Book picks similar to
Before Lucky by J.S. Cooper


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You Make Me


Erin McCarthy - 2014
    Then he left without a word. The betrayal devastated Caitlyn and made her vow to forget the compelling bad boy. But forgetting his sensual touch and their deep all-consuming friendship is easier said than done. Isn’t the guy she needs… Determined to move on, in college Caitlyn has risen above her small town impoverished roots and has joined a sorority, reinvented her appearance, and landed the right boyfriend. Pre-law major and frat president, Ethan, is thoughtful and always laughing, and he makes her feel happy, calm. He also gives her the social acceptance she craves. But the perfect world she tried so hard to attain is ripped apart when Heath appears one night out of nowhere. Caitlyn remembers all the reasons why she loves him, even if they don’t make sense to anyone but her. Out of the military, Heath is as brooding and intense as ever, and he is determined not only to win her back, but to exact revenge on everyone who kept him from her… And when one love allows her to breathe, but the other feels as essential to her life as air, how does she choose between them?

Scandalous


Ella Steele - 2012
    Your muse is back. The thing that gave you passion, tormented you, and haunted you is back. You're reeling in ecstasy and dread. It's something you want, but can't ever have. And the one that brings the pain is pure, white as snow... and standing in front of you."One kiss could have changed Abby's life, but when it didn't happen, she ran. Jack was everything to her and when he didn't respond, Abby couldn't bear it. Everything about that night--leaning in close to his face, feeling the night breeze teasing her hair, the way his scent filled her head--was burned vividly into her mind, including the moment when Jack pulled away. There was no kiss. Abby was wrong. She was wrong about him, wrong about them. Maybe she didn't have to go to college two thousand miles away, but she did. She had to forget about him. Abby threw herself off the grid, disappearing completely from the life she knew. After completing her undergraduate degree, she enrolled in seminary. All contact with her old life was severed and she never looked back, until she was forced to.When Abby puts idealism into practice, her congregation throws her out. If she can survive a year on her own, they'll take her back, and continue to pay off her student loans--but if she fails, Abby is on her own with enough debt to fund a small town. Seminary wasn't cheap. With no place left to go, Abby returns to New York and her best friend takes her in. Desperate to make it on her own and prove she was right, Abby follows a job lead to an art studio on Long Island. It isn't until she hears Jack's voice that she freezes. The hairs on the back of her neck prickle as she turns to see Jack, ten years later, looking even more tempting than before.Fate is cruel. Abby left this life behind, but she's thrown back into it, head first. It's like someone hit rewind on her life and its ten years earlier. She's the cotton-mouthed girl that she always was around Jack, and now her future relies on the man who rejected her.SCANDALOUS 2 WILL BE RELEASED SPRING 2013

Betting on You


Sydney Landon - 2014
    Her plan to avoid parental involvement seems to be going well until her mother buys her a date at a charity auction—with the hot resort owner who she’s been eyeing on her latest work project.Seth never mixes business with pleasure, but something about Mia drives him to distraction. Giving into his desires for just one night will hopefully clear his head enough to keep his hands off her during office hours.But when one mind-blowing night turns into weeks of flirtation, frustration, and companionship, Mia realizes that their workplace fling may be developing into more—and that Seth might be the perfect man she’s been waiting for…

Unmasked


Melody Grace - 2015
    He’s built an empire on cool logic and sense — until a chance encounter with Noelle brings out the reckless streak he never knew he had.One night. Two unlikely hearts. No holding back. As the night unfolds, Ash and Noelle discover new passion and adventure, but can their moment of connection last until the morning light? Find out in the sexy, fun new novella from New York Times bestselling author, Melody Grace!

Him


Carey Heywood - 2013
    She thought she could stay away forever. If it wasn’t for her big brother's wedding, that is. Part of her even feels silly for staying away this long. It's not like anyone even knew what happened. Well, except for him.That guy. The one she compared all others to. The one who set the bar so high no other guy after him could even compete. The one who made her feel like anything was possible. The one she thought she would never be good enough for. The one she spent the last seven years trying to forget.All she needs to do is make it through the next week without running into him.

