Book picks similar to
The Vines We Planted by Joanell Serra


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Courtside Crush


Kayla Tirrell - 2019
    Of course, it didn’t stop there. Thanks to a condemning video, I also got eight weeks of community service and athletic probation right before basketball season is supposed to start. (There goes my spot as captain!) Thankfully, there’s a guy at Marlowe Junction’s Helping Hands who makes passing the time more enjoyable. He’s gorgeous, funny, and a huge basketball fan. Too bad he’s also my brother’s biggest enemy… Courtside Crush is a modern-day retelling of Romeo and Juliet, perfect for anyone who likes their sweet romance with a dash of drama. It is the first book in the Varsity Girlfriends series.

Toxic


Nicole Blanchard - 2017
    A criminal.As a prison nurse, I knew the rules: do my job, don’t get involved, and never let a prisoner get under my skin.I broke all three.My passion, my obsession, my addiction. I risked my entire life so we could be together.I thought helping him escape from prison would be the hard part.It turns out when you fall in love with a villain, you also turn into one.

Suffer Love


Ashley Herring Blake - 2016
    Clair after she learns that her father cheated on her mother. But Hadley doesn’t want to let it go. She wants to be angry and she wants everyone in her life—her dad most of all—to leave her alone.Sam Bennett and his family have had their share of drama too. Still reeling from a move to a new town and his parents’ recent divorce, Sam is hoping that he can coast through senior year and then move on to hassle-free, parent-free life in college. He isn’t looking for a relationship…that is, until he sees Hadley for the first time.Hadley and Sam’s connection is undeniable, but Sam has a secret that could ruin everything. Should he follow his heart or tell the truth?

Secret Confessions of the Enticing Duchess


Olivia Bennet - 2019
    When a stunning nobleman enters the shop with his obnoxious fiancé, she is immediately enticed. Suffering his parents’ sudden loss at a young age, Percival Montagu, Duke of Northcott, becomes enamored with the ravishing dressmaker and craves to make her his mistress. But he has made a lucrative deal and too much is at stake should he breaks it. When a stolen jewel and a series of well-crafted events throw Abigail in gaol, her life is in peril. Percival is the only one who can save her from a terrible fate. However, he doesn’t know that their pasts are sickeningly intertwined and something darker is connecting them...a shattering secret that should have been kept hidden, forever. *If you like a realistic yet steamy depiction of the Regency and Victorian era, then Secret Confessions of the Enticing Duchess is the novel for you. This is Olivia's second novel, a historical Regency romance novel of 80,000 words (around 400 pages). No cheating, no cliffhangers, and a strong happily ever after. Pick up "Secret Confessions of the Enticing Duchess" today to discover Olivia's new amazing story!

The Marvelous Monroe Girls


Shirley Jump - 2022
    Sales are down at her vintage dress shop, her beloved grandmother isn’t her usual spunky self, and Gabby desperately misses the closeness she had with her sisters, Margaret and Emma—who were once so inseparable that their family called them the Monroe Musketeers.  When the sisters stumble across a stash of letters that reveals their grandmother’s secret life, Gabby sees an opportunity to bring the sisters back together again and best of all, raise her grandmother’s spirits. And sure, this new project makes it easier to pretend her own life isn’t crashing around her, but concentrating on helping everyone else and ignoring her own feelings is what Gabby does best.Except when it comes to Jake Maddox. Once the boy next door she crushed on—hard—he’s grown into an even more intriguing man, and her attraction to him isn’t so easy to hide. It’s clear he’s just as interested in her, but dating Jake would only muddy up her already complicated life. Or is it finally time to put herself first and risk it all for a chance at happiness?

The Other Half of Augusta Hope


Joanna Glen - 2019
    At seven, she’s correcting her teachers. At eight, she spins the globe and picks her favourite country on the sound of its name: Burundi. And now that she's an adult, Augusta has no interest in the goings-on of the small town where she lives with her parents and her beloved twin sister, Julia.When an unspeakable tragedy upends everything in Augusta's life, she's propelled headfirst into the unknown. She's determined to find where she belongs – but what if her true home, and heart, are half a world away?

Happily Evan After


Michelle Irwin - 2014
    Despite initial hesitancy, he has learned to handle every case with care and he now basks in the afterglow of new-found love and relishes in the energy it provides him. But his end goal is still the promise of paradise in return for his penance.It's all going according to plan until he receives an assignment that is inconceivable to him. He has to find a mate for Becca, within whom lives the reincarnated soul of his one true love. Bound by his duty to find her a match, he must resist her charm and suppress his own desires. It is his job and he cannot fail, even if his own paradise now seems lost.For a cupid, falling in love is against the rules.Isn't it?

All the Beloved Ghosts


Alison MacLeod - 2017
    A professor of cardiovascular physiology lingers on the cusp of consciousness as he waits for his new heart to be delivered, still beating, from another body—and is carried on a tidal wave of memories to an attic room half a century ago. Visiting Sylvia Plath’s grave in Yorkshire, the author imagines a conversation with the poet, a fellow North American who settled in grey England. She reflects on the treasured photograph of Princess Diana she took as a teenager, one of a multitude taken during a life cut short. And at Charleston, Angelica Garnett, child of the Bloomsbury Group, is overpowered by echoes of the past—all the beloved ghosts that spring to life before her eyes. MacLeod’s characters hover on the border of life and death, where memory is most vivid and the present most elusive.

