Book picks similar to
The Secret Pool by Betty Neels


betty-neels
romance
harlequin
contemporary

Kiss Me Not


Emma Hart - 2019
    Not a lick. Not at all. Nuh-uh-freakin’-uh.I do care that he’s doing it six feet away from me behind a gaudy velvet curtain—making him my competition in this year’s kissing contest.Why do I care, you ask? Because I’ve had an unfortunate crush on the insufferable idiot since I was sixteen years old, but I also know it’s never going to happen.He’s the Creek Falls bachelor to die for, and I’m the Creek Falls racoon lady who puts peanut butter sandwiches out for them every night.I’m not going to let him break my four-year-long reign—no matter how many times he breaks the rules and slides the curtain across to do the one thing he’s not allowed to:Kiss me.

Grayson


Lisa Eugene - 2014
    After all, she’s never even seen him. He remains sequestered upstairs in a house that looks like it should be the main feature in an episode of Hoarders. She had no idea the house was such a dump when she took the job. But she’s concerned about the safety and health of the old man living under such horrid conditions.What she got was a mystery…Despite warnings not to venture upstairs, she wanders up to the second floor. What she sees is shocking. The man she finds is a gorgeous, sexy, middle-aged man-- and he's stepping out of the shower. But something is definitely not right. Why would this wealthy, handsome man live in a house in such disrepair while his nine-teen year old son resides in a lavish penthouse? Why does he hide away from society? Why does he come to her rescue and then run away?What she discovered was heartbreaking…Angie learns that forty-four year old Grayson Whitmore suffers from schizophrenia. Paranoid, he retreats into his own world.What she ended up with was a treasure…Angie is determined to get through to Grayson. They form a friendship that blazes into an inconceivable love fired with raging passion. Angie must now come to Grayson’s rescue because the wicked that has been perpetrated on him is unconscionable. First, though, she must gain the trust of a man whose mind does not allow for such a thing.

A Woman Without Lies


Elizabeth Lowell - 1985
    Then she learned the pain of irretrievable loss --- the sad and sudden permanence of death.A MAN WITHOUT TRUSTMiles Hawkins has known only hatred and betrayal from women. Scarred and embittered, Hawk became a solitary distant man --- vowing never to let himself trust a woman again.A PASSION WITHOUT LIMITSWhen Angel and Hawk first meet, they misjudge and hurt each other badly. But Angel is willing to risk what proud, silent Hawk cannot. Gently she brings truth and love to a tormented soul who believes in neither ... though she fears in her heart that, by loving Hawk, she will surely lose him.

Beach Read


Emily Henry - 2020
    January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.They’re polar opposites.In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring beach houses, broke, and bogged down with writer's block.Until, one hazy evening, one thing leads to another and they strike a deal designed to force them out of their creative ruts: Augustus will spend the summer writing something happy, and January will pen the next Great American Novel. She’ll take him on field trips worthy of any rom-com montage, and he’ll take her to interview surviving members of a backwoods death cult (obviously). Everyone will finish a book and no one will fall in love. Really.

Temporary Wife


Roberta Leigh - 1974
    Nor had she suspected that the secret behind the business reasons was the fact that Luke was in love with Gina, his boss's wife . . .

Strangers in the Desert


Lynn Raye Harris - 2011
    Isabella, the wife Sheikh Adan thought was dead, has just walked back into his life on the eve of his wedding to another woman. Now Adan is to be crowned King, Isabella must be his Queen -- sharing his desert throne and the royal bed. But gone is the dutiful, pure girl he once knew; in her place is a defiant, sultry woman who makes Adan's blood run hot. A woman who has no memory of being his wife....

The Wedding Date Disaster


Avery Flynn - 2020
    She’s gonna need a wingman and a whole lot of vodka for this level of family interaction. At least her bestie agreed he’d man up and help. But then instead of her best friend, his evil twin strolls out of the airport.If you looked up doesn’t-deserve-to-be-that-confident, way-too-hot-for-his-own-good billionaire in the dictionary, you’d find a picture of Will Holt. He’s awful. Horrible. The worst―even if his butt looks phenomenal in those jeans.Ten times worse? Hadley’s buffer was supposed to be there to keep her away from the million and one family events. But Satan’s spawn just grins and signs them up for every. Single. Thing.Fine. “Cutthroat” Scrabble? She’s in. She can’t wait to take this guy down a notch. But somewhere between Pictionary and the teasing glint in his eyes, their bickering starts to feel like more than just a game…

