Book picks similar to
Heartless by Vanessa Marie


romance
teacher-student
student-teacher
new-adult

The Boy Who Loved Wicked


C.P. Harris - 2021
    I’d impatiently waited three years to take the course, but from the moment he strode in with his sad eyes that mirrored my own, I was intrigued by only him. Dr. Sebastian Wicked. Intrigue turned into obsession, and common interests set the stage for a tentative friendship with the enigmatic man. In time, every line put in place became blurred as what we shared sparked the flames of a forbidden affair. An affair that should've never been, a wrong that the universe sought to right. There was only one possible outcome—we were both going to burn. Would our love rise up from the ashes? Or would it smolder in the ruins?My name is Phoenix Michaelson, and I am the boy who loved Wicked.

Drowning Instinct


Ilsa J. Bick - 2012
    (This is not one of those stories.)Jenna Lord’s first sixteen years were not exactly a fairytale. Her father is a controlling psycho and her mother is a drunk. She used to count on her older brother—until he shipped off to Afghanistan. And then, of course, there was the time she almost died in a fire. There are stories where the monster gets the girl, and we all shed tears for his innocent victim. (This is not one of those stories either.)Mitch Anderson is many things: A dedicated teacher and coach. A caring husband. A man with a certain... magnetism. And there are stories where it’s hard to be sure who’s a prince and who’s a monster, who is a victim and who should live happily ever after. (These are the most interesting stories of all.)Drowning Instinct is a novel of pain, deception, desperation, and love against the odds—and the rules.

Forbidden


Tabitha Suzuma - 2010
    He is seventeen; gorgeous and on the brink of a bright future. And now they have fallen in love. But... they are brother and sister.Seventeen-year-old Lochan and sixteen-year-old Maya have always felt more like friends than siblings. Together they have stepped in for their alcoholic, wayward mother to take care of their three younger siblings. As defacto parents to the little ones, Lochan and Maya have had to grow up fast. And the stress of their lives—and the way they understand each other so completely—has also brought them closer than two siblings would ordinarily be. So close, in fact, that they have fallen in love. Their clandestine romance quickly blooms into deep, desperate love. They know their relationship is wrong and cannot possibly continue. And yet, they cannot stop what feels so incredibly right. As the novel careens toward an explosive and shocking finale, only one thing is certain: a love this devastating has no happy ending.

Keep Me Still


Caisey Quinn - 2013
    When she runs into Landen at freshmen orientation, she has a choice to make. Reinforce those steel walls she's built up around herself or give the only boy who can keep her still a second chance.Landen’s more than ready to tear down those walls, but this time when they come crashing down, they might bury her* This special edition of Keep Me Still includes the novella, Let You Leave:Layla Flaherty had the perfect life, or close to it. Until a stranger gunned her parents down right in front of her, leaving her with seizure inducing PTSD. After years of trying to pass as normal and failing miserably, she resigns herself to being invisible. But new to town Landen O’Brien sees her, and he likes what he sees. Much to Layla’s surprise, he doesn’t freak out when she has a seizure in front of him. He does the exact opposite, calming her until the tremors subside. But Landen has secrets of his own. Secrets that will either bind them together or tear them apart.

Worthy of Love?


J. Lea - 2015
    Maybe they are right, but I don`t really agree.When I was 14, the life I knew, turned upside down. I was devastated.Every time I looked myself in the mirror, I saw this ugly girl looking at me. Love obviously wasn't a part of my plan anymore. How could it be?But then I met him. And it happened. Suddenly and without a warning. I want him. I crave him. Every fiber of my being yearns for him. He is the one who makes my heart sing, and the one who hunts my dreams at night. But I can never have him. After all, he is forbidden...

