ghosts that have haunted her for so long.Her patient, Benny Gault, first came to Fairfleet, England, in 1939, having fled Nazi Germany on a Kindertransport train.As his health fails, he and Rosamond begin to confide in each other. At first their tentative friendship revolves around the love they both shared for Rosamond’s glamorous grandmother, Harriet, but as their trust in each other grows, guilty secrets are exposed and history is turned on its head.From the acclaimed author of Playing with the Moon and Restitution comes a beautiful and haunting tale of friendship, redemption and forgiveness across generations.
She: Fiction
Michelle Latiolais - 2016
She is the narrative of her passage, from her escape on a bus through her quiet, determined progress across the city’s unforgiving terrain. The journey takes her into and around the lives of Angelinos from all walks: a dancer whose hyperactive sense of smell makes her fiance’s presence insufferable; a penniless botanist who earns her keep creating sugar-icing flowers to decorate glamorous wedding cakes she can never afford; a dentist lamenting the abuses done to the teeth of a patient for whom he has cared dutifully. Her odd encounters, set against the backdrop of Los Angeles’s flagrant wealth, cast into relief its eccentricities and the everyday trials faced by its collection of lost souls. Together these stories reflect and refract one another, illuminating a poignant, unflinching portrait of loss and the search for identity in its wake.
Girl Long Gone
Danielle M. Haas - 2020
He was a great match, and they had so many things in common. But sometimes your life can come down to one single bad decision... NYPD Computer-crimes detective Connor Mitchel’s sister is missing. As he combs through his sister’s life, he realizes Monica might not have been this killer’s first target—or his last. In a twisted game of cat and mouse, Connor thinks he’s finally found the man responsible for his sister’s disappearance. Unfortunately, he’ll first need to convince the shy, distrustful Evelyn Price she could be the next victim tangled in the murderer’s web if she doesn’t agree to help him catch the killer. But just as Connor and Evelyn close in on their quarry, the killer has one last trick up his sleeve that could trap them all…
Pretty Young Things (Spinful Classics Book 1)
Ace Gray - 2019
Jealousy. Lust. It all started with a bloody palm and a promise. Words beneath the moonlight that I thought would keep us together. Forever. Deceit. Betrayal. Vengeance. I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t think you had it in you. But what was supposed to bury me—break me—simply remade me as something new. Something hellbent on ruining you, my love. *This book is a complete stand-alone based on the classic The Count of Monte Christo*
Do Not Disturb
Mary Billiter - 2016
When a luxury beachfront hotel in the OC conducts a mass hire, Katie Flanagan's ninth in line. Is it her dream job? Possibly. Will it help her escape living with her parents for the rest of her life? Hopefully. Add in two hot new hires: one who is her type in all the wrong ways and one who has her questioning what she really wants and needs. Either way, she has a choice to make. When Katie discovers a secret document aimed at downsizing the staff, she finds her voice and pens a press release that places the hotel, and her, at the center of national coverage. When the corporate line is drawn in the sand, the question becomes - will she cross it? Havoc, heat, and hotel madness... welcome to the back hallways at the Waterfront Point Resort.
Oh, Christmas Night
Jane Porter - 2019
The smart thing to do would be to buckle down and keep on working. But for the first time in her life, she goes with impulsive and books a flight to Montana to inspect the bookstore, and hopefully have her first white Christmas ever.Texan lawyer and entrepreneur, Atticus Bowen, has found the perfect location for his next restaurant—the two-story, turn-of-the-century brick building on Marietta’s Main Street. All he has to do is convince the new owner to sell Paradise Books to him. After all, used bookstores aren’t practical or viable businesses, and he’s making Rachel Mills a very generous offer. But instead of jumping on his offer, Rachel decides she’s going to open the bookstore doors for December and ‘explore her options.’The last thing Rachel expected was to fall in love with the old bookstore, or charming Marietta. She never expected sparks to fly with handsome, arrogant Atticus Bowen, either. Smart, practical Rachel realizes she just might be falling in love with the sexy, opinionated Texan lawyer — something that could prove to be neither smart, nor practical….or the best decision of her life.
