Book picks similar to
For All You Have Left by Laura Miller


new-adult
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romance
contemporary-romance

AnguiSH


Lila Felix - 2013
    Scarred doesn’t begin to define his hell since finding out his girlfriend had cheated, stolen, and lied two years ago. It led to a single event—one that would blacken his days and his nights from then on. Since then, he hasn’t left his house, crippled by fear of people and any social interaction.Ashland talks too much and has the voice of a meth-laden prairie dog, or so she’s always been told. She’s been called annoying and irritating all of her life and gave up on having friends for a long time. College has given her a new lease on a social life and she’s embraced who she is. But now she’s waiting for the one guy who can take her breath away and put up with her antics. A simple note pinned to a corkboard will lead Ash right to Breaker’s solitary world and she will learn that just because a guy doesn’t fit her ideal, doesn’t mean she won’t fall head over feet in love.

Drowning in Stars


Debra Anastasia - 2020
    She blew bubbles through my window. I shot my Nerf gun through hers. We both had secrets, but one of us was fated to get hurt. I wanted it to be me.Pixie: When I was afraid of the dark, he would shine a light in my window. We shared our popsicles and I taught him how to get a good swing on the playground. I never imagined I’d have to decide who got to live and who didn’t. I chose him --and he could never know.She walked a tightrope five stories up just to save my life…★☆★ Drowning in Stars is a full 100k standalone. ★☆★

Black Box


Cassia Leo - 2014
    Their first encounter changes Mikki's life forever, but their second meeting leaves them both buried beneath the emotional wreckage of a violent attack. Mikki is left with more questions and grief than she can handle, while Crush is forced to forget the girl who saved his life.Now nineteen years old, Mikki Gladstone has decided she's tired of the mind-numbing meds. She books a flight to Los Angeles to end her life far away from her loving, though often distant, family.Twenty-one-year-old Crush has always channeled his blackest thoughts into his music, but he's never had great aspirations. He decides to fly to Los Angeles to record a demo of the only song he's never performed in public; a song he wrote for a girl he doesn't even know: Black Box. He has no expectations of fame and he's never felt like his life had any purpose... until he meets Mikki in Terminal B.When Mikki and Crush cross paths for the third time in Terminal B, neither has any idea who the other person is; until they slowly piece together their history and realize that fate has more in store for them than just another love story.

The Ending I Want


Samantha Towle - 2016
     Taylor Shaw had the perfect life—until she was sixteen. That was when everything changed. From that moment on, life went from bad to worse…to the worst. After recovering from a brain tumor, months later, she suffers the tragic loss of her whole family. Since that fateful day, she’s been coasting through life. Now, the brain tumor has returned, and Taylor decides she’s had enough. She’s going to take her fate into her own hands. No more hospitals. No more surgeries. No more anything. She’s going to join her family. It’s her decision. What she longs for. The ending she wants. She just has a list of things to do before she goes. First, go to England. Second, kiss a stranger… Only, Taylor didn’t expect Liam Hunter, the stranger—with his handsome face, his six-foot-three of gorgeousness, and his oh-so-hot English accent—to change things. To change her. To change the ending she wanted. What is a girl, who is standing on the edge of nothing, to do when offered the chance of everything?

Harley & Rose


Carmen Jenner - 2016
    So what if this isn’t her actual wedding day, and that she’s only here because Harley was left at the altar just a few hours earlier? Trading San Francisco for paradise and swapping her bridesmaid’s bouquet for a Blue Hawaii, Rose hopes she can finally escape the friend zone. Once upon a time they had been more than friends, but life got in the way. She’s spent every day since wishing Harley would get a clue. She’s always been his best friend. He’s always been hers. She’s in love with him. He’s … not in love with her. He’s … marrying someone else. He’s … hiding something. He’s … well—it’s complicated.