Don't Kiss the Bride


Carian Cole - 2021
    He was my own personal hero who seemed to be in all the right places at the right times. Like when my car broke down and I needed a ride home, and when I face planted on the sidewalk right in front of him and had to be taken to the emergency room.Those weren’t exactly my best moments, but they were his. We became friends, and it didn’t matter that he was sixteen years older than me. We had a lot in common—like our love of old rock music and vintage fast cars, and our aversion to relationships.When he approached me with a crazy idea to help me out, I couldn’t say no.The arrangement was supposed to be temporary. A marriage on paper and nothing else.It should’ve been easy, but it wasn’t.Because here I am, eighteen years-old, still in high school, and married to a man I was never supposed to fall in love with.We had just one rule—no kissing the bride.But we broke that rule, and it sealed our fate forever.

Collared


Nicole Williams - 2016
    . .Brings her home. Jade Childs spent ten years in captivity, but now that she’s back, the real battle for survival begins. The media shadows her. Flashbacks haunt her. Her old life evades her. Her so-called new life rejects her. She spent too many years in the dark to recognize the light. She spent too long repressing her feelings to remember how to express them. She spent a decade abandoning hope and cannot dare letting it back into her life. Jade’s not just defined by what happened to her—she’s collared to it.When the twenty-seven-year-old woman is found,A community wants to know the story,Parents want to forget the story,Friends want to be a part of the story,And the man who still loves her faces the greatest challenge yet: letting her go.

Undone


R.E. Hunter - 2014
    Embry’s sole focus is to get through law school—with the help of her best friend, Morgan—and make something of the broken girl she became. Not thinking about falling in love, being in a relationship or even entertaining the idea of romance, Embry is moving forward one day at a time.Luke Brody is charming and sexy, and has a past of his own. He wants nothing more than to put his demons to rest and move on with his life. But, when Embry enters the picture, is he destined to repeat those same mistakes? Blindsided by their instant attraction, neither Luke nor Embry are prepared for the feelings they’re developing. But will it all be for nothing? Will they let their pasts destroy them, or will they risk everything to fight for their relationship when it all comes undone?

Paper Princess


Erin Watt - 2016
    She’s spent her whole life moving from town to town with her flighty mother, struggling to make ends meet and believing that someday she’ll climb out of the gutter. After her mother’s death, Ella is truly alone. Until Callum Royal appears, plucking Ella out of poverty and tossing her into his posh mansion among his five sons who all hate her. Each Royal boy is more magnetic than the last, but none as captivating as Reed Royal, the boy who is determined to send her back to the slums she came from.Reed doesn’t want her. He says she doesn’t belong with the Royals.He might be right.Wealth. Excess. Deception. It’s like nothing Ella has ever experienced, and if she’s going to survive her time in the Royal palace, she’ll need to learn to issue her own Royal decrees.

Mr. President


Katy Evans - 2016
    But is he willing to lose his?I met the president’s son when we were both young. Matthew Hamilton was handsome, polished, and intelligent. I’d never met a guy like him.He promised me that he’d never run for president. I promised that if he did, I’d be by his side.Three terms later, an invitation to join Matthew Hamilton’s campaign is the most exhilarating opportunity I’ve ever experienced. I'm determined to make a difference; he is determined to win. Focused on his goal, Matt is steadfast, ruthless, and disarming. All eyes are on him and his popularity is surging. But soon, the next possible president of the United States is possessing me in more ways than one—and despite the risks, I'm helpless to resist. We're stealing touches, stealing moments, and stealing away at night. But our chemical connection is quickly becoming dangerously combustive, putting not only my heart, but Matt's chance at the presidency on the line. Winning will take everything. Walking away will be the hardest thing of all.

Prick


Sabrina Paige - 2015
    Caulter Sterling is a prick.A filthy-mouthed, womanizing, crude, spoiled, arrogant prick.The tattooed, pierced, panty-melting-hot son of a celebrity.I hate him.He's slept his way through practically every girl at Brighton Academy. Except for me.I'm the good girl. The responsible girl. The 4.0, class president, studied-so-much-she-never-lost-the-big-V girl.And in celebration of graduation and adulthood, I just made the worst decision in the history of ever. I lost my V-card to the devil himself.It was just one night. So what if it was mind-blowing? Hit it and quit it.Except I just found out that my father - the Senator, the Presidential hopeful - is marrying Caulter's mother. Oh, and this summer? We're hitting the campaign trail.One big happy family.I'm totally f**ked.