Big World
Mary Miller - 2009
Mary Miller's BIG WORLD is the second book and first work of fiction to come out of Short Flight/Long Drive Books, a publishing arm of the independent literary journal Hobart. The characters in Mary Miller's debut short story collection BIG WORLD are at once autonomous and lonesome, possessing both a longing to connect with those around them and a cynicism regarding their ability to do so, whether they're holed up in a motel room in Pigeon Forge with an air gun shooting boyfriend as in "Fast Trains" or navigating the rooms of their house with their dad after their mother's death as in "Leak." Mary Miller's writing is unapologetically honest and efficient and the gut-wrenching directness of her prose is reminiscent of Mary Gaitskill and Courtney Eldridge, if Gaitskill's and Eldridge's stories were set in the south and reeked of spilt beer and cigarette smoke.
Love on the Cape
M.K. Meredith - 2017
But when Van Buren Enterprises announces plans to develop historic Cape Van Buren into a gold-plated playground for the wealthy, Larkin refuses to watch one more beautiful thing in her life be destroyed, so she sets out to preserve the historic cape—and with it, the memory of her son. Only it isn’t the company she needs to fear, it’s the dangerously irresistible CEO who has the power to derail her plans. Annoyingly arrogant one minute and beautifully wounded the next, he awakens something in her heart that had died with her son even as his actions promise to break it once again.Ryker Van Buren needs closure from his dark childhood and the best way to do that is to level his family home. As the rightful owner of the estate, he plans on developing it into a master community—what better way to secure his future than by selling off his past? Until he locks eyes with the passionate conservationist who fights him at every turn for the rights to his legacy. He can’t keep his hands off her, but worse, he can’t get her off his land or out of his dreams.Attraction sparks and two broken souls recognize each other through the pain. Against all odds, love blooms on the cape. But when their pasts collide, will they choose love in the moment, or will they lose their chance at forever?
A Bright and Pleading Dagger
Nicole Rivas - 2018
A pizza shop worker goes on a series of visceral dates with her gynecologist; a slighted lover coughs up a forgotten childhood toy; an artist unknowingly becomes the subject of an intrusive admirer’s lust; a woman has a heated staring contest with the world’s oldest man. Powerful and precise, Rivas’s stories highlight the unreality within the real, simultaneously evoking humor, outrage, and awe.Contest judge Rigoberto González writes: “With this marvelous collection of short stories, Rivas places her finger on that pressure point, where adventure and dangerintersect, where fantasy and reality cross wires, and where desire ebbs and flows to the delight—or chagrin—of her female protagonists. Each story, unpredictable and startling,leaves a lasting impression. A Bright and Pleading Dagger is truly a compelling and unforgettable journey into the dark but poignant experiences of women.”
Sweet Lake
Christine Nolfi - 2017
But knowing doesn’t make doing any easier.Everyone in Sweet Lake, Ohio, wants her to muster all her business sense and return the Wayfair Inn to its former glory. Her parents hope she’ll forgive her scoundrel of a brother and reconcile the family. The eccentric Sweet Lake Sirens want her to open the inn—and her heart—to new possibilities. And her hilarious lifelong friends Jada and Cat are dropping none-too-subtle hints for her to ignite a romance with Daniel Kettering, the sexy attorney who’s been pining for her for years…Now a shocking turn of events will open old wounds and upend the world Linnie has carefully built. She has to make changes quickly—and the results, though not entirely what she expected, might be what she’s been yearning for all along.
What Lies Below
Barbara Taylor Sissel - 2018
One woman is living hers…
Gilly O’Connell’s nightmares aren’t just bad dreams; they’re glimpses of terrifying realities to come. Gilly has spent her entire life trying to suppress the foreboding visions. So when a dismissed premonition leads to her husband’s murder, she buries the guilt and pain of the unsolved crime in the only way she knows how—she runs from it.Three years later, after overcoming a battle with addiction and starting over in a small Texas town, Gilly dares to believe the worst is over. That is, until another crime rips her heart open: the abduction of a three-year-old girl. Gilly knows more about it than anyone…She’s dreaming again.Gilly is convinced that if she tells the police she dreamed of the kidnapping before it happened, there’s no way they’ll believe her. But when she finally gets the courage to come forward with what she saw, people don’t see her as crazy—they see her as a suspect.Now, in order to help a desperate single father save his child, Gilly must first clear her own name. But as the nightmares of the past catch up to her, Gilly’s only chance for salvation might be the dreams she’s spent so long trying to ignore.