Book picks similar to
Anywhere But Here by Stephanie Hoffman McManus


romance
second-chance
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second-chance-love

Bigger Than the Sky


Harper Bentley - 2014
    No, I’m not an idiot.Yes, I had my reasons. Now I’ve made a new life for myself working at a large firm in Richmond and I’ve left the past behind. Or so I thought.Upon returning to my hometown of Serenity Point, Virginia, to take care of some business, I find that Kade’s now home for good and he’s none too happy about my being here. Two months. That’s all I’m staying then I’m out of here. Unless I believe the town’s pink-haired psychic’s prediction. Or embrace the sense of belonging I feel at being back home. Or give in to the emotions stirring inside when Kade's attention is suddenly on me. He scares the crap out of me. He thrills me. He used to tell me our love was bigger than the sky. I always knew ours was a once-in-a-lifetime love. So how can he be so sure it can happen again?

Wait for Me


Tia Louise - 2019
    Her brother Sawyer would kick my ass if he knew how many times we made out that summer, how close we got.Everything changed when Sawyer and I joined the military.We were honorably discharged, but I didn’t go to her.Instead, I went back to the city… where no amount of money, no amount of pills can heal this wound.Only her whiskey eyes and dark hair, her slim arms and her sweet scent, give me hope. I broke her heart just as surely as I broke mine, but I’m going back to make it right.If she’s still waiting… (WAIT FOR ME is a STAND-ALONE second-chance, military romance with a guaranteed HEA. No cheating. No cliffhangers.)

Ghosted


J.M. Darhower - 2017
    Through scandal after scandal, addiction on top of addiction, a flurry of paparazzi hunt him as he fights to conquer his demons.She's a single mother, assistant manager at a grocery store, existing in monotony with her five-year-old daughter. Every day when she goes to work, lurid tabloids surround her, the face of a notorious bad boy haunting her from their covers.A man and a woman, living vastly different lives, but that wasn't always the case. Once, they were just a boy and a girl who bonded over comic books and fell in love unexpectedly.When Kennedy Garfield met Jonathan Cunningham back in high school, she knew he had all the makings of a tragic hero. With stars in his eyes, and her heart on her sleeve, the pair ran away together to follow their dreams.But dreams, sometimes, turn into nightmares.Now, years later, the only thing they share is a daughter—one who has no idea her father plays her favorite superhero. But Jonathan is desperate to make amends, and at the top of his list is the woman who gave up everything for him and the little girl he hasn't yet met.

Three Wishes


Kristen Ashley - 2011
    Her family had three wishes and they’d only ever used one so Fazire was stuck in the human world. This worked since he’d become a member of the family anyway. Even with a genie, Lily's young life wasn’t perfect. To escape the kids making her miserable at school, Lily buried herself in romance novels. One day, when the teasing was just too much, she used one of her wishes. She told Fazire she wanted to find a man like in her books and she made the most complicated wish Fazire had ever heard. Her wished-for man had to be impossibly handsome, virile, fierce, rugged and ruthless (amongst a dozen other things). He also had to think she was beautiful and he had to love her more than anything in the world. Nathaniel McAllister wasn’t born to a life where there were such things as genies granting wishes. His life was filled with drugs, crime and neglect. He was running errands for a gangster before he was in his teens and, even though life and hard work led him to wealth and respectability, he always knew, deep down, he was dirty. When Nate met Lily he knew he was no good for her but as virile, fierce, rugged and ruthless as he was, Nate was no match for the pull of sweet, innocent Lily. Unfortunately, Lily’s wish included that she and her hero go through trials and tribulations to test their love. And Fazire wasn’t only a good genie, he loved Lily – so he gave her exactly what she wanted.

What He Doesn't Know


Kandi Steiner - 2018
    Inside its walls are many things that belong to me — my books, the china from my mother on my wedding day, the beautiful cage once home to two birds, now empty, just like me.And a man.A man who also belongs to me.A man I no longer wish to keep.A man who, no doubt, has not slept, though the sun is rising. Because the house where he waits is where I laid my head to rest every night for eight years. Until last night.No one who knows me would believe Charlie Pierce, the quiet, bookish girl who never made waves is pulling out of the driveway of a man who isn’t her husband.But they don’t know me at all.I don’t even know me.Not anymore.They say there are two sides to every story, and I suppose in most cases, that’s true. But the one I live inside of? It has three.On the northeast side of town, there is a house.But there is no longer a home.

Fighting to Breathe


Aurora Rose Reynolds - 2015
    They never imagined the future could hold anything other than together-forever. When Lea's father dies in a tragic fishing accident, she's crushed under the weight of her grief and catches a glimpse of another type of future, one she knows she's not strong enough to face. Austin is angry. For the past fifteen years, he's believed the woman he loved with every ounce of his soul left him without so much as a backwards glance. When Lea unexpectedly returns to their hometown, all the years of heartache inside Austin bubbles to the surface and presents itself as blinding rage. Faced with the truth about the past, a newly discovered secret, these former lovers will learn that if they want to have any chance at the future they'd given up on all those years ago, they will have to rescue one another from drowning in pain so debilitating it will leave them both fighting to breathe. Contains mature themes.

