Book picks similar to
Vivien's Heavenly Ice Cream Shop by Abby Clements
chick-lit
fiction
romance
contemporary
The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart
Anna Bell - 2016
Abi's barely left her bed since Joseph, the love of her life, dumped her, saying they were incompatible. When Joseph leaves a box of her possessions on her doorstep, she finds a bucket list of ten things she never knew he wanted to do. What better way to win him back than by completing the list, and proving they're a perfect match?But there's just one problem - or rather, ten. Abi's not exactly the outdoorsy type, and she's absolutely terrified of heights - not ideal for a list that includes climbing a mountain, cycling around the Isle of Wight and, last but not least, abseiling down the tallest building in town . . . Completing the list is going to need all Abi's courage - and a lot of help from her friends. But as she heals her broken heart one task at a time, the newly confident Abi might just have a surprise in store . . .
Sundays at Tiffany's
James Patterson - 2008
Her mother, the powerful head of a Broadway theater company, has no time for her. She does have one friend-a handsome, comforting, funny man named Michael-but only she can see him. Years later, Jane is in her thirties and just as alone as ever. Then she meets Michael again-as handsome, smart and perfect as she remembers him to be. But not even Michael knows the reason they've really been reunited.SUNDAYS AT TIFFANY'S is a love story with an irresistible twist, a novel about the child inside all of us-and the boundary-crossing power of love.
Swimming Lessons
Claire Fuller - 2017
When Ingrid has written her final letter she disappears from a Dorset beach, leaving behind her beautiful but dilapidated house by the sea, her husband, and her two daughters, Flora and Nan.Twelve years later, Gil thinks he sees Ingrid from a bookshop window, but he’s getting older and this unlikely sighting is chalked up to senility. Flora, who has never believed her mother drowned, returns home to care for her father and to try to finally discover what happened to Ingrid. But what Flora doesn’t realize is that the answers to her questions are hidden in the books that surround her. Scandalous and whip-smart, Swimming Lessons holds the Coleman family up to the light, exposing the mysterious truths of a passionate and troubled marriage.
Sweetbitter
Stephanie Danler - 2016
Now a STARZ Original Series.Newly arrived in New York City, twenty-two-year-old Tess lands a job as a "backwaiter" at a celebrated downtown Manhattan restaurant. What follows is the story of her education: in champagne and cocaine, love and lust, dive bars and fine dining rooms, as she learns to navigate the chaotic, enchanting, punishing life she has chosen. As her appetites awaken—for food and wine, but also for knowledge, experience, and belonging—Tess finds herself helplessly drawn into a darkly alluring love triangle. In Sweetbitter, Stephanie Danler deftly conjures with heart-stopping accuracy the nonstop and high-adrenaline world of the restaurant industry and evokes the infinite possibilities, the unbearable beauty, and the fragility and brutality of being young in New York.
The Little Café in Copenhagen
Julie Caplin - 2018
Until that boyfriend goes behind her back and snatches a much sought-after promotion from her.Heartbroken and questioning everything, Kate needs to escape.Leaving behind rush hour and late nights in the office for a city break in beautiful Copenhagen, Kate discovers how to live life ‘the Danish way’. From candles and cosy nights in to the easy smiles of tall, gorgeous Vikings and eating your body weight in pastries (ok, that’s just her), the city offers her a new perspective.Can the secrets of hygge and happiness lead her to her own happily-ever-after?
Comfort Food
Kate Jacobs - 2008
She's getting tired of being the hostess, the mother hen, the woman who has to bake her own birthday party. To make things worse, the network execs at the Cooking Channel want to boost her ratings by teaming Gus with the beautiful, ambitious Carmen Vega, a former Miss Spain, who is decidedly not middle-aged.But Gus won't go without a fight. She recreates her show as an on-air cooking class, which she uses as an excuse to bring together her extended family for some lessons in life as well as cuisine. The new cast includes her bickering daughters, fickle Sabrina, who has just gotten engaged for the third time, and overserious Aimee; Troy, Sabrina's ex-boyfriend, and Hannah, Gus's timid neighbor. And while Gus may have to deal with Carmen's diva behavior, she also has to contend with a new culinary producer, Oliver, a handsome ex-banker who raises the temperature just a little beyond Gus's comfort zone. In the pursuit of higher ratings and culinary delights, Gus realizes that she might be able not just to rejuvenate her career but to improve her family life - and perhaps her love life as well...
By The Time You Read This
Lola Jaye - 2008
Here are the rules: 1. You must only read each new entry on your birthday, there is one for every year until you are thirty. 2. This is a private manual between you and me. 3. No peeping at the next entry unless it's your birthday! When Lois Bates is handed the manual, she can barely bring herself to read it as the pain of losing her dad is still so raw. Yet soon his advice is guiding her through every stage of her life - from first love and relationships to her career. The manual can never be a substitute for having her dad back, but through his words Lois learns to start living again, and discovers that happiness is waiting around the corner...
Summer's Child
Diane Chamberlain - 1999
Daria's parent's had adopted the infant, but now they are dead and she has accepted responsibility for Shelly--who has grown into a beautiful, slightly handicapped young woman. Without consulting Daria, Shelly contacts Rory Taylor, host of TV's True Life Stories, to ask his help in finding her birth mother. Rory has a personal interest in Shelly's story since he'd been one of the many teenagers hanging out on the beach the summer the baby was found. Daria, meanwhile, has been keeping to herself the crush she's had on Rory for years--along with Shelly's true story. Here, as in previous offerings, Chamberlain (Breaking the Silence) creates a captivating tale populated with haunting characters.