Latakia


J.F. Smith - 2011
    He has his friends and his softball and his volunteer work. And he has a very good-looking boyfriend, Brian, who he’s been happily dating for over a year now. So what if his friends tend to question just how good his boyfriend is, and so what if Brian tends to have inexplicable mood swings. And so what if Brian seems to invite Matt’s suspicions on occasion. If he just shows a little faith and trust, he’ll appreciate what he has with Brian the way he should. Right?But suddenly, Matt finds himself in a desperate life-or-death situation on a trip overseas, and he realizes just how much he misses home, and Brian. He’s luckily rescued by a team of US Special Forces, only to immediately find out they’re a bunch of bigoted jerks. Worse, a quirk of his situation forces him to spend time with them that he’d rather not. And that’s when he finds out that first impressions can be misleading. When called upon, he steps up when every fiber of his being tells him not to, and discovers something deep inside himself that he didn’t realize was even there. And his life will never be the same. He finds that he can, after all, make some very overdue changes in his own life.What Matt doesn’t realize is that the bond of brotherhood runs both ways. And he winds up changing the lives of several of the men on that Special Forces team as much as they changed his.All it takes is faith and trust.

All Rhodes Lead Here


Mariana Zapata - 2021
    Aurora De La Torre knows moving back to a place that was once home isn’t going to be easy. Starting your whole life over probably isn’t supposed to be. But a small town in the mountains might be the perfect remedy for a broken heart. Checking out her landlord across the driveway just might cure it too.

On the Way to You


Kandi Steiner - 2017
    I could have said my dog, or my books, or yoga — but I just stared. And then, I got in his car. It was crazy to take a road trip with a stranger, but after years of standing still, he was my one-way ticket to a new life, and I wasn’t going to miss it. We shared the same space, the same car, the same hotel room — and still, we were strangers. One day we’d be laughing, the next, we wouldn’t speak. Emery was surrounded by impenetrable walls, but I wanted in. Discovering his journal changed everything. I read his thoughts, words not meant for anyone’s eyes, and the more I learned about him, the harder I fell. It turned out nothing made Emery Reed happy, and I wanted to change that. I earned his trust by violating his privacy, and as wrong as it was, it worked — until one entry revealed a darkness I never knew existed, a timer I never knew was ticking. Suddenly, what made me happy was saving Emery from himself. I just didn’t know if I could.

On the Island


Tracey Garvis Graves - 2011
    Callahan at his family's summer rental in the Maldives, she accepts without hesitation; a working vacation on a tropical island trumps the library any day.T.J. Callahan has no desire to leave town, not that anyone asked him. He's almost seventeen and if having cancer wasn't bad enough, now he has to spend his first summer in remission with his family—and a stack of overdue assignments—instead of his friends.Anna and T.J. are en route to join T.J.'s family in the Maldives when the pilot of their seaplane suffers a fatal heart attack and crash-lands in the Indian Ocean. Adrift in shark-infested waters, their life jackets keep them afloat until they make it to the shore of an uninhabited island. Now Anna and T.J. just want to survive and they must work together to obtain water, food, fire, and shelter.Their basic needs might be met but as the days turn to weeks, and then months, the castaways encounter plenty of other obstacles, including violent tropical storms, the many dangers lurking in the sea, and the possibility that T.J.'s cancer could return. As T.J. celebrates yet another birthday on the island, Anna begins to wonder if the biggest challenge of all might be living with a boy who is gradually becoming a man.

Unforgiven


Elizabeth Finn - 2013
    It does not mean she’s prepared to come face to face with the cruelest of those memories.Darren Cory’s life is a shell of what it once was, and when he’s forced to endure the cause of his agony, hatred abounds quickly. But hating Bailey destroys him too.Can Darren find a way to move past the pain and forgive the woman he once cared so much for before his anger consumes them both? Or will he drag them into the hell of an unforgiven past.

Dear Emmie Blue


Lia Louis - 2020
    Attached was her name, her email address… and a secret she desperately wanted to be free of. Weeks later, on a beach in France, Lucas Moreau discovered the balloon and immediately emailed the attached address, sparking an intense friendship between the two teens. Now, fourteen years later, Emmie is hiding the fact that she’s desperately in love with Lucas. She has pinned all her hopes on him and waits patiently for him to finally admit that she’s the one for him. So dedicated to her love for Lucas, Emmie has all but neglected her life outside of this relationship—she’s given up the search for her absentee father, no longer tries to build bridges with her distant mother, and lives as a lodger to an old lady she barely knows after being laid off. And when Lucas tells Emmie he has a big question to ask her, she’s convinced this is the moment he’ll reveal his feelings for her. But nothing in life ever quite goes as planned, does it? Filled with heart and humor, Dear Emmie Blue “beautifully captures the heartache and frustrations of carrying our teenaged selves with us wherever we go” (Anstey Harris, author of Goodbye Paris) that is perfect for fans of Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine and Evvie Drake Starts Over.