Never Close Enough


Anie Michaels - 2013
    At her greatest moment of need, a protective and sexy Porter Masters comes to her rescue. Ella takes a holiday week at the coast to discover herself and finds her attraction to Porter potent and undeniable. Uncertain of their future together, Ella struggles to open her heart to trust again. Porter Masters takes care of his own: his single mother, his company, and now he’s compelled to protect the beauty that walked into his world. Never one for relationships in his past, Porter discovers that he was waiting all along for Ella. As their time together comes to an end, will Porter fight for the woman who stole his heart? Porter will find a way to keep her, despite the obstacles.

Not a Chance


S.C. Stephens - 2011
    Just goes to show - first impressions can be dead wrong. Makayla should have listened to her instincts. She never should have accepted a date with him, she never should have continued seeing him, and she definitely shouldn't have started falling for him.Image credit: Luigi Diamanti

Plastic Hearts


Lisa De Jong - 2013
    I like it that way. I grew up in a fake society where plastic hearts rule. If our hearts are made of plastic, they can never be broken. My parents have expectations and I do everything I can to meet them, even if it means giving up on my own dreams. Now, all I want is to be free to make my own choices.Dane Wright is everything I have been warned to stay away from. We met one night while I was with my perfect, parent-approved boyfriend and I haven’t stopped thinking about him. I don’t want to like him. I am doing everything I can to ignore his pull, but my heart seems to want what it cannot have, what it has never had.Can he measure up? He may think I am too good for him, but maybe he is too good for me. Life is a series of choices and I have never been able to make my own. Until one day, when my heart decides to make a choice for me.Recommended for mature readers due to sexual content and language

Forever & Always


Jasinda Wilder - 2013
    Even if it’s just random stuff, nothing important, they’re important to me. Gramps is great, and I love working on the ranch.But…I’m lonely.I feel disconnected, like I’m no one, like I don’t belong anywhere. Like I’m just here until something else happens. I don’t even know what I want with my future. But your letters, they make me feel connected to something, to someone. I had a crush on you, when we first met. I thought you were beautiful. So beautiful. It was hard to think of anything else. Then camp ended and we never got together, and now all I have of you is these letters.S**t.I just told you I have a crush on you. HAD. Had a crush. Not sure what is anymore. A letter-crush? A literary love? That’s stupid. Sorry. I just have this rule with myself that I never throw away what I write and I always send it, so hopefully this doesn’t weird you out too much. I had a dream about you too. Same kind of thing. Us, in the darkness, together.Just us.And it was like you said, a memory turned into a dream, but a memory of something that’s never happened, but in the dream it felt so real, and it was more, I don’t even know, more RIGHT than anything I’ve ever felt, in life or in dreams. I wonder what it means that we both had the same dream about each other. Maybe nothing, maybe everything. You tell me.Cade----------------------------------------------------------------Cade,We’re pen pals. Maybe that’s all we’ll ever be. I don’t know. If we met IRL (in real life, in case you’re not familiar with the term) what would happen? And just FYI, the term you used, a literary love? It was beautiful. So beautiful. That term means something, between us now. We are literary loves. Lovers? I do love you, in some strange way. Knowing about you, in these letters, knowing your hurt and your joys, it means something so important to me, that I just can’t describe. I need your art, and your letters, and your literary love.If we never have anything else between us, I need this. I do. Maybe this letter will only complicate things, but like you I have a rule that I never erase or throw away what I’ve written and I always send it, no matter what I write in the letter. Your literary love,Ever

Only for Him


Cristin Harber - 2015
    He’s the stuff high school crushes are made of, Mister Popular, and captain of every team. She’s artsy, cute, and not in his league, though fully aware of Summerland’s "I Dream of Dating Grayson Ford" support group.I can’t say no. The girl’s had my heart since before I knew it went missing.He hides a life of hell. His father hates him, his mother’s gone. Emma is his only savior, yet she doesn’t know her power over him. She’s the only girl he wants, the only one he could ever tell—though he won’t.I’m stronger, bigger, more of a man than he’ll ever be, but because I ruined his life, I’ve taken his crap, his attacks, the vulgar nature of his existence.Until she discovers Gray’s embarrassment, his humiliation. Emma fights for him, for a chance. Theirs is a Cinderella story that she believes impossible. But as the layers peel back, it’s just a guy who needs a girl in order to keep breathing.My mind is already doodling Mrs. Grayson Ford in imaginary notebooks. He has no clue where my head is at… But, given that I didn’t see what just happened coming, maybe I have no clue where his head is at either.______* ONLY FOR HIM is the first book in the Only series, all of which will release in Spring 2015.

