Book picks similar to
Missed Connection by Stephanie Shea


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Until We Break


Cynthia Dane - 2020
    The only thing missing from her picturesque, countryside life is companionship. But with a great distaste for dating – and the city – Stefani approaches an international service to make her marital dreams come true.Enter Yulia, the alluring Russian woman with a penchant for heavy flirtation. She occasionally puts her money where her mouth is, too, driving Stefani wild with fantasies that this marriage might be more than convenience.Yet she can’t shake the feeling that Yulia has an ulterior motive. Or maybe that’s the Valettis’ collective past coming back to bite them.YULIA PETROVAYulia Petrova will do whatever it takes to get to America. Specifically, the Pacific Northwest, where the only person who matters is waiting for her.She’ll even marry a total stranger. A woman, no less.The trick isn’t balancing her own preferences. No, the trick is keeping her new fiancée from finding out the truth too quickly. First, she must ensure that Stefani is in love with her. Then, Yulia must reveal the tragic truth that has brought her to America.DO SVIDANIYA, MI AMORETheir budding passion and rising trust in one another is about to be severely complicated by the illness sweeping the world. For Stefani, that means shutting down the winery and hiding behind her chronic anxiety. For Yulia, that means taking all matters into her own hands. The whole world could burn, and she would still get what she came here for.And she will do it alone – with or without the woman she’s come to love

No After You


Nicole Pyland - 2020
    She had no idea that she’d meet the love of her life that night. There were only a couple of problems with that chance meeting. Dani had a boyfriend. That chance meeting – it was with Peyton Gloss, the world’s most famous music star, who also happened to be a woman.Peyton had only planned on performing that night. When she’d seen the most beautiful woman in the world in the crowd, she had to talk to her. Dani Wilder was a beautiful, kind, smart supermodel, who also happened to have a boyfriend. When the two women spend time together, though, it’s clear to both of them that this is more than merely a close friendship.In this prequel to “All the Love Songs,” find out what happened the night these two met, and discover how their relationship began.

Blend


Georgia Beers - 2018
    She’s thrilled when her boss leaves her in charge (well, half charge) and tells her to feel free to make changes. Lindsay has tons of ideas that she's been dying to put into action, and this is her big chance to increase the success of the business and prove she’s more than ready to run things solo. But getting the boss's daughter on board is harder than expected. The uptight and annoyingly attractive Piper is blocking her every move. For Piper Bradshaw, Vineyard is not her job. She already has one. She's VP at a large tech company, and she's damn good at it. Who cares if people say she’s a workaholic and an icy bitch? She didn't get to the top by being prone to whims and experiments. She's not happy when her mother suddenly decides to gallivant all over the country and furious that the family business has been left in the hands of the happy-go-lucky, born-a-generation-too-late hippie who manages it. Good thing Lindsay can't make any changes unless they both agree, because Piper doesn't intend to. Lindsay and Piper are like night and day. Working together won’t be easy, but not falling in love might prove the hardest job of all.

Don't Cry for Me


Rachel Lacey - 2020
    The recipe for ratings gold...or heartbreak?Eve Marlow has her eyes on the prize: a third season of her popular business makeover show, Do Over. But when her ratings take an unexpected dive, Eve needs a blockbuster new client, or she can kiss season three goodbye. She has her work cut out for her, and that's before she discovers a litter of newborn kittens in a trash can. Now she's desperate to find someone to take them so she can concentrate on reviving her career.Josie Swanson had to put her kitten rescue on the back burner when she inherited her father's bar two years ago. Since then, she's invested all her time and energy into keeping it afloat, but despite her best efforts, Swanson's is going under. When she gets a phone call from Eve Marlow, host of the television show Josie applied to earlier that year, the woman she's convinced can save her bar, Josie hopes her luck has finally turned.Eve knows what she needs to succeed, and it isn't Josie--or her bar. There's no denying the chemistry sizzling between them, though. Josie's personality is as vibrant as her turquoise-tipped hair. She stirs things in Eve that haven't been stirred in a long time, but there's a reason she keeps her heart under lock and key. Eve stands to lose a lot more than her TV show if she lets her guard down, no matter how tempted she is to see if Josie's love would be worth the risk.

