Book picks similar to
Serendipity by Carol Wyatt


age-gap
lesbian
fauxmance
slow-burn

Close to Home


Rachel Spangler - 2017
    Everything is precisely as it should be. Well, it is until her father suffers a debilitating stroke during the busiest time of her year—tax season. Suddenly, Kelly finds herself overworked, exhausted, behind schedule, and forced to hire an intern to meet her deadlines.Elliot Garza is young and brash, but she's also a talented accounting student who is charismatic, driven, and solely focused on completing her internship so she can escape from the bleak Midwestern town to Washington, DC and her dream job. She knows she has the professional skills necessary to do the job well, but she is less certain about her ability to handle her beautiful, prickly, demanding, and compelling new boss.In this fresh new romance from one of the genre's top young authors, will Kelly's past and Elliot's future add up to something greater than the sum of their escalating attraction, or will the answer to their equation end up hitting too close to home?Rachel Spangler is the author of ten lesbian romance novels and novellas and the winner of two Golden Crown Literary Society Awards. She pens the popular blog, Wonder Boi Writes, and lives with her wife and son in Western New York.

More Than A Holiday


Lauren Trevino - 2020
    Payton Sutton is still trying to get over her father's sudden death one year ago.She should have committed to her mother's law firm by now, but between the grief and the realization of how short life really is, Payton puts it off for another while, choosing to fly to Spain instead, to a seaside town that her father loved.After a few weeks in the sun, she should know what she wants, right?The one thing she hadn't counted on was falling in love.

Ticket To Love


Donna Jay - 2018
    The sassy Australian, ten years her junior, is as charming as she is off-limits.When lines are crossed, fireworks explode, and not all of them good. Emotions run high, loyalties are tested, bonds are made, and bonds are broken.Just when Tara thinks life has settled into a comfortable routine, a door to her past looms ahead. Taking a giant leap of faith, with Kathryn by her side, she steps through.

Deck the Halls


Caitlin Ryan - 2020
    Between raising her daughter alone and running an online crafting business, she really doesn't have time to worry about putting up a tree, or baking cookies for Santa. When's she is called into her daughter's classroom, she is shocked to find out her daughter's teacher is her high-school sweetheart. Thirteen years and one failed marriage later, she had no interest in rekindling their romance.Valerie Rivers loves Christmas. Christmas decorations, Christmas candy, Christmas sweaters. If it's Christmas themed, she has to have it. Leaving her high-school girlfriend, Bridget, to pursue an acting career is one of her biggest regrets. When Ms. Buttermilk, Aria's mother, turns out to be Bridget, she sees a second chance at everything she walked away from.Bridget has changed, and it's up to Valerie (with a little help from Aria) to help her rekindle her love of Christmas. Is 25 days enough to fall in love, find her Christmas spirit, and keep their sanity long enough to make it through the annual Christmas market, or do they need a Christmas miracle?

Mistletoe


Lyn Gardner - 2012
    Now, Santa has a problem. No child's wish has ever gone unanswered, but the child isn't a child anymore. Believing there is nothing in Santa's Village to satisfy the little girl's wish now that she's an adult, he calls on a Higher Power and is given a suggestion. Although most of Santa's workshops contain only toys for boys and girls, there is one that holds a possible solution to his problem. Learning that Diana will be attending three upcoming Christmas parties, Santa calls on his lead elf to deliver three sprigs of mistletoe, hoping that under one, Diana Clarke will find what she asked for thirty years before.

The Art of Growing


Jacqueline Ramsden - 2021
    She owns a landscaping business, she tends her plants, lives alone, and secretly crushes on her favorite nonbinary garden center employee, Polly. Between anxiety and modesty, Sloane's never planning on telling Polly she likes them. She'll just be admiring from afar while she deals with her demanding family and fulfills her sister’s order.Polly Stanwick loves people. She has the best time working at Blooms, talking to customers, hanging out with the kids, and generally being a ray of sunshine. When they hear their regular, Sloane Abbott, is having a rough day, they naturally sweep in to help.What neither of them is expecting is for Polly's colleague to suggest her as a fake date for Sloane's weekend with her family. For Sloane, it’s the only way to avoid the heteronormative life her parents will push on her, so despite her misgivings, she agrees. It’s only one weekend, right?Fooling the Abbotts into thinking she and Polly are a couple is easy, but for Sloane, handling her own feelings is harder. Holding hands and sharing a bed doesn’t make things any easier—nor does Polly being there for her in all the ways she ever wished somebody would.Sometimes the hardest thing to face is our own potential to grow.The Art of Growing is a 75k-word slow-burn, friends-to-lovers, fake-dating romance over a weekend full of mutual pining and blurred lines. Content warnings for on-page sex scenes, abusive family dynamics, off-screen references to past abusive relationships, anxiety attacks, and useless sapphics.

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.

Falling


Jade Winters - 2020
    Though there's an obvious attraction between the two women, Amelia questions whether it's real or all in her head. A fantasy that can never become a reality. After all, Vogue is rich, talented and beautiful, and can have any woman she wants.Unknown to Amelia, Vogue is hiding behind a façade. Bereft after her best friend betrays her, Vogue is torn between the life she thought she knew and the reality she now faces, as the threat of losing her business looms over her.Both women have to decide whether to put their hearts on the line and risk opening themselves up to the unknown. If they don't, they risk losing so much more.