Because You Are Mine


Beth Kery - 2013
    Succumbing to their desires is the easy part. But when passion opens the door to an intimacy neither has known, can a man known for being unbendable learn to love?

Jacked


Tina Reber - 2014
    Since that moment, she has made it her life goal to pursue emergency medicine, pouring her heart and soul into assuring another innocent life isn’t lost to the hands of the wicked. We all have secrets we've never shared. Detective Adam Trent has lost control of everything, starting with losing his partner to a punk with a gun and then everything else to the crushing guilt. Now a member of the elite Auto Theft Task Force in Philadelphia, it's his job to be one step ahead of the criminals stealing expensive cars in the city. Too bad the television cameras keep getting in the way of his investigation. We all have pasts that we can never escape. A stolen car, a tragic chase, and a traffic stop crosses the fates of these two, tying them together in ways that are unimaginable. As their love and trust grows, so do the enemies that threaten their survival, testing the strength of their commitment. Can true love endure half-truths, past pains, and secrets never meant to be shared? Some things are just out of our control. Love Unscripted spin-off featuring Kyle Trent's older brother, Adam.

Dark Desire


Emily Jane Trent - 2013
    The passion between them ignites a flame that can’t be put out. She discovers her dark desire – her life will never be the same. “There was something in his face. She couldn't think the thought she grasped for. His skin was pale, and she got the impression he wasn't out in the sun much. His baby blue eyes were so bright, they appeared luminous. And his dark brown hair shimmered with auburn highlights, here under the blaring brightness of the lobby. He was just beautiful. She'd never known a man could be beautiful, but he definitely was.”Dark Desire, 1st novella in the Touched By You series, is a romantic tale that takes place in New York. The sex scenes are graphic - includes light bdsm. The author was inspired by the endearing romance in the Twilight series. And the sexual enlightenment, and sweet romance, in the Fifty Shades Of Grey series. Touched By You is a unique love story, with full character development, and added intrigue from the billionaire’s life, that will make each book in the series hard to put down.

Hold On


Samantha Young - 2019
    While their lonely upbringing made Killian a cynic, it isn’t in Autumn’s nature to be anything but warm and open. However, after a series of relationship disasters and the unsettling realization that she’s drifting aimlessly through life, Autumn wonders if she’s left herself too vulnerable to the world. Deciding some distance from the security blanket of her brother and an unmotivated life in Glasgow is exactly what she needs to find herself, Autumn takes up her friend’s offer to stay at a ski resort in the snowy hills of Montana. Some guy-free alone time on Whitetail Mountain sounds just the thing to get to know herself better. However, she wasn’t counting on colliding into sexy Grayson King on the slopes. Autumn has never met anyone like Gray. Confident, smart, with a wicked sense of humor, he makes the men she dated seem like boys. Her attraction to him immediately puts her on the defense because being open-hearted in the past has only gotten it broken. Yet it becomes increasingly difficult to resist a man who is not only determined to seduce her, but adamant about helping her find her purpose in life and embrace the person she is. Autumn knows she shouldn’t fall for Gray. It can only end badly. After all their lives are divided by an ocean and their inevitable separation is just another heart break away… The Kristen Proby Crossover Collection features a new novel by Kristen Proby and six by some of her favorite writers: Kristen Proby – Soaring with Fallon Sawyer Bennett – Wicked Force K.L. Grayson – Crazy Imperfect Love Laura Kaye – Worth Fighting For Monica Murphy – Nothing Without You Rachel Van Dyken – All Stars Fall Samantha Young – Hold On