Book picks similar to
My Way to You by Catherine Bybee
romance
contemporary
contemporary-romance
fiction
The Apology Project
Jeanette Escudero - 2021
She’s been fired for not compromising her principles in a high-profile case and then punching her partner in the nose for the misogynistic comment he made in retort (not her finest moment). Leaving a career that gave her purpose, Amelia can only ask, What next?Let it be better than her epic failure of a fortieth birthday party: an open bar full of no-shows except for John Ellis, a total stranger and the new associate at her ex-firm. As it turns out, though, he’s very good company—and a wake-up call. With the help of John and a lot of champagne, Amelia considers the people she’s wronged, from old besties to former boyfriends to coworkers. Amelia resolves to make amends—to those who really deserve it.One apology at a time, Amelia’s looking at the choices she’s made in the past, the new ones she’s making with John, and those she’s making for herself. What next? Maybe a second chance she never expected.
Never Enough
Kelly Elliott - 2019
Bull riding. But life on the road means leaving his young son at home with his parents. They want him to give up his career and be a father to his child, but Brock needs the adrenaline to get through each day…or so he thinks.Lincoln Pratt needs a fresh start. As a top interior designer in Atlanta, she has everything she could ever want, but she’s always at her father’s mercy. Something’s missing, and Lincoln knows she’ll only find it somewhere far away—like the rolling pastures of Hamilton, Montana, where she meets the irresistibly mysterious Brock.In Brock Shaw, Lincoln sees the part of her that’s missing. In Lincoln Pratt, Brock sees the part of himself he thought he’d lost. But the pain of his past binds him. Can he let himself love again?
Show Me the Way
A.L. Jackson - 2017
Jackson . . . Rex Gunner. As bitter as he is beautiful. The owner of the largest construction company in Gingham Lakes has been burned one too many times.His wife leaving him to raise their daughter was the last blow this single dad could take.The only woman he'll let into his heart is his little girl. Rynna Dayne. As vulnerable as she is tempting.She ran from Gingham Lakes when she was seventeen. She swore to herself she would never return.Then her grandmother passed away and left her the deed to the diner that she once loved.When Rex meets his new neighbor, he knows he's in trouble.She's gorgeous and sweet and everything he can't trust.Until she becomes the one thing he can't resist. One kiss sends them tumbling toward ecstasy.But in a town this size, pasts are bound to collide.Caught in a web of lies, betrayal, and disloyalty, Rex must make a choice. Will he hide behind his walls or will he take the chance . . .
The Arrangement
Sarah Dunn - 2017
They've got a two hundred year-old house, an autistic son obsessed with the Titanic, and 17 chickens, at last count. It's the kind of paradise where stay-at-home moms team up to cook the school's "hot lunch," dads grill grass-fed burgers, and, as Lucy observes, "chopping kale has become a certain kind of American housewife's version of chopping wood."When friends at a wine-soaked dinner party reveal they've made their marriage open, sensible Lucy balks. There's a part of her, though – the part that worries she's become too comfortable being invisible-that's intrigued. Why not try a short marital experiment? Six months, clear ground rules, zero questions asked. When an affair with a man in the city begins to seem more enticing than the happily-ever-after she's known for the past nine years, Lucy must decide what truly makes her happy – "real life," or the "experiment?"
Our Stop
Laura Jane Williams - 2019
Well, except if she oversleeps or wakes up at her friend Emma’s after too much wine.Daniel really does get the 7.30 train every morning, which is easy because he hasn’t been able to sleep properly since his dad died.One morning, Nadia’s eye catches sight of a post in the daily paper:
To the cute girl with the coffee stains on her dress. I’m the guy who’s always standing near the doors… Drink sometime?
So begins a not-quite-romance of near-misses, true love, and the power of the written word.
Hold You Close
Melanie Harlow - 2018
Every time I see him climbing out of his pool, practically naked and unreasonably sexy, my blood boils.I’ve always loved to loathe him. I never planned to need him.*** London Parish is my little sister’s best friend, not that it stopped me from falling for her.Our history is complicated. The only thing we have in common is being godparents to my sister’s three adorable kids—until our lives are changed in one tragic moment. Now we’re trying to raise the children we love, mourn an unthinkable loss, and fight an undeniable attraction.My life is already upside-down, and the last thing I need is for old feelings to resurface. Because I’ll never be able to keep her, no matter how hard I try to hold her close.