I Like You Just Fine When You're Not Around


Ann Wertz Garvin - 2016
    Her mother's memory is going (dementia), her boyfriend is gone (Hawaii), her absent sister shows up long enough to have a baby (and then leaves again, without the baby) and her job as a therapist has disappeared after a contentious couples' therapy session goes horribly and honestly sideways. Oh, and then there's the whole thing about the family secret that nobody saw coming.But Tig is a survivor (she hopes) who manages to stumble and step her way to a new job, new truths, new outlooks and a new lease on life.

Privilege


Mary Adkins - 2020
    But even within that rarefied circle of people trying to change the world, it seems everyone has a different idea of what justice is.Stayja York goes to Carter every day, too, but she isn’t a student. She works at the Coffee Bean, doling out almond milk lattes to entitled co-eds, while trying to put out fires on the home front and save for her own education.Their three lives intersect unexpectedly when Annie accuses fourth-year student Tyler Brand of sexual assault. Once Bea is assigned as Tyler’s student advocate, the girls find themselves on opposite sides as battle lines are drawn across the picture-perfect campus—and Stayja finds herself invested in the case’s outcome, too.Told through the viewpoints of Annie, Bea, and Stayja, Privilege is a bracingly clear-eyed look at today’s campus politics, and a riveting story of three young women making their way in a world not built for them.

Honey Bee


Heather Shere - 2017
    No hassles, no complications, and no heartache. As the handsome high school athletics coach, he would be the pick of the small town he grew up in... if he was into commitment, or dating...or even calling back. But he has sworn off anything resembling a future and his mind isn't going to change. Then his eyes lock on the new girl in town...She’s beautiful, intelligent, and full of surprises. Just the kind of complication he has been avoiding.Sophia Brown is looking for the sweet simple life. She has it all planned out. Getting used to life alone isn't easy, but she has her garden, her bees, and her dog Triton to tend to. It's the fresh start she's been dreaming of, surrounded by nothing but open fields to stare at all day.  Nothing at all...unless you count the high school football team and their distractingly handsome coach, practicing right across the street.When sparks fly, Bo must choose between the sting of his past or the sweetness of the future. He may just find that honey tastes good on everything.

Hey Sunshine


Tia Giacalone - 2015
    Four years later, everything is different. When Chase returns, admitting he made a mistake and asking for a second chance, Avery wants to think she can trust him again. But when the arrival of a handsome, quiet stranger named Fox shifts Avery’s focus, she realizes that things are about to get a lot more complicated. When is a lot of history enough reason for a future? And how do you ignore the way someone makes you feel, especially when they were the last thing you ever expected?A college age, New Adult romance - for readers 17+ due to mature themesStay tuned for Book 2 in the Hey Sunshine series - coming late 2015

The Taste of Blue Light


Lydia Ruffles - 2017
    She is lucky. She is broken.These are the things she doesn't know:What happened over the summer.Why she ended up in hospital.Why her memories are etched in red.'The nightmares tend to linger long after your screams have woken you up ...'Desperate to uncover the truth, Lux's time is running out. If she cannot piece together the events of the summer and regain control of her fractured mind, she will be taken away from everything and everyone she holds dear.If her dreams don't swallow her first.

Marry Me


Samantha Lind - 2018
    She captured my heart from the moment I first saw her dancing through the sprinkler. I always kept my feelings hidden though, standing back as she dated other guys, afraid to cross that line and risk losing her. I even went out with a few girls myself, but no one ever measured up. Then that dreaded day arrived, and I knew I’d lost her forever. Lauren- Sam was always my constant. My rock. My best friend. That feeling, the one I only got around him, had never been matched by another man. But Sam never showed me he felt anything more for me than friendship, so I moved on... Now, standing at the end of the aisle, ready to walk to my forever, my mind spins with what-ifs. Do I keep moving forward, knowing a man who loves me is at the end? Or do I risk it all, for the one man I’ve always wanted, and hope he wants me in return.

Forever Friends


Sarah Mackenzie - 2019
    But now that her daughter is away at college, she doesn't know what to do next. Without weekly PTA meetings and after-school chauffeur duty, Renee isn't sure who she is anymore. What she is sure of is that she probably shouldn't be crushing on her new boss, who couldn't possibly be interested in a middle-aged mom . . . Sadie Landry is drowning in the stay-at-home mom life. With a toddler running wild, a husband who is growing more distant by the day, and a mother-in-law who has a comment on every-little-thing, Sadie is one mommy-and-me class away from losing it. When she learns that she is pregnant again, Sadie knows that something has to change for the sake of her family—and her sanity. After a birthday party bake-a-thon nearly turns into a three-alarm fire, Renee comes to her neighbor Sadie's rescue with comfort, competence, and a killer pie recipe. With their unlikely friendship and a newly hatched plan to open a bakery, can Sadie and Renee finally have the lives they've always dreamed of?