Book picks similar to
A Beautiful Mess by Brenda S. Anderson


contemporary
fiction
inspirational
women-s-fiction

Summer on the Turquoise Coast


Lilac Mills - 2018
    Nina likes her life exactly as it is. Happy(ish) in her job, and with no love interests on the horizon she knows she can’t get hurt if she doesn’t rock the boat. But Nina’s octogenarian grandmother, Flossie, has plans to drag Nina kicking and screaming from her comfort zone.Arriving on the turquoise coast Nina’s plans for a quiet holiday are blown out of the water by the sheer amounts of vodka, adult games of "pin the tail on the donkey" and tabletop dancing - and that's just her gran! Join Nina and Flossie for Summer on the Turquoise Coast as they learn to let go, enjoy the time they have and maybe even find love in the process.

Mine


Courtney Cole - 2019
    Lindsey was the storm she didn’t see coming.When Tessa Taylor unlocked her husband Ethan’s iPad to discover nude photos from a twenty-six-year-old bombshell named Lindsey, her seemingly perfect life came to a screeching halt.With a hurricane barreling toward Florida and Ethan stuck on a business trip, Tessa finds herself imprisoned in her own home with a choice to make: Does she ride out the storm until she can confront Ethan in person, or does she take matters into her own hands?Increasingly restless and desperate for revenge, Tessa resolves to act. And when she lures Lindsey over a few hours later, there’s no turning back.What ensues is a battle of wills between two well-matched opponents, blinded by love for the same man but driven by demons of their own. Like storm-ravaged Florida, neither woman will be the same when the skies clear.

Iron Butterfly


Lisa Wainland - 2015
    At twenty-nine, she receives sudden, life-changing news. She realizes that her everyday life with her fiancé, Jake, was pretty amazing. Who cares about a sarcastic boss or a promotion when losing everything has become a terrifying reality? Cassie’s shocking news infiltrates the lives of everyone she loves, particularly Jake and her estranged sister, Sandy. Jake wants to be strong for Cassie, but this unexpected turn brings back painful memories—and a terrible secret he’s shared with no one. Sandy, who ran away to pursue stardom, is called home to face those she left behind. The golden child of the family, Sandy fell from her pedestal long ago. Will she be able to face her own failures? As Cassie struggles against an uncertain future, Jake and Sandy battle with the demons of the past. All three will learn valuable lessons about love, forgiveness and appreciating the days we’re given.

The Midwife


Jolina Petersheim - 2014
    Contact with the outside world could provide medical advantages, but remaining secluded in the community gives her the anonymity she craves.Graduate student Beth Winslow is on a path she never would have chosen. Heartbroken after surrendering a baby to adoption, she devotes herself to her studies until she becomes pregnant again, this time as a surrogate. But when early tests indicate possible abnormalities, Beth is unprepared for the parents' decision to end the pregnancy--and for the fierce love she feels for this unborn child. Desperate, she flees the city and seeks refuge at Hopen House.Past and present collide when a young woman named Amelia arrives to the sweeping countryside bearing secrets of her own. As Amelia's due date draws near, Rhoda must face her past and those she thought she had left behind in order for the healing power of love and forgiveness to set them all free.

Who We Were Before


Leah Mercer - 2016
    Of course it wasn’t. But if she’d just grasped harder, run faster, lunged quicker, she might have saved him. And Edward doesn’t really blame her, though his bitter words at the time still haunt her, and he can no more take them back than she can halt the car that killed their son.Two years on, every day is a tragedy. Edward knows they should take healing steps together, but he’s tired of being shut out. For Zoe, it just seems easier to let grief lead the way.A weekend in Paris might be their last hope for reconciliation, but mischance sees them separated before they’ve even left Gare du Nord. Lost and alone, Edward and Zoe must try to find their way back to each other—and find their way back to the people they were before. But is that even possible?

California Girls


Susan Mallery - 2019
    While avoiding the tabloids and pretending she’s just fine, she’s crumbling inside, desperate for him to come to his senses and for life to go back to normal.Zennie’s breakup is no big loss. Although the world insists she pair up, she’d rather be surfing. So agreeing to be the surrogate for her best friend is a no-brainer—after all, she has an available womb and no other attachments to worry about. Except…when everyone else, including her big sister, thinks she’s making a huge mistake, being pregnant is a lot lonelier—and more complicated—than she imagined.Never the tallest, thinnest or prettiest sister, Ali is used to being overlooked, but when her fiancé sends his disapproving brother to call off the wedding, it’s a new low. And yet Daniel continues to turn up “for support,” making Ali wonder if maybe—for once—someone sees her in a way no one ever has.But side by side by side, these sisters will start over and rebuild their lives with all the affection, charm and laugh-out-loud humor that is classic Susan Mallery.

The Copper Beech


Maeve Binchy - 1992
    But not even Father Gunn, the parish priest, who knows most of what goes on behind Shancarrig's closed doors, or Dr. Jims, the village doctor, who knows all the rest, realizes that not everything in the placid village is what it seems. From the Hardcover edition.

Two Rivers


T. Greenwood - 2009
    Since the death of his wife, Betsy, twelve years earlier, Harper has narrowed his world to working at the local railroad and raising his daughter, Shelly, the best way he knows how. Still wracked with sorrow over the loss of his life-long love and plagued by his role in a brutal, long-ago crime, he wants only to make amends for his past mistakes.Then one fall day, a train derails in Two Rivers, and amid the wreckage Harper finds an unexpected chance at atonement. One of the survivors, a pregnant fifteen-year-old girl with mismatched eyes and skin the color of blackberries, needs a place to stay. Though filled with misgivings, Harper offers to take Maggie in. But it isn't long before he begins to suspect that Maggie's appearance in Two Rivers is not the simple case of happenstance it first appeared to be.