The Two Lives of Lydia Bird
Josie Silver - 2020
Freddie and Lydia. They'd been together for more than a decade, and Lydia thought their love was indestructible.But she was wrong. On her twenty-eighth birthday, Freddie died in a car accident.So now it's just Lydia, and all she wants to do is hide indoors and sob until her eyes fall out. But Lydia knows that Freddie would want her to try to live fully, happily, even without him. So, enlisting the help of his best friend, Jonah, and her sister, Elle, she takes her first tentative steps into the world, open to life--and perhaps even love--again.But then something inexplicable happens that gives her another chance at her old life with Freddie. A life where none of the tragic events of the past few months have happened.Lydia is pulled again and again across the doorway of her past, living two lives, impossibly, at once. But there's an emotional toll to returning to a world where Freddie, alive, still owns her heart. Because there's someone in her new life, her real life, who wants her to stay.Written with Josie Silver's trademark warmth and wit, The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a powerful and thrilling love story about the what-ifs that arise at life's crossroads, and what happens when one woman is given a miraculous chance to answer them.
The Hideaway
Lauren K. Denton - 2017
She intends to quickly tie up loose ends then return to her busy life and thriving antique shop in New Orleans. Instead, she learns Mags has willed The Hideaway to her and charged her with renovating it—no small task considering her grandmother’s best friends, a motley crew of senior citizens, still live there.Rather than hurrying back to New Orleans, Sara stays in Sweet Bay and begins the biggest house-rehabbing project of her career. Amid drywall dust, old memories, and a charming contractor, she discovers that slipping back into life at The Hideaway is easier than she expected.Then she discovers a box Mags left in the attic with clues to a life Sara never imagined for her grandmother. With help from Mags’s friends, Sara begins to piece together the mysterious life of bravery, passion, and choices that changed her grandmother’s destiny in both marvelous and devastating ways.When an opportunistic land developer threatens to seize The Hideaway, Sara is forced to make a choice—stay in Sweet Bay and fight for the house and the people she’s grown to love or leave again and return to her successful but solitary life in New Orleans.
Stuck On You
Portia MacIntosh - 2020
She's too busy as PA for famous artist Damian Banks. When she's not arranging exhibitions, she's organising his dry cleaning or dumping his never ending stream of girlfriends.But when she strikes up an unusual friendship with her desk share buddy, she finds a confidante and a new potential love interest. Problem is, they've never actually met...With Christmas just around the corner, can Sadie put herself first for a change and find what she's been looking for all along?The brand new romantic comedy from top 10 bestseller Portia MacIntosh. Perfect for fans of Sophie Ranald, Mhairi McFarlane and Zara Stoneley.
Slightly South of Simple
Kristy Woodson Harvey - 2017
But now that her marriage to a New York high society heir has fallen apart in a very public, very embarrassing fashion, a pregnant Caroline decides to escape the gossipmongers with her nine-year-old daughter and head home to her mother, Ansley. Ansley has always put her three daughters first, especially when she found out that her late husband, despite what he had always promised, left her with next to nothing. Now the proud owner of a charming waterfront design business and finally standing on her own two feet, Ansley welcomes Caroline and her brood back with open arms. But when her second daughter Sloane, whose military husband is overseas, and youngest daughter and successful actress Emerson join the fray, Ansley begins to feel like the piece of herself she had finally found might be slipping from her grasp. Even more discomfiting, when someone from her past reappears in Ansley's life, the secret she’s harbored from her daughters their entire lives might finally be forced into the open. Exploring the powerful bonds between sisters and mothers and daughters, this engaging novel is filled with Southern charm, emotional drama, and plenty of heart.
Against All Odds
Danielle Steel - 2017
Kate Madison’s stylish resale shop has been a big SoHo success, supporting her and her four kids since her husband’s untimely death. Now they are grown and ready to forge lives of their own. And they all choose to play against the odds, to their mother’s dismay.Isabelle, a dedicated attorney, is in line to make partner at her Wall Street firm when she falls for a client she represents in a criminal case. She tells herself she can make a life with him—but can she? Julie, a young designer, meets a man who seems too good to be true and falls under his spell. She marries him quickly, gives up her job, and moves to Los Angeles to be at his side—but is all what it seems? Justin is a struggling writer who pushes for children with his partner before they’re financially or emotionally ready. Will the strain on the relationship take too high a toll? And Willie, the youngest, a tech expert, makes a choice that shocks them all, with a woman twelve years older.Kate—loving, supportive, and outspoken—can’t keep her children from playing against the odds. Can the odds be beaten? Not often—as her children have to learn for themselves. For Kate, the hardest lesson will be that she can’t protect the children she loves from the choices they make—but can only love them as they make them.
