Book picks similar to
The Beautiful Now by Michelle Leighton


romance
second-chance
contemporary
contemporary-romance

Still Beating


Jennifer Hartmann - 2020
    This book contains subject matter that may be sensitive for some readers, including rape, as well as strong language and explicit sex. 18+ only. Please read responsibly. When Cora attends her sister’s birthday party, she expects at most a hangover or a walk of shame. She doesn’t anticipate a stolen wallet, leaving her stranded and dependent on Dean—her arch nemesis and ultimate thorn in her side. And she really doesn’t anticipate waking up in shackles in a madman’s basement.To make matters worse, Dean shares the space in his own set of chains.After fifteen years of teasing, insults, and practical jokes, the ultimate joke seems to be on them. The two people who always thought they’d end up killing each other must now work together if they want to survive.But Cora and Dean have no idea their abductor has a plan for them. A plan that will alter the course of their relationship, blur the line between hate and love, and shackle them together with far more than just chains.

Sex, Not Love


Vi Keeland - 2018
    We met at a wedding—him sitting on the groom’s side, me sitting on the bride’s. Stealing glances at each other throughout the night, there was no denying an intense, mutual attraction. I caught the bouquet; he caught the garter. Hunter held me tightly while we danced and suggested we explore the chemistry sparking between us. His blunt, dirty mouth should’ve turned me off. But for some crazy reason, it had the opposite effect on me.We ended up back in my hotel room. The next morning, I headed home to New York leaving him behind in California with the wrong number.I thought about him often, but after my last relationship, I’d sworn off of charming, cocky, gorgeous-as-sin men. A year later, Hunter and I met again at the birth of our friends’ baby. Our attraction hadn't dulled one bit. After a whirlwind trip, he demanded a real phone number this time. So I left him with my mother’s—she could scare away any man with her talks of babies and marriage—and flew back home.I’d thought it was funny, until the following week when he rang the bell at Mom’s house for Sunday night dinner. The crazy, gorgeous man had won over my mother and taken an eight-week assignment in my city. He proposed we spend that time screwing each other out of our systems. Eight weeks of mind-blowing sex with no strings attached? What did I have to lose?Nothing, I thought.It’s just sex, not love.But you know what they say about the best laid plans…From #1 New York Times Bestseller Vi Keeland, comes a new, sexy standalone novel.

Disgrace


Brittainy C. Cherry - 2018
    I didn’t know my worth. I didn’t know how to exist without him by my side.All I wanted was for him to come back to me.Then, Jackson Emery appeared.He was supposed to be a distraction for my mind. A summer fling. A confidence boost to my bruised heart.We were perfect for one another, because we both knew we wouldn’t last. Jackson didn’t believe in commitment, and I no longer believed in love. He was too closed-off for me, and I was too damaged for him.Everything was fine, until one night my heart skipped a beat.I didn’t expect him to make me laugh. To make me think. To make my sadness somewhat disappear.When our time was up, my heart didn’t know how to walk away.Each day I prayed for my husband to love me again, yet slowly my prayers began to shift toward the man who wasn’t right for me. I prayed for one more smile, one more kiss, one more laugh, one more touch… I prayed for him to be mine.Even though I knew his heart wasn’t destined to love.*This book was previously known as Between the Notes.*

Obsessed


R.J. Lewis - 2016
    He became my addiction the moment I met him at 10 years old. He was my best friend from childhood. He protected me and guided me. I loved him fiercely long before I really understood what love was. We were inseparable. He knew how I felt, and sometimes he would stare at me in ways that made me breathless. But there were boundaries. Lines that couldn't be crossed. Looks that shouldn't be exchanged. Lips that shouldn't be kissed. We weren't supposed to love each other. Not in **that** way. Because, you see, Aston was also my adopted brother... Aston Elise was off-limits, a temptation that cursed my existence with this visceral hunger to have her, possess her, and taste her like she was made for me. I was tormented and on the brink of falling. If I stepped over that boundary, if I gave into my want, I wasn’t sure I could survive the disappointment of my adopted parents. We would all be affected. Our lives wouldn’t be the way it was. That change was irreversible, and the damage would be permanent. It was a scary thought, destroying a foundation and rebuilding it without knowing what it might end up looking like. But my want for her…it sat in the core of me, growing and growing. And want is a dangerous fucking thing. It clouds your judgment, it makes you weak, and I knew…I knew without a doubt, it was only a matter of time before I cracked. Obsession was devotion. Obsession was mania and need. It was a compulsive urge to self-gratify by wanting, and wanting, and wanting ‘til it hurt, ‘til you could feel it there in your bones, gnawing its way deeper within you. Obsession was my craze for Elise. She was my impulse. My…pulse itself. It wasn’t healthy. I knew that. I didn’t fucking care either.

