Book picks similar to
A Portrait for Toni by Annette Lyon


romance
contemporary
clean-reads
clean-secular-romance

After Love Leaves: The Story of Us


Michelle Alstead - 2017
    When she met Brad Sorenson, Zoe was convinced her bad luck with men had finally changed. He saw past her insecurities and the Oreo addiction she just couldn’t shake, inspiring her to chase her dreams. Brad was looking for a good time online, not love. But Zoe was so sweet, so kind. Everything about her was perfect—until she fell for him. Doesn’t she understand he’s the wrong guy for a woman like her? Zoe doesn’t know why Brad left her standing in an airport; he won’t return her calls or texts. With her self-esteem and dreams shattered, she can’t imagine ever loving anyone else… When a devastating diagnosis changes Brad’s life forever, he’s forced to finally face the truth: there’s only one woman he’s ever truly loved.Will Zoe give Brad a second chance or is she done with love for good?***This is not your typical romance. Real love is complicated and messy. This story is written for those who have loved the wrong person for all the right reasons.

Growing in Love


Paige Powers - 2014
    Breakups, makeups, drama in the halls, it’s all in a school day’s work. Jack is your all-American teenager experiencing the usual woes of his generation. Crazy parties, locker scenes, immaturity, and if that wasn’t enough, he’s got serious girl problems. It just so happens that Jack’s friend, Lidia, is having her own dating issues and the two of them come up with a plan to get back at their exes. Pretend to be boyfriend and girlfriend and flaunt their incredible happiness to make their past loves jealous. The plan is brilliant and they put on the performance of their young lives. They have high hopes the ruse will be successful and they’ll be back with their original partners before too long. Things are going good for the new, happy couple. But over the course of the faux relationship, they discover each other's true personas and are drawn together despite the false pretenses. Their affection toward one another becomes something neither one expected; genuine. Growing in Love is a tender, coming-of-age story about forgiveness, loss of innocence; self-discovery; relationships of all kinds–including abusive–and teenage love and romance.

Cat Got Your Tongue?


Rae Rivers - 2013
    Who better to help than the daughter of a cat burglar?When art collector Cole Anderson is targeted for his priceless Renoir, he reluctantly employs a bodyguard to upgrade his personal security. Imagine his surprise when she arrives--professional, capable, and sporting a ponytail and a gorgeous smile. Alex Foxley is all woman--sexy, feisty, and intimately familiar with the shady workings of the art underworld thanks to her mother's connections. While battling an explosive attraction for each other and thwarting thieves determined to have Cole's Renoir at any cost, Cole and Alex must work together to protect his life and property--and uncover a secret neither of them knows exists. Will they discover who is behind the deadly conspiracy before it's too late? Or will passion and lust blind them to what's right under their noses?

Scars of Youth


Shane Morales - 2015
    Her heart still belongs to the boy she fell in love with in high-school, but she's come to accept that she can never regain the love she lost.Kyle Andersen has moved to a new city and is determined to make a new life for himself, but he still feels incomplete. He's never gotten over the girl who broke his heart when he was just fifteen, and the hurt she caused him anchors him to his past.On the same night, the two remember each other, and they think back to that one year in high-school that came to define their lives.This is their story.Set at boarding school in Switzerland, Scars of Youth is the emotional first book in a unique series about the power of first love and second chances.If you like tender romances full of emotion, love, and heartbreak then you'll love this heartfelt and moving tale of two teens who find true love together, and the scars that their youth carves into their hearts.

Happy Hour


Anne Mitchell - 2012
    As soon as she arrives people look at her oddly, treat her like royalty and keep referring to her as Rosie Reynolds. She discovers that Rosie is the Big Apple’s favourite talk show host and after Rosie’s botched face-lift, Jane is offered the job of emergency stand-in on Happy Hour, the show that made Rosie famous. But here she meets Lou, a dangerously charming man who also happens to be Rosie’s husband...