The Doula


Bridget Boland - 2012
    For a doula, it resonates with eager anticipation. Either way, it always means lives are about to change. . . . It might seem like birth and death lie at opposite ends of a spectrum, but to Carolyn Connors, they are mirror images. Caro is no stranger to death, having grown up in a funeral home, but after witnessing her mother’s miscarriage and her brother’s tragic drowning as a child—neither of which she is allowed to discuss—she chooses to become a doula, celebrating the arrival of life rather than its departure. When her glamorous lifelong best friend, Mary Grace, calls with the exciting news that she is pregnant, Caro packs up her life and leaves home to be MG’s birthing coach. But tension escalates between Caro and MG’s domineering husband, Brad, and the sensitive doula’s advice falls on deaf ears. MG cuts off all contact until complications with her pregnancy leave her with no one else to call. Hurrying to the unborn child’s rescue and watching the life drain from her best friend’s body, Caro thinks the nightmare can’t get any worse. . . . Until Brad accuses her of medical malpractice. For the first time in her life, Caro must confront the painful guilt, loss, and shame that have trailed her from the past, leading her to the most profound rebirth of all.

Things I Never Told You


Beth K. Vogt - 2018
    No longer half of a pair, Payton reinvents herself as a partner in a successful party-planning business and is doing just fine--as long as she manages to hold her memories and her family at arm's length.But with her middle sister Jillian's engagement, Payton's party-planning skills are called into action. Which means working alongside her opinionated oldest sister, Johanna, who always seems ready for a fight. They can only hope that a wedding might be just the occasion to heal the resentment and jealousy that divides them . . . until a frightening diagnosis threatens Jillian's plans and her future. As old wounds are reopened and the family faces the possibility of another tragedy, the Thatchers must decide if they will pull together or be driven further apart.

The Senator's Wife


Sue Miller - 2008
    The author of the iconic The Good Mother and the best-selling While I Was Gone brings her marvelous gifts to a powerful story of two unconventional women who unexpectedly change each other’s lives.Meri is newly married, pregnant, and standing on the cusp of her life as a wife and mother, recognizing with some terror the gap between reality and expectation. Delia Naughton—wife of the two-term liberal senator Tom Naughton—is Meri’s new neighbor in the adjacent New England town house. Delia’s husband’s chronic infidelity has been an open secret in Washington circles, but despite the complexity of their relationship, the bond between them remains strong. What keeps people together, even in the midst of profound betrayal? How can a journey imperiled by, and sometimes indistinguishable from, compromise and disappointment culminate in healing and grace? Delia and Meri find themselves leading strangely parallel lives, both reckoning with the contours and mysteries of marriage, one refined and abraded by years of complicated intimacy, the other barely begun.Here are all the things for which Sue Miller has always been beloved—the complexity of experience precisely rendered, the richness of character and emotion, the superb economy of style—fused with an utterly engrossing story that has a great deal to say to women, and men, of all ages.

Let Her Go


M.R. Pritchard - 2015
    She’s left picking up the pieces of her shattered world while the tabloids, pesky neighbors, and an eight-point buck seem to haunt her. The only thing keeping Morgan grounded is her recently discovered love for running. But everything changes when Morgan learns her husband was keeping secrets and he left her to run his successful gym with her newly acquired business partner, stoic MMA fighter Nick “The Strangler” Stacks. Will Morgan's second chance at love be a fight to the end?

Another Mother's Life


Rowan Coleman - 2008
     For wealthy Alison James, moving with her family to her hometown of Farmington presents more than a case of relocation jitters. Fifteen years ago, she fled town, eloping with her best friend's boyfriend. Now, blessed with three children, but uneasy in her marriage, she wonders if that decision led her away from the life she was meant to lead. Catherine Ashley, broke, the mother of two and almost divorced, can't help but wonder the same thing. Although she's content with her children, she finds herself returning again and again to those few weeks fifteen years ago when she fell deeply in love, only to be betrayed by her most trusted friend. Now, once more living in the same town, Alison and Catherine are about to find out just how different their lives could still be. But this time around they are adults, and while their own happiness is at stake, so is their children's. Wise and warmhearted, Another Mother's Life will make you laugh and cry -- and think about what you would do when confronted by some of life's most difficult choices.

The Ornament Keeper


Eva Marie Everson - 2018
    The Ornament Keeper, a contemporary Christmas novella, features Felicia and Jackson Morgan who are spending their first Christmas apart after twenty years of marriage. But a lifetime of gifted ornaments helps Felicia piece together the story of their marriage and the one mistake of unforgiveness she made before they said, "I do." Can these memory-filled ornaments reunite this family before Christmas? Only time will tell.

Good Grief


Lolly Winston - 2004
    Alas, she is more of the Jack Daniels kind. Self-medicating with ice cream for breakfast, breaking down at the supermarket, and showing up to work in her bathrobe and bunny slippers-soon she's not only lost her husband, but her job, house...and waistline. With humor and chutzpah Sophie leaves town, determined to reinvent her life. But starting over has its hurdles; soon she's involved with a thirteen-year-old who has a fascination with fire, and a handsome actor who inspires a range of feelings she can't cope with-yet.