The Choices I've Made


J.L. Berg - 2017
    I couldn't be me anymore. So, with nothing more than a few boxes and a beat up truck, I left behind my old life at the tender age of eighteen.And I never looked back. Twelve years later, I find myself traveling back to the sandy shores of that North Carolina town where my late father has left me his medical practice. Coming here means facing my past... My memories... And her--Molly McIntyre. Growing up, Molly had been my entire world, first as a childhood friend and then so much more. We'd made promises to each other back then. Promises I broke when I walked away. And now that I'm back? Well, let's just say she's not exactly the head of my welcoming committee. But even she can't deny the undeniable spark that still burns so brightly between us and soon, we're tumbling fast and hard into the past.But I need to keep my eyes set to the future, because mine isn't here in this dead end town. Not anymore. All Molly has ever known is here, on this small island. Could I really ask her to give it all up? For me? If I walk away again, will she follow?

Heat Wave


Karina Halle - 2016
    ~~~ Still grieving the loss of her sister who died two years ago, the last thing Veronica "Ronnie" Locke needed was to lose her job at one of Chicago’s finest restaurants and have to move back in with her parents. So when a window of opportunity opens for her – running a kitchen at a small Hawaiian hotel – she’d be crazy not to take it. The only problem is, the man running the hotel drives her crazy:Logan Shephard.It doesn’t matter that he’s got dark brown eyes, a tall, muscular build that’s sculpted from daily surfing sessions, and a deep Australian accent that makes your toes curl.What does matter is that he’s a grump.Kind of an asshole, too.And gets under Ronnie’s skin like no one else. But the more time Ronnie spends on the island of Kauai, falling in love with the lush land and its carefree lifestyle, the closer she gets to Logan. And the closer she gets to Logan, the more she realizes she may have pegged him all wrong. Maybe it’s the hot, steamy jungles or the invigorating ocean air, but soon their relationship becomes utterly intoxicating. There’s just one major catch. The two of them together would incite a scandal neither Ronnie, nor her family, would ever recover from. Forbidden, Illicit, off-limits – sometimes the heat is worth surrendering to, even if you get burned.Note: this is a standalone novel, unrelated to any previous books. It does NOT contain cheating of any kind.

Blind Kiss


Renee Carlino - 2018
    Fourteen years ago, this shop was her childhood dance studio... Now she’s a suburban housewife, dreading the moment her son departs for MIT, leaving her with an impeccably decorated McMansion and a failing marriage. She had her chance at wild, stars-in-her-eyes happiness, but that was a lifetime ago. After The Kiss. Before The Decision.The Kiss was soulful. Magical. Earth-shattering, And it was all for a free gift card. Asked to participate in a psych study that posed the question, “Can you have sexual chemistry without knowing what the other person looks like?” Penny agreed to be blindfolded, make polite conversation with a total stranger, and kiss him. She never expected The Kiss to change her life forever and introduce her to Gavin: tattooed, gorgeous, and spontaneous enough to ask her out seconds after the blindfolds came off.For a year, they danced between friendship and romance—until Penny made The Decision that forced them to settle for friendship. Now, fourteen years later, both of their lives are about to radically change—and it’s his turn to decide what will become of their once-in-a-lifetime connection."

Unloved


Katy Regnery - 2017
    My name is Cassidy Porter...My father, Paul Isaac Porter, was executed twenty years ago for the brutal murder of twelve innocent girls.Though I was only eight-years-old at the time, I am aware - every day of my life - that I am his child, his only son.To protect the world from the poison in my veins, I live a quiet life, off the grid, away from humanity.I promised myself, and my mother, not to infect innocent lives with the darkness that swirls within me, waiting to make itself known.It's a promise I would have kept...if Brynn Cadogan hadn't stumbled into my life.Now I exist between heaven and hell: falling for a woman who wants to love me, while all along reminding myself that I must remain...Unloved.**NOTE: This book is intended for readers 18+**

Silenced


Leddy Harper - 2017
    Silenced and scarred, he keeps to himself, spending his time with his notebook in the woods behind his aunt’s house. Until Rylee Anderson…When Rylee spots Killian hopping over a fence next door, she follows him, unprepared for the boy she’d find—or the relationship that would unfold over the next seven years.Or the silence that would follow.Fighting between the hate of his past and the promise of his future, Killian must make choices—ones that would affect more than himself. Choices that would test the lines of right and wrong. Decisions that could break the bond of the only love Killian knew.Hate or love.Revenge or forgiveness.Silence or his voice.