The Passion Thief


Anne McCarthy Strauss - 2014
    At least that’s what Betty Boomer tells herself at night, while Stan, her husband of two decades, snores upright on the couch. Emboldened by too much Chardonnay, she searches the Internet for her college boyfriend Michael, the proverbial one who got away. Memories of their youthful passion reignite a lust Betty thought had dried up long ago.Michael responds to Betty’s cyber message, and temptation calls this globe-trotting freelance journalist. While Stan’s idea of excitement is staying up past ten o’clock on a Saturday night, Michael has evolved into a flashy Las Vegas casino manager with three ex-wives. Which man offers stimulation and which one brings monotony coupled with reliability is vividly clear.Written with the yearning and struggle many women feel, Betty Boomer is not alone when she asks, “Is this all I need or should I take another shot at passion?” Author Anne McCarthy Strauss brings us her latest women’s fiction coupled with a large dose of romantic comedy and a dozen long-stemmed roses.

The Right Choice


Karen Drogin - 2013
    The fact that they have no sexual sparks? No problem. Or so she thinks ... until Mike Novak, her finance's brother, arrives for the wedding.Could the best man be the right choice for her after all?

Falling for You


Noelle Stevens - 2016
    This book ends on a cliffhanger, but the entire series is available in a bundle called Searching for Love: The Complete Story.Newly divorced and deeply wounded, all Reese Montgomery wants is to find true love. After her ex-husband tells her she no longer measures up and then unceremoniously dumps her, she realizes her background--a father in prison, an alcoholic mother--makes her undesirable. When she meets Brody Ford on a beach in Malibu, her attraction is instant, as is her certainty that they are all wrong for each other.Brody, a self-made man from a close-knit family, is lonely. After losing the woman he loves in a car accident, he believes he'll never love again. When a chance encounter brings Reese into his life, something about her touches him. And he wants more. But her reluctance to open her heart forces him to work harder to win her over than he's ever had to work before.Will they be able to heal the hurts each carries, or are they too wounded to find the love they're searching for?Falling for You is a sweet, clean contemporary romance.Books in the Searching for Love romance series (4 books total)Falling for YouFinding ReeseSurrender My HeartBring Me Home

The Wedding Wager


Regina Duke - 2012
    He despises everything his father stands for, but he can’t abandon his kid sister and baby brother. Their future is tied to his own. When his father threatens to rob them all of their mother’s legacy, Kevin takes bold action to protect what should be theirs.Megan Mully is out of the hospital at last. But she’s homeless, jobless, broke and alone. Love is the last thing on her mind. Kevin is just a means to an end. She never expected him to steal her heart!

Turning Back Time: Sweet and Wholesome with a Fun Matchmaking Twist (Crestfield Inn, #1)


Elsie Davis - 2020
    He’s intent on filling in the missing links on his family tree. When they both end up researching the early 1800s, will history get in the way of the future?All Sarah’s life, stories had been told—handed down from generation to generation. Captain Tremont had gone to his watery grave committing a crime…bootlegging. But a message discovered in her grandmother’s trunk addressed to her great-grandfather six times removed, leads Sarah to believe there is another explanation.Blake is delivering a load of antiques to the local B&B when a gorgeous woman just about knocks him off his feet—literally and figuratively. An antique lamp gets broken and the air is rife with tension, but when they meet again at the library, Blake offers to team up in their research efforts by way of apology. Strictly business of course.But as they wind their way through history, it would seem there are some strange things happening when the resident spirit gets involved. Will the truth bring them happiness or drive them apart forever?

Dirt


Cassia Leo - 2017
    Then, in one brutal instant, the universe tilted on its side, discarding us into black nothingness.Now, I have a cocky a**hole for a husband. The only way we communicate anymore is when we’re fighting or f**king.With nothing left to lose, I write Jack a goodbye letter and head for Portland, where I quickly meet a neighbor who helps me find a job. My new neighbor—hot, tattooed ex-soldier Isaac Evans—is complicated. Nevertheless, we form a fast friendship, bonding over our mutual desire to create something beautiful from the wreckage of our lives. But despite the distance between us, Jack and I are still trying to make things work—fighting and f**king dirtier than ever. And he doesn’t appreciate my new friendship with Isaac. Not one f**king bit.