Reclaiming the Sand


A. Meredith Walters - 2014
    Tormenter and tormented. Villain and hero. Ellie McCallum was a bully. No connection to anyone or anything. A sad and lonely existence for a young woman who had come to expect nothing more for herself. Her only happiness coming from making others miserable. Particularly Freaky Flynn. Flynn Hendrick lived a life completely disconnected even as he struggled to become something more than that boy with Asperger's. He was taunted and teased, bearing the brunt of systematic and calculated cruelty, ultimately culminating in a catastrophic turn of events that brought Ellie and Flynn’s worlds crashing down.But then Flynn and Ellie grew up. And moved on.Until years later when their paths unexpectedly cross again and the bully and the freak are face to face once more.When labels come to define you, finding yourself feels impossible. Particularly for two people disconnected from the world who inexplicably find a connection in each other. And out of the wreckage of their tragic beginnings, an unlikely love story unfolds.But a painful past doesn’t always want to let go. And old wounds are never truly healed…and sometimes the further you try to run from yourself the closer you come to who you really are.

See Through Heart


Amie Knight - 2016
     It wasn’t our quiet nights by the creek or stolen kisses surrounded by a sea of cotton that saved me. It was her. She was my comfort when life threw one ugly tragedy after another at me. Until she dealt me the greatest blow. Now, abandonment, betrayal, and death darken every corner of my life. Anger and hurt burn bright where love and trust once lived. But, now, she’s back. Sure, she’s changed, but I see through it—straight to her heart.

Maybe Maby


Willow Aster - 2014
    Not the put-her-in-the-loony-bin kind, but the rock-in-the-corner-so-I-can-breathe kind. Maybe they’re one and the same and I really do need to be put away, but I think I just need a little air. I’m bone tired. My eyes look like I haven’t slept in weeks. I’m eating my feelings and developing a pudge that isn’t gonna go anywhere if I keep binging on chocolate, nachos and wine. I’m 28 and everyone has left me. I have no friends. My boyfriend left. My mom died, so technically she left me too. I hate my job. I get this overwhelming 'oh my God, is this what my life is gonna be?' feeling and I want to die. Curl up and die. And since I don’t feel my heartbeat fading or my breathing getting even slightly faint, I panic that I’m gonna have to live. Maybe Maby is a heartbreaking, and at times, hilarious story about coping with loss, finding love in New York, and learning to recognize hope in the middle of it all.

The Hard Truth About Sunshine


Sawyer Bennett - 2017
    Provocatively heart-breaking, audaciously irreverent and romantically fulfilling, The Hard Truth About Sunshine exposes just how very thin the line is between a full life and an empty existence. An angry, bitter amputee. An optimist losing her eyesight. A dying kid. A suicidal thief. Four people with nothing in common but their destination. Despite having narrowly escaped death’s clutches, Christopher Barlow is grateful for nothing. His capacity to love has been crushed. He hates everyone and everything, completely unable to see past the gray stain of misery that coats his perception of the world. It’s only after he involuntarily joins a band of depressed misfits who are struggling to overcome their own problems, does Christopher start to re-evaluate his lot in life. What could they possibly learn from one another? How could they possibly help each other to heal? And the question that Christopher asks himself over and over again… can he learn to love again? He’s about to find out as he embarks upon a cross country trip with a beautiful woman who is going blind, a boy with terminal cancer, and an abuse victim who can’t decide whether she wants to live or die. They will encounter adventure, thrills, loss and love. And within their travels they will learn the greatest lesson of all. The hard truth about sunshine… Warning: This book deals with some tough issues including suicide and sexual abuse.