Thick as Thieves


Cara Malone - 2019
     Madison Blackstone is a lone wolf thief on a mission to win back the only family she has left. When a rare book surfaces on the black market, it’s just the thing to buy her brother’s love. The only thing is, she has to quit the heist lifestyle to earn his trust. Madison has planned her final job meticulously, but even in her wildest dreams she could never anticipate a rival like Cass. Cass Hartley is fallen swindler royalty… fallen ever since her foolish heart got her legendary parents caught and jailed. A rare book with a hefty reward to pay back old debts should go a long way to clearing her conscience, and it should be an easy job - if Cass was the only one going after it. When Cass and Madison meet, it’s inside a bank vault at midnight and they’re both reaching for the same safe deposit locker. Things go sideways fast as crew rivalries, double-crosses and vicious guard poodles foil their plans. And then there’s the undeniable attraction building between them in tight spaces, dark rooms and adrenaline-fueled adventures. It has Madison questioning her choice to go clean, Cass wondering if she’s falling into the same old traps, and their crews wondering what the heck got into them. Working together is the only way to get the book, but can they trust each other with the most precious treasure of all – their hearts? From the bestselling Cara Malone and Anna Cove comes a fun, flirty book heist with twists, turns, and an unexpected romance.

Strong Hearts


Ellie Green - 2019
    She expects to find an empty house. Instead, she finds a naked woman in the bathtub. A beautiful, naked woman. Tilly can’t decide if she’s angry at Eva or attracted to her, but either way they can’t avoid each other in the small community. A quiet break in the country is turning out to be anything but for Tilly. But it might also be exactly what she needs. As attraction turns to romance, she learns there is more to Eva than meets the eye. Eva is strong, and strength is what Tilly needs when she has to face the fight that is waiting for her in the city. Will she be strong enough to overcome what stands between her and a chance at happiness?

Eight Dates


Lori L. Lake - 2014
    She’s found that meeting women is difficult – kind of daunting, actually. She feels like she’s been run through the mill, and she doesn’t want to go through it again. But when her best pal and business partner Mitchell signs her up at the GirlsGaylore.com dating website and characterizes her as a happy-go-lucky, amorous, risk-taking single, all hell breaks loose. Suddenly women are coming out of the woodwork and Sky hardly knows what to make of it. EIGHT DATES is a comical story of a woman’s search for Ms. Right—and how she finds quite a few Ms. Wrongs along the way.

Irregular Heartbeat


Chris Zett - 2018
    She’s determined not to let anything stop her—not even falling in love with her aloof mentor, Dr. Emily Barnes.Emily has only ever focused on her career as a senior attending in the emergency department, and she isn’t happy about having to babysit a resident with a ten-year gap in her résumé, no matter how intriguing she is.But every time they work together, it’s not just their patients’ heartbeat that gets a little irregular. Soon, the once-clear lines between work and personal life begin to blur.When Diana’s unorthodox secret past is revealed, putting her job in jeopardy, Emily has to choose between her career and her relationship. A lesbian romance that asks how much we’d risk for love.Themes: medical romance · professional drummer · rock star life94,000 words

Contract for Love


Alison Grey - 2015
    She’s been raised by her rich grandmother, and her only goals are partying and bedding women.When her grandmother threatens to disinherit her if she doesn’t clean up her act, Madison has to find a way to convince her she’s changed.After a chance encounter with Sherry, Madison comes up with a crazy idea that will rock both of their worlds: she wants to hire Sherry to play her fake girlfriend.Themes: fake dating · fake girlfriend · fake relationship · play girl · pretend romance · rich girl/poor girl97,000 words

The Secret Chord


Virginia Hale - 2019
    Joan of Arc, she expected to deal with rowdy adolescents, strict nuns, and memories of her intense friendship with her old roommate, Tilly Wattle. The last thing Kate expected, however, was for Tilly to show up as the substitute teacher.The last time the two had seen each other, Tilly had her heart set on joining the sisterhood of nuns that had raised her as an orphan. Tilly longed for a simple life devoting herself to God while Kate longed for a simple life devoting herself to Tilly. Now, twelve years since she forced herself to say goodbye, Kate realizes that she never really got over her sweet, beautiful friend—or the secret kisses they shared as girls.In her heart of hearts Kate believes that Tilly can match her passion with equal intensity. When Tilly steadfastly refuses to talk about their past, what choice does Kate have but to try to control her own longings and concentrate on renewing their friendship?But what if Kate isn’t the only one desperate to hide her true feelings…Genre: RomanceEditor: Cath WalkerCover Designer: Judith Fellows

There You Are


Robin Alexander - 2019
    Even though her career plans didn’t turn out as she expected, she still believes her expectations for her love life will be met. Brett is ready to meet Ms. Right Forever if she can get a break in the schedule her young boss dictates. Evangeline Scott, known as Scotty, also dreamed of being a famous fashion designer. Years of fighting tooth and nail for a toehold in the fashion industry have taken their toll. Scotty has lowered her expectations and is the latest designer for I Am Alex, a clothing line for young adults. Her boss Alex and her congenial attitude is like a breath of fresh air, but Alex’s chief designer, Brett, is something akin to morning breath with a dash of garlic, yet oddly interesting. Scotty and Brett are more alike than they realize when they first meet, but it takes a crash landing in the wilderness for them to truly realize just how perfect they are for each other. They just have to survive Alex and her sister Cass who can’t stand each other, their Uncle Mark who can’t stand up to his own dog, and whatever lurks in the Montana mountains. Robin Alexander’s latest romantic comedy is loaded with laughs, love, and a tiny bit of wildlife.