Deconstructed


Liz Talley - 2022
    Her plan: hire an investigator; find an attorney; enlist the help of her new assistant, Ruby; and make her husband pay.Ruby knows how quickly everything changes. After a dicey past, she’s determined to forge a new future by working for Cricket and reinventing herself as a designer, deconstructing vintage haute couture. If anybody can help mend a few tears in Cricket’s life, she can.But turns out Cricket’s life isn’t just a little torn. It’s wrinkled, stained, and falling apart at the seams. With Ruby and her ragtag relatives—a soused PI and a hunky tow truck driver—Cricket is sleuthing her way to the truth, no matter how dangerous it gets.Sure, Cricket’s life isn’t what she imagined. But she’s embracing change and figuring out what she really wants. And that’s kind of fabulous.

Accidentally Married


Victorine E. Lieske - 2014
    Her rent is due and she needs a job. Desperately. After getting a tip about an open position, she rushes to Jameson Technologies and meets CEO Jared Jameson. Unfortunately, due to a misunderstanding, she is put in the awkward position of pretending to be his girlfriend. Not the job she was applying for. And when she finds out Jared lied to her to get what he wanted, she decides to get back at him. In front of his family. Jared is stunned when Madison announces they are getting married. She pushed her revenge too far. How can he tell them it’s all a lie? And when his sick aunt asks them to be married before she dies, Madison comes up with a hair-brained plan to hire an actor and stage a fake wedding. What they both don’t know is Jared’s father has found out about the fake wedding. And he’s got his own hair-brained plan. This is a sweet romance, appropriate for any age.

Indelible Love - Emily's Story


D.W. Cee - 2012
    Her world shattered, she picks up the pieces when she finds love again with Jake.Dr. Jake Reid - Successful doctor, loving boyfriend, the one who wants to fulfill Emily's happily ever after - falls in love with Emily at first sight and pushes their relationship fast and furious.Max Davis - Reserved, indecisive, Emily's first love - believes he let go of his first love for her sake, for all the right reasons. Eighteen months after the break-up, he's ready to win Emily's heart again.Insecure from her broken relationship, Emily can't fully trust Jake's passion and love for her and struggles between Jake, the man who wants to create a future with her, and Max, the man who wants to relive the past. When both men propose, Emily's indecision causes her to lose her true love. Laugh, cry and cheer for Emily as her relationships unfold through culinary delights that begin in Napa Valley and weaves through eateries in San Francisco, Kyoto, Tokyo, Los Angeles, and Paris. Who she chooses for her happily ever after may surprise you in the end.

Kiss Me, Dancer


Alicia Street - 2011
    Dance instructor Casey Richardson takes an immediate dislike to the brash, arrogant Drew Byrne when he pulls his nine-year-old son out of her “silly” dance class. Still, she cannot help noticing his smoking hot body and bedroom eyes. A working class girl raised in the small fishing and farming community on Long Island’s rural North Fork, Casey knows all too well how easily a girl can get hurt by the notorious womanizing hunks that flourish on the South Fork in the Hamptons. Men like Drew Byrne. The last thing she needs is for him to be the only one who can save her from losing her dance academy, the dream she has worked so hard to turn into a reality.Remarrying is definitely off Drew’s list of things to do. As head of his Fortune 500 trucking company, he enjoys his wealth and has no problem keeping it a game with some of the world’s most beautiful women. So why should his son’s challenging, straight talking dance teacher get under his skin in a way no other female has? Sure, Casey Richardson has luminous brown eyes and a lean, taut body that drives him nuts, but he’s seen plenty in his day with the supermodels he is used to dating. He tells himself it is because Casey is the only one who was able to bring his shy, uncommunicative son out of his shell. But even that isn’t it. Bewildered, Drew decides he just might make use of those ridiculous psychic readings he won at North Cove’s Annual Fourth Of July Bazaar raffle. Little does he know the local psychic who donated the readings has taken off last minute for some trekking in Tibet —and Casey was swayed into substituting for her with phone readings to the anonymous winner. Add in a stint on a hit TV dance-off series, a cozy local coffee shop, a narcissistic rock star and a protective big brother to make KISS ME, DANCER a sexy, heartfelt and fun read.In addition to being part of today’s Indie author movement, Alicia and Roy Street are also traditionally published (under another penname). In 2009 they received a Daphne Du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense.