Book picks similar to
Interim by S. Walden


young-adult
dark
new-adult
romance

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.

The Paper Swan


Leylah Attar - 2015
    But on Day 22, she would have given anything for the sweet slumber of death. Because on Day 22, she realizes that her only way out means certain death for one of the two men she loves.A haunting tale of passion, loss, and redemption, The Paper Swan is a darkly intense yet heartwarming love story, textured with grit, intrigue, and suspense. Please note: This is NOT a love triangle.A full-length, standalone novel, intended for mature audiences due to violence, sex and language. Subject matter may be disturbing for some readers.

How to Save a Life


Emma Scott - 2016
    A harrowing past haunts her every time she looks in the mirror, and she can’t escape the violence of her everyday life. More and more, her thoughts turn to Evan Salinger, the boy she knew in high school. The boy they called a mental case. A loner. A freak. The boy who seemed to know things no one could know. For a few short weeks, Jo had found perfect solace in Evan’s company, sneaking every night to meet him at the local pool. In the cool of the water and the warmth of Evan’s arms around her, Jo had tasted something close to happiness. Cruel circumstances tore them apart, and four years later, the sweet memory of their time together is dissolving under the punishing reality of Jo’s life now. Evan seems like a fading dream…until he reappears at the moment she needs him most. Guided by Evan’s strange intuition, they flee her small Louisiana town, and Jo begins to suspect there is something more to his sudden return than he admits.Over twelve days across America’s heartland, deep secrets come to light, buried pasts are unearthed, and the line between dreams and reality is blurred as Evan and Jo fight to hold on to their soul-deep love, and discover that there is more than one way to save a life.***How to Save a Life is a complete second-chance STANDALONE novel with shades of the paranormal. It carries the characters from high school through to their early twenties. It is not YA; mature subject matter, and sexual situations. TRIGGER WARNING: domestic violence (on the page) and mention of sexual abuse (off the page) For readers 18 years and up.The Dreamcatcher novels are a series of interconnected STANDALONES, each with shades of the paranormal. It is NOT necessary to read them in order, though some characters appear in other novels.

Flawed


Kate Avelynn - 2012
    For years, she’s watched James destroy his life to save hers. If all he asks for in return is her affection, she’ll give it freely.Until, with a tiny kiss and a broken mind, he asks for more than she can give.Sam Donavon has been James’ best friend — and the boy Sarah’s had a crush on — for as long as she can remember. As their forbidden relationship deepens, Sarah knows she’s in trouble. Quiet, serious Sam has decided he’s going to save her. Neither of them realizes James is far more unstable than her father ever was, or that he’s not about to let Sarah forget her half of the pact...

When We Collide


A.L. Jackson - 2012
    Trapped in a world of false ambitions and feigned affections, William knows he’s reached a breaking point and something’s going to give.Maggie had lived her entire life without hope until one man showed her what it meant to be loved. He’d been her light in a lifetime of darkness. Six years ago, that darkness stole him away. Without him, she’s surrendered herself to an existence she doesn’t know how to escape.When the family William left behind is struck by tragedy, he is called back to the one place he’s sworn to never return to again.In a moment that will change his life forever, William comes face to face with the girl who, with one look, captured his heart. He is unable to ignore the buried desires and the hope for the future they’d once believed they’d have.Now William is ready to fight to take back what had been stolen from him six years before.But he never imagined what that fight might cost him.A.L. Jackson gives you an intimate look into the lives of a family bound by an unseen connection in this romantic thriller with a supernatural twist.

Marrow


Tarryn Fisher - 2015
     In the house there is a girl. In the girl there is a darkness. Margo is not like other girls. She lives in a derelict neighborhood called the Bone, in a cursed house, with her cursed mother, who hasn’t spoken to her in over two years. She lives her days feeling invisible. It’s not until she develops a friendship with her wheelchair-bound neighbor, Judah Grant, that things begin to change. When neighborhood girl, seven-year-old Neveah Anthony, goes missing, Judah sets out to help Margo uncover what happened to her. What Margo finds changes her, and with a new perspective on life, she’s determined to find evil and punish it–targeting rapists and child molesters, one by one. But hunting evil is dangerous, and Margo risks losing everything, including her own soul.