Rock


Anyta Sunday - 2014
    There’s Lila, too: The other woman, the one who stole the rock-solid foundation of his life. And then . . . There’s Jace. Lila’s son. Lila’s smug, regurgitated-fish-scale-blue eyed son. All Cooper wants is to have his family back the way it once was, but there’s something about this boy that promises things will never be the same again. Sedimentary. Resisting the realities of his new life, Cooper and Jace get off to a rocky start. But rocky start or not, after hundreds of shared memories together, they forge something new. A close . . . friendship. Because friendship is all they can have. Although it’s not like they are real brothers. Technically, they’re not even stepbrothers . . . Metamorphic. But how does that friendship evolve under the pressures of life? Under pressures of the heart?

What's Left of Me


Amanda Maxlyn - 2013
    He is persistent, and he knows what he wants. Me.He doesn’t treat me like I’m fragile.But he doesn’t know, and I’m not ready to tell him.What if it changes everything?Tragedy found me when I was seventeen.Love found me when I was twenty-one.My name is Aundrea McCall, and this is my journey.

Here's to Falling


Christine Zolendz - 2015
    Intended for mature readers only.***TRIGGER WARNING!

A Love So Tragic


Stevie J. Cole - 2016
    We all make them. Sometimes we break them. But what happens when the promise you break haunts your dreams, when that moment of betrayal echoes within every last beat of your heart? Love. Love is passionate, painful, and all consuming in the most brutal yet beautiful way. How many people have you said 'I love you' to? Five, ten, maybe no one? I've said that word to two men, but only one where I felt it. Tragic. This word sums up my relationship with Nicolas: devastating, painful, depressing. A first love that should have lasted a lifetime, but I ruined with a stupid decision. Nicolas is my star crossed lover, and even though Shakespeare has taught me that stories such as ours always end in tragedy, I can't not love him, even if I'm married to someone else.

Flawed Heart


Bella Jewel - 2015
    The man I married was strong, beautiful and pure. The man I married cherished our lives together. The man I married loved me.This...This isn't that man.One night. One accident. It changes everything.I wish I could tell you the exact moment he fell out of love with me. I wish I could tell you there was hope. That I hung on. That I fought. I wish I could tell you that we fixed it. That happily every after was just out of our grips.It wasn't. I ran, in the dead of the night, I packed my things and I left him.Now I'm back. He's still the same man. A deadly underground fighter for the House of Obsidian. He's still dangerous. He's still broken. I still love him.This is the part where I'm supposed to turn around and run... But I don't.

The Five Stages of Falling in Love


Rachel Higginson - 2015
    Grady's prognosis was grim, even from the start, but Liz never gave up hope he would survive. How could she, when he was everything to her?Six months later, she is trying to pick up the pieces of her shattered life and get the kids to school on time. Both seem impossible. Everything seems impossible these days.When Ben Tyler moves in next door, she is drowning in sorrow and pain, her children are acting out, and the house is falling apart. She has no time for curious new friends or unwanted help, but Ben gives her both. And he doesn't just want to help her with yard work or cleaning the gutters. Ben wants more from Liz. More than she's capable of ever giving again.As Liz mourns her dead husband and works her way through the five stages of grief, she finds there's more of her heart to give than she thought possible. And as new love takes hold, she peels away the guilt and heartache, and discovers there's more to life than death.

The Fall


Kate Stewart - 2015
    . . and the end of it.I was only fifteen years old when he claimed it and twenty when he took it with him.They say what is meant to be will find a way. But when you have changed to the point of no return, how can anything ever be the same?Seven years later, Dean Martin waltzed back into my life in hopes of resuming what I had fought so hard to forget, but he was in for a wake-up call.I was no longer the naïve woman he had left . . . and I was no longer his.I met the love of my life and my soul mate when I was fifteen. I knew that; he knew that. He wanted that girl back. I wanted to forget she ever existed.DeanWhat I thought was my pre-destined path was very much an illusion. Living seven years with regret, I realized too late that I was broken, and that I only had myself to blame.I thought love could wait . . . but it didn’t. We’d had it all those years ago, and then I foolishly left it behind.She was all that mattered. She was all there ever was.There was no life without Dallas, no reason . . . except her.No matter how hard she tried to convince me, I knew I had to once again make her mine, to make her remember . . . the fall.Explicit sex, strong language.

Retrieval


Aly Martinez - 2016
    Two couples.I proposed on our first date. She laughed and told me I was insane. Less than a day later, she said yes.It was a whirlwind, but we were happy… Until we got greedy and wanted a family.It was a life I couldn’t give her, not for lack of trying. Fertility just wasn’t on our side. We sought out doctors and treatments. Spent money we didn’t have. Lied to our families. Smiled for our friends. Put on a brave face for a world that didn’t understand.Finally, we were successful…Until we were forced to bury our son.We were left broken, battered, and destroyed.They say love is in the details, but it was the details that ruined us.This is the story of how I took back what had always been mine.The retrieval of my wife and our family.

Harley & Rose


Carmen Jenner - 2016
    So what if this isn’t her actual wedding day, and that she’s only here because Harley was left at the altar just a few hours earlier? Trading San Francisco for paradise and swapping her bridesmaid’s bouquet for a Blue Hawaii, Rose hopes she can finally escape the friend zone. Once upon a time they had been more than friends, but life got in the way. She’s spent every day since wishing Harley would get a clue. She’s always been his best friend. He’s always been hers. She’s in love with him. He’s … not in love with her. He’s … marrying someone else. He’s … hiding something. He’s … well—it’s complicated.