Book picks similar to
One Way Ticket by Tricia O'Malley


romance
giveaways
contemporary-romance
tbr

Secrets in the Sand


Carolyn Brown - 2021
    Not when they are deep within the heart like Angela Conrad's. Ten years ago, Clancy Morgan broke her heart and even though she's made a successful life for herself, she's never gotten over that pain. Angel didn't intend to ever go back home, but when the Alumni Association asked her to return to her hometown to play for the dance at their alumni gathering, she agreed.Clancy wasn't planning to attend, but he does, and he recognizes Angela immediately. He never expected to see her again, and definitely didn't expect to see her standing up there looking like a movie star and singing like a seasoned famous country artist. She's the Angel he walked away from and has been kicking himself ever since.He made a big mistake, but maybe he can mend it, if only she'll let him. She's not so easily inclined, but he gets to know her posse of protective girlfriends, and they cook up a scheme to help her get over him once and for all. Or, maybe she'll let him win her back.

The Me I Used to Be


Jennifer Ryan - 2019
    Her mother blames her for her father’s death, and her brothers want her out of their way. When Evangeline learns she’s solely responsible for their failing ranch—putting her family’s future squarely on her shoulders—she’ll have to find a creative way to save their home before they lose it all.She’ll have her reckoning...Her only ally: the cop who sent her away. Chris Chambers is positive she went to prison to protect someone else. He strikes a deal: help him track down the real criminals in exchange for clearing her name. But the closer Evangeline and Chris get to exposing the truth—and to each other—the deeper Evangeline is drawn into a dangerous sting that could finally bring her justice…or put her dreams on hold permanently.She’ll fight for the life she always wanted…Everyone’s lives moved on while Evangeline’s stood still. Now she has a chance to rebuild her family ranch, her life, and expose the people who put her away, so she can become the woman she was always meant to be.

Perfectly Impossible


Elizabeth Topp - 2020
    An artist at heart, Anna works a day job as a private assistant for Bambi Von Bizmark, a megarich Upper East Side matriarch who’s about to be honored at the illustrious Opera Ball.Caught between the staid world of great wealth and her unconventional life as an artist, Anna struggles with her true calling. If she’s supposed to be a painter, why is she so much more successful as a personal assistant? When her boyfriend lands a fancy new job, it throws their future as a couple into doubt and intensifies Anna’s identity crisis. All she has to do is ensure everything runs smoothly and hold herself together until the Opera Ball is over. How hard could that be?Featuring a vibrant array of characters from the powerful to the proletarian, Perfectly Impossible offers a glimpse into a world you’ll never want to leave.

Someday in Paris


Olivia Lara - 2020
    Missed opportunities and mistakes. Loss and sacrifice. But above all, it is about love. The kind of love that survives time, distance... even death. The kind of love I wish for you.' Finding the one is only the beginning...1954. Zara is fifteen the first time she meets Leon. During a power cut in a small French museum, the two spend one short hour in the dark talking about their love for art, Monet, and Paris. Neither knows what the other looks like. Both know their lives will never be the same.1963. In Paris, Leon no longer believes he will ever find the girl he lost that night. After dreaming about him for years, Zara thinks she has already found him. When they meet at an exhibition, they don't recognize each other – yet the way they feel is so familiar...Over the course of twenty years, Zara and Leon are destined to fall in love again and again. But will they ever find a way to be together?The magical new love story of 2020, perfect for hopeless romantics and fans of One Day and The Notebook.

Off Schedule


Andrea Buck - 2021
    Ten days. One motorhome. What could go wrong?When Paula runs into the ex-love of her life, she believes it’s fate. When he introduces his new fiancée, Paula thinks fate should get fired. And when her ex has the nerve to ask what’s going on in her life, she does what any reasonable person would do, she lies.Her musician neighbor is willing to play the fake boyfriend. He just needs a tiny favor in return. Piece of cake, he tells her. Nothing to worry about.Paula sets off to deliver an antique instrument, but ends up stranded in the desert with a homeless dog, an impossible deadline, and ancient motorhome. Only a miracle could get her home. When the miracle shows up looking like a Greek god in a Levi’s ad, staying on schedule becomes the least of Paula’s problems.