Whispers and the Roars


K. Webster - 2016
    Can’t. Ever. Touch. Me.

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+**

Forbidden


Tabitha Suzuma - 2010
    He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But... they are brother and sister.Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

Most of All You


Mia Sheridan - 2017
    . .Crystal learned long ago that love brings only pain. Feeling nothing at all is far better than being hurt again. She guards her wounded heart behind a hard exterior and carries within her a deep mistrust of men, who, in her experience, have only ever used and taken.A man in need of help . . .Then Gabriel Dalton walks into her life. Despite the terrible darkness of his past, there's an undeniable goodness in him. And even though she knows the cost, Crystal finds herself drawn to Gabriel. His quiet strength is wearing down her defenses and his gentle patience is causing her to question everything she thought she knew.Only love can mend a shattered heart . . .Crystal and Gabriel never imagined that the world, which had stolen everything from them, would bring them a deep love like this. Except fate will only take them so far, and now the choice is theirs: Harden their hearts once again or find the courage to shed their painful pasts.

One Day Soon


A. Meredith Walters - 2016
    I stayed with him through darkness and fire. We loved each other in the moment between innocence and bitter truth. We were the kids easily ignored, who grew into adults we hardly knew. We weren’t meant to last forever. And we didn’t. He ran away. I tried to move on. Yet I never stopped thinking about the boy who had fought to keep me alive in a world that would have swallowed me whole. He was the past that I buried, but never forgot. Until the day I found him again, years after believing I had lost him forever. And in cold, resentful eyes, I saw the heart of the man who had been everything when I had nothing at all. So I vowed to hold onto the second chance that was stolen from the children we had been. Sometimes fate is ugly. Life can be twisted. And who we are can be ruined by who we once were. For two people who had survived so much, we would have to learn how to hold on before we were forced to let go.

Weightless


Kandi Steiner - 2016
     I remember I wanted to photograph them, the way the red and blue splashed across his cold, emotionless face. But I knew even if my feet could move from the place where they had cemented themselves to the ground and I could run for my camera, I wouldn’t be able to capture that moment. I had trusted him, I had loved him, and even though my body had changed that summer, he’d made sure to help me hold on to who I was inside, regardless of how the exterior altered. But then everything changed. He stole my innocence. He scarred my heart. He took everything I thought I knew about my life and fast-pitched it out the window, shattering the glass that held my world together in the process. I remember the lights. The passionate, desperate, hot strikes of red. The harsh, cruel, icy bolts of blue. They symbolized everything I endured that summer. And everything I would never face again.

Slammer


Tabatha Vargo - 2015
    Ten years later, the boy he used to be is gone. In his place is the shell of a man with murder under his belt. Any emotion he once had was left under the gavel when he was given life in prison. That is until the new nurse in the infirmary joins the block. Putting your hands on a prison employee will get you the hole, but some things are worth their punishment, and something tells him Lyla will be worth more than he bargained for. Lyla Evans isn’t sure about her new job at a maximum security prison, but showing uncertainty and weakness isn’t an option. Taking care of murderers and rapists isn’t ideal, but survival is key. She’s warned ahead of time about a prisoner named X, but when she’s attacked, it’s the dangerous X that saves her. Fraternizing with the prisoners is forbidden, but sometimes the most forbidden things are the sweetest.

Nocte


Courtney Cole - 2014
    I'm eighteen years old, and I'm one half of a whole. My other half—my twin brother, my Finn—is crazy. I love him. More than life, more than anything. And even though I'm terrified he'll suck me down with him, no one can save him but me. I'm doing all I can to stay afloat in a sea of insanity, but I'm drowning more and more each day. So I reach out for a lifeline. Dare DuBray. He's my savior and my anti-Christ. His arms are where I feel safe, where I'm afraid, where I belong, where I'm lost. He will heal me, break me, love me and hate me. He has the power to destroy me. Maybe that's ok. Because I can't seem to save Finn and love Dare without everyone getting hurt. Why? Because of a secret. A secret I'm so busy trying to figure out, that I never see it coming. You won't either.

Meet Me in the Dark


J.A. Huss - 2015
    Left in the hands of a sadistic man, she did whatever it took to survive. But Merc’s last words gave her hope. Hope he’d be back to finish the job.Merc knows just what to do with a fearful girl like Sydney after he was betrayed by her father that night. He wields sex, drugs, lies, and love like weapons—and Sydney is his target.He’s in control. He’s always in control. But Sydney Channing is not what she appears. And Merc’s only redeeming act, the very one that made Sydney’s life a living hell, might just be his worst mistake yet.WARNING: Meet Me In The Dark is non-traditional DARK CAPTIVE ROMANTIC SUSPENSE. It is not intended for sensitive readers.