Summer at the Comfort Food Café
Debbie Johnson - 2016
For tourists and locals alike, the ramshackle cafe overlooking the beach is a beacon of laughter, companionship, and security – a place like no other; a place that offers friendship as a daily special, and where a hearty welcome is always on the menu.For widowed mum-of-two Laura Walker, the decision to uproot her teenaged children and make the trek from Manchester to Dorset for the summer isn’t one she takes lightly, and it’s certainly not winning her any awards from her kids, Nate and Lizzie. Even her own parents think she’s gone mad.But following the death of her beloved husband David two years earlier, Laura knows that it’s time to move on. To find a way to live without him, instead of just surviving. To find her new place in the world, and to fill the gap that he’s left in all their lives.Her new job at the cafe, and the hilarious people she meets there, give Laura the chance she needs to make new friends; to learn to be herself again, and – just possibly – to learn to love again as well.For her, the Comfort Food Cafe doesn’t just serve food – it serves a second chance to live her life to the full…
The Opposite of Love
Julie Buxbaum - 2008
Somewhere beneath her sense of fun, her bravado, and her independent exterior, Emily knows that her breakup with Andrew has less to do with him and more to do with...her. You‘re your own worst enemy's her best friend Jess tells her. It‘s like you get pleasure out of breaking your own heart. As the holiday season looms and Emily contemplates whether she made a huge mistake, the rest of her world begins to unravel: she is assigned to a multimillion-dollar lawsuit where she must defend the very values she detests by a boss who can‘t keep his hands to himself; her Grandpa Jack, a charming, feisty octogenarian and the person she cares most about in the world, is losing it, while her emotionally distant father has left her to cope with this alone; and underneath it all, fading memories of her deceased mother continue to remind her that love does’t last forever.How this brave, original young heroine finally decides to take control of her life and face the fears that have long haunted her is the great achievement of Julie Buxbaum’s marvelous first novel. Written with the authority, grace, and wisdom of an author far beyond her years, The Opposite of Love heralds the debut of a remarkable talent in contemporary fiction.
The Pull of the Moon
Elizabeth Berg - 1996
I just wanted you to know I was safe...I won't be back for a while. I'm on a trip. I needed all of a sudden to go, without saying where, because I don't know where. I know this is not like me. I know that. But please believe me, I am safe and I am not crazy. I felt as though if I didn't do this I wouldn't be safe and I would be crazy...And can you believe this? I love you. - Nan.Sometimes you have to leave your life behind for a while to see it and really live freshly again. In this luminous, exquisitely written novel, a woman follows the pull of the moon to find her way home. Sometimes humorous, sometimes heartbreaking, always honest, The Pull of the Moon is a novel about the journey of one woman - and about the issues of the heart that transforms the lives of all women.
The Silent Treatment
Abbie Greaves - 2020
Six months of silence. One last chance. By all appearances, Frank and Maggie share a happy, loving marriage. But for the past six months, they have not spoken. Not a sentence, not a single word. Maggie isn’t sure what, exactly, provoked Frank’s silence, though she has a few ideas.Day after day, they have eaten meals together and slept in the same bed in an increasingly uncomfortable silence that has become, for Maggie, deafening.Then Frank finds Maggie collapsed in the kitchen, unconscious, an empty package of sleeping pills on the table. Rushed to the hospital, she is placed in a medically induced coma while the doctors assess the damage.If she regains consciousness, Maggie may never be the same. Though he is overwhelmed at the thought of losing his wife, will Frank be able to find his voice once again—and explain his withdrawal—or is it too late?
The Opposite of Me
Sarah Pekkanen - 2010
Determined to get noticed, Lindsey is finally on the cusp of being named VP creative director of an elite New York advertising agency, after years of eighty-plus-hour weeks, migraines, and profound loneliness. But during the course of one devastating night, Lindsey’s carefully constructed life implodes. Humiliated, she flees the glitter of Manhattan and retreats to the time warp of her parents’ Maryland home. As her sister plans her lavish wedding to her Prince Charming, Lindsey struggles to maintain her identity as the smart, responsible twin while she furtively tries to piece her career back together. But things get more complicated when a long-held family secret is unleashed that forces both sisters to reconsider who they are and who they are meant to be.
The Overdue Life of Amy Byler
Kelly Harms - 2019
So when the guilt-ridden husband who abandoned her shows up and offers to take care of their kids for the summer, she accepts his offer and escapes rural Pennsylvania for New York City.Usually grounded and mild mannered, Amy finally lets her hair down in the city that never sleeps. She discovers a life filled with culture, sophistication, and—with a little encouragement from her friends—a few blind dates. When one man in particular makes quick work of Amy’s heart, she risks losing herself completely in the unexpected escape, and as the summer comes to an end, Amy realizes too late that she must make an impossible decision: stay in this exciting new chapter of her life, or return to the life she left behind.But before she can choose, a crisis forces the two worlds together, and Amy must stare down a future where she could lose both sides of herself, and every dream she’s ever nurtured, in the beat of a heart.
Getting Over It
Anna Maxted - 2000
She's a lowly assistant editor at GirlTime magazine, she drives an ancient Toyota, and she has a history of choosing men who fall several thousand feet below acceptable boyfriend standard. Not to mention that she shares an apartment with a scruffy , tactless roommate, her best girlfriends are a little too perfect, and the most affectionate male in her life—her cat, Fatboy—occasionally pees in her underwear draw.Then Helen gets the telephone call she least expects: Her father has had a massive heart attack. Initially brushing off his death as merely an interruption in her already chaotic life (they were never very close, after all), Helen is surprised to find everything else starting to crumble around her. Her pushy mother is coming apart at the seams, a close friend might be heading toward tragedy, and, after the tequila incident, it looks as though Tom the vet will be sticking with Dalmatians. Turns out getting over it isn't going to be quite as easy as she thought.