The Paid Bridesmaid


Sariah Wilson - 2022
    Discretion guaranteed. Her next gig is a destination wedding—livestreamed and sponsored—for an Instagram influencer. That means a paradise of new contacts, which could be a boon to her already booming business. If Rachel can keep the very handsome and slightly too interested best man at bay, that is.High-tech entrepreneur Camden Lewis must know: Who is this gorgeous, intelligent, and mysterious woman? Too good to be real. Convinced she’s a corporate spy out to tank his company, Camden’s not letting her out of his sight. But the constant surveillance is also opening his eyes to things about Rachel that he likes. If she’s a spy, she’s certainly the cutest one he’s ever seen.As the week’s worth of wedding events march along, Rachel and Camden are learning almost everything there is to know about each other. Rachel’s made a career out of always a bridesmaid…but perhaps there’s a chance for her own trip down the aisle?

A Week at Most


Claudia Shelton - 2020
    Change can be even worse. But there comes a time in life when there's nothing else to do… Big-city newscaster Ashley Lanovan never envisioned herself divorced and unemployed by thirty-eight. She agrees to housesit a friend's property in small town USA, but rapidly realizes she's a fish out of water. Learning to adapt has never been her strong point, but the neglected community is friendly and needs her business savvy. A computer hack has put CIA agent Mark Garmund's life in danger, so he takes a few days refuge with friends in Nature's Crossing. His career secrets are dangerous and changing professions has been foremost in his thoughts lately. He realizes it's time to make a choice when a chance encounter with the woman his friends introduced him to years ago, leads to more than hello. But first, he has to make sure their future will be safe. Mark figures earning Ashley's trust may not be easy. He should have called her years ago…

Halstead House


Aspen Hadley - 2021
    Growing up under an iron thumb, she's never gone off script, yet as she stares at the candles on her twenty-fifth birthday, she determines to reach for more.Terrified but hopeful, Grace buys a one-way airline ticket to Lavender Island in order to visit Halstead House, the once upon a time home of the only person Grace had ever been safe with, her honorary grandmother Mary. When Grace arrives on the island she's immediately caught up in the warmth-filled life she'd always imagined.What she hadn't imagined, however, was John Lucas Halstead or the feelings he would stir in her – especially when he’ll do anything to keep her at arms length. Just as Grace is finding her feet, her mother arrives on the island uninvited, forcing Grace to decide where she’ll stand once and for all. Is it finally time to rip up the script? Or will she accept her role and return?Only Grace can decide.

A Letter to Three Witches


Elizabeth Bass - 2022
    When romance problems cause their powers to go berserk, a trio of witches whose family was banned from practicing magic risk getting in serious trouble with the Grand Council. Can they get their magic—and their love lives—in order before it’s too late? Nearly a century ago, Gwen Engel’s great-great-grandfather cast a spell with catastrophic side-effects. As a result, the Grand Council of Witches forbade his descendants from practicing witchcraft. The Council even planted anonymous snitches called Watchers in the community to report any errant spellcasting… Yet magic may still be alive and not so well in Zenobia. Gwen and her cousins, Trudy and Milo, receive a letter from Gwen’s adopted sister, Tannith, informing them that she’s bewitched one of their partners and will run away with him at the end of the week. While Gwen frets about whether to trust her scientist boyfriend, currently out of town on a beetle-studying trip, she’s worried that local grad student Jeremy is secretly a Watcher doing his own research. Cousin Trudy is so stressed that she accidentally enchants her cupcakes, creating havoc among her bakery customers—and in her marriage. Perhaps it’s time the family took back control and figured out how to harness their powers. How else can Gwen decide whether her growing feelings for Jeremy are real—or the result of too many of Trudy’s cupcakes?

The Marriage Code


Brooke Burroughs - 2021
    But after turning down her boyfriend’s proposal, everything starts to crumble. In an effort to save the one thing she cares about—her job—she must recruit her colleague, Rishi, to be on her development team…only she may or may not have received the position he was promised. (She did.)Rishi cannot believe that he got passed over for promotion. To make matters worse, not only does his job require him to return home to Bangalore with his nemesis, Emma, but his parents now expect him to choose a bride and get married. So, when Emma makes him an offer—join her team, and she’ll write an algorithm to find him the perfect bride—he reluctantly accepts.Neither of them expect her marriage code to work so well—or to fall for one another—which leads Emma and Rishi to wonder if leaving fate up to formulas is really an equation for lasting love.

The Checklist


Addie Woolridge - 2021
    Gorgeous boyfriend? Check. Ambitions derailed by an insecure boss? Sigh—check.Things were going a little too well for Dylan Delacroix. After upstaging her boss on a big account, she gets dispatched to the last place she wants to be: her hometown, Seattle. There, she must use her superstar corporate-consulting skills to curb the worst impulses of an impossibly eccentric tech CEO—if she doesn’t, she’s fired.The fun doesn’t stop there: Dylan must also negotiate a ceasefire in the endless war between her bohemian parents and the straitlaced neighbors. Adding to the chaos is a wilting relationship with her boyfriend and a blossoming attraction to the neighbors’ smoking-hot son.Suddenly Dylan has a million checklists, each a mile long. As personal and professional pressures mount, she finds it harder and harder to stay on track. Having always relied on her ability to manage the world around her, Dylan’s going to need a new plan. She may be down, but she’s definitely not out.

The Truth and Other Hidden Things


Lea Geller - 2021
    So Bells, Harry, their two adolescent children, and her baby bump move to New York’s Hudson Valley, where Harry has landed a job at Dutchess College in the town of Pigkill.When the farm-to-table utopia Bells envisioned is anything but, she turns to the blogosphere. Under the pen name the County Dutchess, she anonymously dishes about life in Pigkill, detailing the activities of hypercompetitive parents and kombucha-drinking hipsters. Suddenly, Bells has a place to say all the things she’s been secretly thinking about being a wife and mother. As Bells turns the focus of her blog on her new neighbors, her readership continues to grow, but her scandalous posts hit closer to home: she puts Harry’s new job in jeopardy, derails her children’s lives, and risks the one real friendship she’s built.When Bells uncovers scandals right under her nose, the Dutchess goes viral, and soon everyone is asking, Who is the County Dutchess? Now Bells has to ask herself if it’s worth losing the people closest to her to finally feel noticed by everyone else.

Husband Material


Emily Belden - 2019
    Ever since the fateful day that leveled her world, Charlotte has worked hard to move forward. Great job at a hot social media analytics company? Check. Roommate with no knowledge of her past? Check. Adorable dog? Check. All the while, she’s faithfully data-crunched her way through life, calculating the probability of risk—so she can avoid it.Yet Charlotte’s algorithms could never have predicted that her late husband’s ashes would land squarely on her doorstep five years later. Stunned but determined, Charlotte sets out to find meaning in this sudden twist of fate, even if that includes facing her perfectly coiffed, and perfectly difficult, ex-mother-in-law—and her husband’s best friend, who seems to become a fixture at her side whether she likes it or not.But soon a shocking secret surfaces, forcing Charlotte to answer questions she never knew to ask and to consider the possibility of forgiveness. And when a chance at new love arises, she’ll have to decide once and for all whether to follow the numbers or trust her heart.

The Substitute


Denise Grover Swank - 2014
    Megan Vandemeer meant to tell her parents about her broken engagement, but a month and a half later she finds herself boarding a plane home to her wedding. Having stretched avoidance to its limits, it's time to come clean--a terrifying prospect since her mother is sure to blame her rather than her cheating, emotionally frigid ex. A couple of drinks and two Dramamine later, Megan finds herself spilling her sob story to the tall, dark, and handsome stranger in the seat next to her. With only one week left to save his business, Josh McMillan boards a plane to Kansas City in a last-ditch effort, leaving the details to chance. An unexpected answer is delivered in the form of the beautiful brunette beside him. Though she’s completely loopy, her honesty, openness, and humor charm him. So when she passes out before landing, he helps her off the plane--a good deed that leads to a colossal misunderstanding. Her parents assume he’s her fiancé. In a twist of fate, the mix-up might help Josh save his business, so he plays along, figuring he can help Megan too. All he has to do is stage a public break up convincing enough to appease her mother. Josh is only supposed to be a substitute groom, but the more time he and Megan spend together, the more their pretend engagement starts to feel real…and the less they want to break it off. Can a relationship that began as a farce turn into happily ever after?

Broken Hart (A Cross Creek Small Town Novel Book 1)


Kelly Collins - 2020
    I learned that the first time Kandra left.You know what she told me? That I couldn’t give her the life she wanted—a life of glitz and glamor.She left to model in the city, hit it big, and I thought I’d never see her again.I thought wrong.Now she’s back.She looks different, but deep down, she’s still the woman I loved—the woman I love.And this time, I’m going to make her mine.