Reign of a King


Rina Kent - 2020
    Jonathan King is every bit his last name.Powerful.Untouchable.Corrupted.He’s also my dead sister’s husband and way older than me.When I first met him as a clueless child, I thought he was a god.Now, I have to confront that god to protect my business from his ruthless grip.Little did I know that declaring a war on the king will cost me everything.When Jonathan covets something, he doesn’t only win, he conquers.Now, he has his sights on me.He wants to consume not only my body, but also my heart and my soul.I fight, but there’s no escaping the king in his kingdom...Reign of a King is the first part of a duet and is not standalone.

The Peer and the Puppet


B.B. Reid - 2018
    Win the race. Collect the cash. It should've been an easy job. Ran out of town with a broken leg and a lawsuit, my mother's latest flame swoops in like a knight in gilded armor. Blackwood Keep is a place I don't belong, and I'm not the only one who knows. To the boy across the hall, my savior's only son, I'm a stray looking for a bone.He's lord of the manor.King of the academy.And number one on my shit list.THE PEERI have no intentions of becoming a happy family with the social climber and her wild daughter. A bottle of Jameson and a cracked skull gets my problem shipped to reform school, but I didn't bank on her returning.Four's out to get even, and she almost had the perfect plan: expose the privileged kid moonlighting as a gangbanger. She's smart, but she'll have to be smarter. Sending her away won't be good enough this time. I'm going to have to tame the little troublemaker. To the girl across the hall, the one without a name, I'm nothing without my silver spoon.She's lady of the trailer park.Queen of the swamps.And my new favorite pastime.The Peer and the Puppet is a standalone romance, however, the series is one story. The plot introduced in Four and Ever's story will continue in the following novels. Content suitable for 18+.

Very Bad Things


Ilsa Madden-Mills - 2013
    And why wouldn't they? Valedictorian of her class and a Texas beauty queen, she's well on her way to Princeton after kissing everyone goodbye at graduation.Until the day she cracks wide open in front of the entire school.Leo Tate is a tattooed bad boy who's sworn to never fall in love, especially with a high school girl.But she keeps showing up at his gym, wearing short skirts and tempting him with her list of bad things.He wants to resist her, but with one touch of her lips, forbidden love has never tasted so sweet.Welcome to Briarwood Academy . . . where sometimes, the best things in life are Very Bad Things.*Mature Content**Author’s note: Each book in the BW series is written as a stand-alone love story following a new couple, but you’ll enjoy reading the other titles and seeing familiar faces return.1: VERY BAD THINGS (Nora and Leo)2: VERY WICKED THINGS (Dovey and Cuba)3. VERY TWISTED THINGS (Violet and Sebastian)

Beware of Bad Boy


April Brookshire - 2013
    Now that I had her in my life I understood what it really meant to feel alive.THE GIRLUntil I met Caleb, I wasn’t sure beauty existed on my inside. With him in my life, I not only saw that beauty to my core, but also in my world around me.Gianna has everything going for her, beauty, popularity and the jock boyfriend to match. Too bad it all makes her miserable. Living her life based on other peoples’ expectations isn’t making her happy. She has only one escape and she guards that secret life fiercely. Caleb has everything he wants, the freedom to do as he likes and plenty of opportunities to do it. With a revolving door of girls in and out of his life, he has no interest in getting tied down. Kicked out of another school, his mom sends him to live with his dad. Gianna hates her new stepbrother on sight. Caleb thinks she’s a hollow beauty. Then he finds out her secret and uses it to get to know the real her. Changing who he is forever.Mature YA contemporary romance