The Authenticity Project
Clare Pooley - 2020
But what if they were? And so he writes--in a plain, green journal--the truth about his own life and leaves it in his local café. It's run by the incredibly tidy and efficient Monica, who furtively adds her own entry and leaves the book in the wine bar across the street. Before long, the others who find the green notebook add the truths about their own deepest selves--and soon find each other in real life at Monica's café.The Authenticity Project's cast of characters--including Hazard, the charming addict who makes a vow to get sober; Alice, the fabulous mommy Instagrammer whose real life is a lot less perfect than it looks online; and their other new friends--is by turns quirky and funny, heartbreakingly sad and painfully true-to-life. It's a story about being brave and putting your real self forward--and finding out that it's not as scary as it seems. In fact, it looks a lot like happiness.The Authenticity Project is just the tonic for our times that readers are clamoring for--and one they will take to their hearts and read with unabashed pleasure.
Silver Bay
Jojo Moyes - 2007
for the first time, a surprising and moving romance set in an old-fashioned seaside town on the verge of unwelcome change Liza McCullen will never fully escape her past. But the unspoiled beaches and tight-knit community of Silver Bay offer the freedom and safety she craves—if not for herself, then for her young daughter, Hannah. That is, until Mike Dormer arrives as a guest in her aunt’s hotel. The mild-mannered Englishman with his too-smart clothes and distracting eyes could destroy everything Liza has worked so hard to protect: not only the family business and the bay that harbors her beloved whales, but also her conviction that she will never love—never deserve to love—again. For his part, Mike Dormer is expecting just another business deal—an easy job kick-starting a resort in a small seaside town ripe for development. But he finds that he doesn’t quite know what to make of the eccentric inhabitants of the ramshackle Silver Bay Hotel, especially not enigmatic Liza McCullen, and their claim to the surrounding waters. As the development begins to take on a momentum of its own, Mike’s and Liza’s worlds collide in this hugely affecting and irresistible tale full of Jojo Moyes’s signature humor and generosity.
Don't Want to Miss a Thing
Jill Mansell - 2013
But everything changes overnight when his sister dies, leaving him in charge of her eight-month-old daughter Delphi. How is he ever going to cope?Comic-strip artist Molly Hayes lives in the beautiful Cotswold village of Briarwood. When it comes to relationships, she has a history of choosing all the wrong men. Leaving the city behind, Dex moves to Briarwood - a much better place to work on his parenting skills - and he and Molly become neighbours. There's an undeniable connection between them. But if Dexter's going to adapt, he first has a lot to learn about Molly, about other people's secrets...and about himself.
Spoiler Alert
Olivia Dade - 2020
While the world knows him as Aeneas, the star of the biggest show on TV, Gods of the Gates, he's known to fanfiction readers as Book!AeneasWouldNever, an anonymous and popular poster. Marcus is able to get out his own frustrations with his character through his stories, especially the ones that feature the internet’s favorite couple to ship, Aeneas and Lavinia. But if anyone ever found out about his online persona, he’d be fired. Immediately.April Whittier has secrets of her own. A hardcore Lavinia fan, she’s hidden her fanfiction and cosplay hobby from her “real life” for years—but not anymore. When she decides to post her latest Lavinia creation on Twitter, her photo goes viral. Trolls and supporters alike are commenting on her plus-size take, but when Marcus, one half of her OTP, sees her pic and asks her out on a date to spite her critics, she realizes life is really stranger than fanfiction.Even though their first date is a disaster, Marcus quickly realizes that he wants much more from April than a one-time publicity stunt. And when he discovers she’s actually Unapologetic Lavinia Stan, his closest fandom friend, he has one more huge secret to hide from her.With love and Marcus’s career on the line, can the two of them stop hiding once and for all, or will a match made in fandom end up prematurely cancelled?