Fake It


Lily Seabrooke - 2021
    She’s staying optimistic, though: she’s confident she can fake it till she makes it, roll with the punches, and find a way to save her luxury restaurant, Paramour.But it gets harder when she gets restaurant mogul and star chef Mike Wallace angry, and finds herself on the other end of a campaign to shut down Paramour.Celebrity chef Holly Mason’s show is in trouble: people are bored with her routine of helping struggling restaurants. Worse, her ex-boyfriend Mike Wallace is making backdoor deals trying to steal the starring role.Luckily, Holly’s agent Tay has a solution: ditch her show plans for the season, throw their lot in with luxury restaurant Paramour against Mike Wallace’s racketeering operation of a restaurant partnership. The cherry on top? A fake relationship between Holly and Avery to stir up drama.It would already be a mess if Holly and Avery weren’t already struggling to hold back their attraction for one another. Despite their promise not to date, the lines between acting and reality get awfully blurry sometimes.Fake It is an 80,000-word fake-dating celebrity romance between a disillusioned TV cooking star and a bright-eyed restaurant owner who’s sure she can manifest a solution to her hard times if she believes hard enough. Features an agent named Tay who calls their brilliant ideas “inspir-Tay-tion,” plenty of descriptions of food that made me hungry while I wrote the book, and a cute bisexual trans girl who gets to fall in love. Content warnings for open-door sex scenes that get a little bit kinky, a gross man who won’t stop calling his ex-girlfriend babe, and sapphics getting in the way of their own feelings, like they always do.

Sprinkled in the Stars


Violet Morley - 2021
    As a paramedic, AJ puts others’ needs above her own; in her personal life, she keeps everyone an arm’s length away. That distance disappears when a chance run-in with actor Melanie Cooper leaves her sticky, angry, and fed up.Melanie Cooper has just signed her last movie. The media keeps portraying her as cold and hard to work with, and Mel has absolutely nothing more to give. As she begins to imagine a new life, a challenging part of her past comes back on the scene, determined to cause problems for Mel.After a series of coincidental meetings, AJ battles her desire for control while Mel struggles with trust. Despite the challenges and complications, Mel finds herself drawn to the Beckett ladies, and AJ can’t deny their connection, either.Falling in love has never been so sweet.Genre: RomanceCover: Cath Grace DesignsEditor: Kat JacksonWords: 86,000

Fake Girlfriend


Clara Reese - 2020
    It wasn’t just my first time at Club Trillium, Portland’s premiere lesbian hotspot.It was also my first night out of the closet.I’ve never even kissed anyone, let alone another girl.Then, two powerful billionaires spot me.They have a PR problem and need a fake girlfriend to show the world they’ve “settled down.”There’s just one problem with the arrangement: I want to make it real.

Welcome to Ruby's


K.C. Luck - 2018
    The bar is where they all go to commiserate over drinks about crappy jobs, wrecked relationships, and life in general. Everyone is family and everyone comes to Ruby’s. Even though her job sucks, Allie’s life appears to be taking an especially good turn when a gorgeous dark-haired stranger comes walking into Ruby’s and sweeps her off her feet. As much as she wants to deny how she feels, the chemistry between them is an eleven on a scale of one to ten. Struggling through a nasty divorce, Vivian Wade is not looking for any more complications in her already crazy life, but when she goes north to Portland to check on business, she sees a blonde woman who takes her breath away. Although a relationship is the last thing she wants, she cannot deny what her body is telling her. When their worlds collide, all starts perfectly, until Allie learns Ruby’s has been sold to an investor. A woman from Los Angeles, named Vivian, who plans to change everything.