Chasing Spring


R.S. Grey - 2016
    I didn't belong in the small town, but my dad wouldn't listen. He dragged me back home in his beat-up truck and dropped a bomb along the way: Chase Matthews was moving in with us. He was the golden boy of my high school, my former best friend, and the last person I wanted sleeping across the hall. His presence was too great a reminder of the ghosts I was trying to forget.I didn't ask for a hero. I don't want to be saved.To me, Lilah Calloway meant late nights sneakin'; out, moonlit hair, and sparklers in July. She was my best friend until the day she left and I'd assumed Blackwater had seen the last of her. Then, like a tempest, she rolled back into town for the final half of senior year. The chopped hair and dark devil-may-care attitude warned most people away, but I knew if I fought hard enough, I could find the lost girl.I didn't want to be her hero. Some girls don't need to be saved.

Collared


Nicole Williams - 2016
    . .Brings her home. Jade Childs spent ten years in captivity, but now that she’s back, the real battle for survival begins. The media shadows her. Flashbacks haunt her. Her old life evades her. Her so-called new life rejects her. She spent too many years in the dark to recognize the light. She spent too long repressing her feelings to remember how to express them. She spent a decade abandoning hope and cannot dare letting it back into her life. Jade’s not just defined by what happened to her—she’s collared to it.When the twenty-seven-year-old woman is found,A community wants to know the story,Parents want to forget the story,Friends want to be a part of the story,And the man who still loves her faces the greatest challenge yet: letting her go.

Trailer Park Heart


Rachel Higginson - 2018
    It’s my legacy. That’s how my mama lived. And that’s how her mama lived. It’s the life I was born into and it’s the life I swore I would leave the second I was old enough to make it out. Only legacies have a funny way of sneaking up on you. An innocent decision the night of high school graduation led to a series of complications in my plans to escape. Seven years later, I’ve resigned myself to this small town and the roots I’m tied to. Nothing could make me leave. And nothing could make me spill the secrets that keep me here. Until he walks back into town with a chip on his shoulder and a stupid hunch nobody else in town has been smart enough to follow. Levi Cole is my opposite. Born on the right side of the tracks with family money to spare, he’s the kind of black sheep that can afford to be rebellious—because his family will always pay for his mistakes. He’s also the only living heir to Cole Family Farms, after his brother Logan was killed in duty seven years ago. He sees something in my life that he thinks he has a right to. But he’s wrong. And obnoxious. And he needs to take his stubborn good looks and that intense way he looks at me and go back to wherever it was he came from. I know better than to trust men like him. I was born and raised in a trailer park, I know nothing good happens to girls like me—girls with trailer park lives and trailer park hearts. Especially from gorgeous, kind, pigheaded men like him.

Perfectly Imperfect


Harper Sloan - 2015
    A fairy tale that had girls pretending they were the fairest, the most beautiful, and the most entitled. A fairy tale most couldn’t grow out of turned my haunted childhood memories into a living nightmare. Girls who grew up believing that pile of garbage became the meanest of all ‘mean girls.’And those mean girls were right – it was a line meant for all the beautiful people in the world – and I knew the answer would never be me.The women with long legs, flat stomachs, and perfect chests.The type of women Kane Masters gravitated toward.Well, that’s definitely not Willow Tate.No. That will never be me.Because I’m completely imperfect.And … I hate myself.I have no idea what Kane could possibly see in someone like me when he could have them.

A Vow Of Hate


Lylah James - 2021
    We were poison together and there was no antidote.Our story began like any other fairy tale ended.With a beautiful wedding.One kiss.Two rings.Three vows.Killian Spencer became my lawfully wedded husband and I, his dutiful wife.But he was no Prince Charming. He didn’t come to save me… and he vowed there would be no happily ever after.And me?Just like the legends I'd read as a little girl, I always thought I’d be the princess in my fairy tale.Well, I was the villain of our love story.“Till death do us part…”

When We Touch


Tia Louise - 2017
    My biggest regret. I thought she’d always be waiting for me. I was wrong.Now I’m back in Oceanside searching for peace, hoping to escape what my life has become. She isn’t supposed to be here…Dark hair blowing in the ocean breeze, Luscious curves barely hidden by thin cotton.I didn’t come back for her.But when we touch, I know I’ll do whatever it takes to make her mine.