My Clarity


M. Clarke - 2014
    However, life throws her a serious curveball when she discovers that her roommate isn’t quite the person she had imagined.Smoking, tattoos, and street racing for fast cash are Elijah’s only interests. A harsh life has made him apathetic and indifferent, until Alexandria enters his life. When their paths cross, turmoil abounds.An inevitable encounter, an undeniable attraction, and an unexpected chance at love—will it be enough?** This is a New Adult romance novel recommended for ages 18+due to sexual content and mature subject matter.**

This is Falling


Ginger Scott - 2014
    Then, I had to learn how to survive. Two years, three months and sixteen days had passed since I was the Rowe Stanton from before, since tragedy stole my youth and my heart went along with it. When I left for college, I put a thousand miles between my future and my past. I’d made a choice—I was going to cross back to the other side, to live with the living. I just didn’t know how. And then I met Nate Preeter. An All-American baseball player, Nate wasn’t supposed to notice a ghost-of-a-girl like me. But he did. He shouldn’t want to know my name. But he did. And when he learned my secret and saw the scars it left behind, he was supposed to run. But he didn’t. My heart was dead, and I was never supposed to belong to anyone. But Nate Preeter had me feeling, and he made me want to be his. He showed me everything I was missing. And then he showed me how to fall. *This is a standalone in a three-part series that will focus on different characters. Each book can be read on its own.

The Problem with Forever


Jennifer L. Armentrout - 2016
    Growing up, Mallory Dodge learned that the best way to survive was to say nothing. And even though it's been four years since her nightmare ended, she's beginning to worry that the fear that holds her back will last a lifetime. Now, after years of homeschooling, Mallory must face a new milestone—spending her senior year at a public high school. But she never imagined she'd run into Rider Stark, the friend and protector she hasn't seen since childhood, on her very first day. It doesn't take long for Mallory to realize that the connection she shared with Rider never really faded. Yet soon it becomes apparent that she's not the only one grappling with lingering scars from the past. And as she watches Rider's life spiral out of control, Mallory must make a choice between staying silent and speaking out—for the people she loves, the life she wants and the truths that need to be heard.

Until Friday Night


Abbi Glines - 2015
    But while West may be Big Man on Campus on the outside, on the inside he’s battling the grief that comes with watching his father slowly die of cancer.Two years ago, Maggie Carleton’s life fell apart when her father murdered her mother. And after she told the police what happened, she stopped speaking and hasn’t spoken since. Even the move to Lawton, Alabama, couldn’t draw Maggie back out. So she stayed quiet, keeping her sorrow and her fractured heart hidden away.As West’s pain becomes too much to handle, he knows he needs to talk to someone about his father—so in the dark shadows of a post-game party, he opens up to the one girl who he knows won’t tell anyone else.West expected that talking about his dad would bring some relief, or at least a flood of emotions he couldn’t control. But he never expected the quiet new girl to reply, to reveal a pain even deeper than his own—or for them to form a connection so strong that he couldn’t ever let her go…

Idle Bloom


Jewel E. Ann - 2014
    Everyday she takes the Red Line to her job at The Green Pot in Boston while her friends enter the coveted, black iron gates to higher learning. The ramifications from a tragic accident have put her life on hold while time marches on for everyone around her. After graduating from Harvard Law, Boston native, Oliver Konrad, moves to Portland to start his career and his life. Three years later, after a horrific discovery, he returns home to trade in his three-piece suit for leather work boots and his suburban home for a condo in Cambridge. All he brought back to the East Coast was an aversion to pillows and secrets he keeps hidden behind a mysterious locked door. Oliver’s days are predictable and his nights are lonely until he meets Vivian on the subway. Her long raven hair, green eyes, and mile-long legs are achingly sexy, but the way she "innocently" fingers and licks her Boston Kreme doughnut can only be described in two words—complete torture.When their paths cross at every turn, laughter is abundant, friendship is easy, and love is unintentional. However, their future seems improbable.

Complicate Me


M. Robinson - 2015
    That one moment where you could have chosen a path that would lead you down a certain road. A different life. It was easier to pretend that we were still best friends, and that she was my girl and I was her boy. Pretending was better than knowing the truth...I. Ruined. Us.I had her. I lost her. I love her.All I did was complicate us.STANDALONE series. New Adult Contemporary Romance: Strong language and sexual content, not intended for readers under 18.