The Flaw in Our Design


Monica McCallan - 2020
    That’s how she likes it, even if she can’t stop the town she loves from being overrun by wealthy tourists each summer. When she’s not working at her family’s paddleboard shop or spending time with her lovable but infuriating brothers, she puts her energy into writing professionally, a dream that has yet to materialize.Valerie Maycomb used to summer in Lake Cabot with her family when she was younger, until school and planning for her future became the driving forces in her existence. For the first time in years, following her college graduation, she’s spending a few months in the small, lakeside town she loved as a child. All she wants is a little time to decompress before law school in the fall and maybe even strike up the courage to talk to a woman.A chance meeting at the lake opens up the possibility of a summer romance, with the explicit understanding that it can’t become something more. Olivia’s not built for falling in love, and Val needs to keep her eye on the prize of a successful career. But neither of them can deny the attraction, and summer quickly takes on a life of its own.

On Burning Mirrors


Jamie Klinger-Krebs - 2018
    While plagued with guilt over an affair that causes her to question her sexuality, coupled with the fear of hurting everyone she loves, Jules pours her emotions into her writing. But she never imagined her words would be discovered when she wasn’t there to explain them.

The Fake Game


Kim Hartfield - 2020
    But the best thing about her job is Marie. The publicist is kind and supportive, not to mention drop-dead gorgeous, and Tabby is flattered to be able to call her a friend. When the two run into Tabby's asshole ex, they pretend to be dating as revenge. It's just a silly game - until he gets hired at their publishing company. Now the friends have to decide if they should quit their game. If they continue, they'll be playing to win. But what if the prize is more than either of them could imagine?

Fine or Punishment


Mira Margrave - 2017
    But when a depraved fantasy keeps plaguing her thoughts, she decides to take a risk and finally allow herself a night of debauchery. Even if she has to hire the company for the evening. An unexpected storm and a surprise visitor throw her plans in disarray but what should be a mortifying error could prove to be a blessing in disguise. Candace Kane’s go-with-the-flow attitude and sharp tongue often got her in trouble, but she didn’t expect any on a quick trip to the library. When a stern, attractive librarian comes on to her hard, Candace can’t help but say yes. The decision hurls both women into uncharted waters. A stand-alone novella (31,500 words).

The Love Factor


Quinn Ivins - 2020
    It might be the nineties, and everything’s shoulder pads, Doc Martens, and The X-Files, but people won’t budge on gay rights. Molly decides to give a PhD a whirl but finds herself more interested in campus politics…and her strict and sexy statistics professor.Professor Carmen Vaughn is stuck in small-town Maryland with smarmy blowhards for colleagues and ungrateful students who can’t handle her high standards. She has no intention of coming out, least of all to Molly, a troublemaking grad student who can’t stop picking fights with the conservative faculty.But when Molly discovers evidence implicating a homophobic colleague in a scandal, Carmen can’t ignore it—even if the subject hits too close to home. As the two women work together to make their case, they grow closer than Carmen ever imagined. But she absolutely refuses to get involved with a student.The thing is, as the chemistry builds between them, Molly isn’t sure she wants to be a grad student anymore…if she ever did.75,000 words

Perfect Perry (Rainbow Heights Book 1)


Carla Ryan - 2018
    But when she meets Zinnia Paradiso, beautiful artist and free spirit, her definition of perfection isn’t so perfect anymore.

Forbidden Melody


Magnolia Robbins - 2018
    With a renowned jazz musician for a father and a world-famous mentor growing up, she is convinced her path is easy. Until her world is suddenly silenced when she loses her hearing. Juliet Hamilton is a prodigy violinist. First chair for nearly fifteen years in the New York Philharmonic and a professor at the conservatory, she is engulfed in her career with no time for distractions. Especially not a beautiful young graduate student with a spirited personality that challenges her every step.When Emma and Juliet’s paths cross in the classroom, their connection is undeniable. When their music comes together, it is unstoppable. The bond they begin to form threatens to challenge more than just their opinions of music. Friendships, ethics, and careers are tested as Emma and Juliet find themselves lost in a concerto of fiery passion and heartbreak. 105,000 words