Book picks similar to
The Best Thing by Mariana Zapata


romance
contemporary
slow-burn
contemporary-romance

Teardrop Shot


Tijan - 2019
    And just like that, our friendship was off to a great start.Reese Forster was the starting point guard for the Seattle Thunder.Gorgeous. Cocky. Loved by the nation.He's also attending preseason basketball training camp where I used to work.Correction: where I work again, because I was fired from my last job.And dumped.And I might have a tiny bit of baggage, but that's normal. Right?Reese and I shouldn't have become friends. We shouldn't have become roommates.And we really shouldn't have started sleeping together ... (Except we did.)I'm adorably psychotic. He's in the NBA.This is not a disaster waiting to happen, at all.

Eleanor & Grey


Brittainy C. Cherry - 2019
     As the young girl who first fell for him, I didn’t know much about life. I did know about his smiles, though, and his laughs, and the strange way my stomach flipped when he was near. Life was perfect…until it wasn’t, and when we were forced to go our separate ways, I held on to our memories, let go of my first crush, and wished for the day I’d find him again. When my wish came true, it was nothing like I imagined. I couldn’t have known when I took the nanny position that it would be his children I looked after, that my new boss would be that boy I used to know, that boy who was now a man—a cold, lonely, detached man. The smile and laugh I had loved so much were gone, now distant memories. Every part of him was covered in a fresh pain. When he realized who I was, he made me promise to do my job and my job only. He made me promise not to try to get to know him, not to recall the memories I’d treasured all this time. But, sometimes, I saw the boy I’d once known in his stormy eyes. I saw the Greyson who smiled and laughed, who had stolen a young girl’s heart, and there was no doubt in my mind that this boy was worth fighting for. I was given a second chance with the one who’d left his mark on me. All I hoped was that somehow I’d leave a mark on his soul, too.

Someone Else's Ocean


Kate Stewart - 2018
    Thomas, I was six years old and we shared a summer beneath the stars.The second time I met Ian Kemp, he was a shell of the boy I once knew. Turbulent and infuriating, he refused my friendship at every turn. Like me, he was a casualty of life’s cruelty, but we were planets apart. We’d both sought refuge on the island, hoping to find our anchor. Instead, we found each other and managed to reclaim our stars...until we both got swept away.

The Hardest Fall


Ella Maise - 2018
    You smile, say hello. Should be simple, if you’re anyone but me. The first time I met Dylan Reed, I found myself making eye contact with a different part of his body. You see, I’m very good at being shy, not to mention extremely well-versed in rambling nonsense and, unfortunately, rather highly skilled at making a fool of myself in front of a guy I’m attracted to. At the time, I knew nothing about him and thought none of what I said would matter since I’d never speak to him again. Turns out, I was very wrong. He was the star wide receiver of the football team, one of the few players expected to make it into the NFL, and I ended up seeing him all over campus. I might have also propositioned him, run away from him, attacked him with a cooking utensil…and…uh, maybe I shouldn’t tell you all of it. It’s pretty normal stuff, things you’d expect…from me. Eventually, the time came when I couldn’t hide anymore—not that he’d have let me even if I tried. Before now, he never knew I was secretly watching him. Now that we see each other every day, he knows when I have a hard time looking away. It doesn’t help that I’m not the most subtle person in the world either. He smiles at me and tells me he finds me fascinating because of my quirks. I can’t even tell him that I think my heart beats differently whenever he’s around. He thinks we’re going to be best friends. I think I have a big thing for him, and the more I get to know him, the more I don’t care that I’m not allowed to be his friend, let alone fall for him. The thing is, that’s exactly what I’m doing—what we’re doing, I think. Falling. Hard.

Cement Heart


Beth Ehemann - 2015
    After all, life is just one big game, right? Wrong. When what was supposed to be an innocent bet goes horribly wrong, he’s left to deal with the aftermath—and the guilt. In an effort to make things right the best way he can, he ends up falling for the one person on the planet he never should have. The old saying goes that two wrongs don’t make a right . . . or do they?

Rock Bottom Girl


Lucy Score - 2019
    Not much has changed in Culpepper. The cool kids are still cool. Now they just own car dealerships and live in McMansions next door. Oh, and the whole town is still talking about that Homecoming she ruined her senior year. Desperate for a new start, Marley accepts a temporary teaching position. Can the girl banned from all future Culpepper High Homecomings keep the losing-est girls soccer team in school history from killing each other and prevent carpal tunnel in a bunch of phone-clutching gym class students? Maybe with the help of Jake Weston, high school bad boy turned sexy good guy. When the school rumor mill sends Marley to the principal’s office to sign an ethics contract, the tattooed track coach, dog dad, and teacher of the year becomes her new fake boyfriend and alibi—for a price. The Deal: He’ll teach her how to coach if she teaches him how to be in a relationship. Who knew a fake boyfriend could deliver such real orgasms? But it’s all temporary. The guy. The job. The team. There’s too much history. Rock bottom can’t turn into a foundation for happily ever after. Can it? Warning: Story also includes a meet-puke, a bouffanted nemesis, a yard swan and donkey basketball, a teenage-orchestrated makeover, and a fake relationship that gets a little too real between the sheets.

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.

Revelry


Kandi Steiner - 2017
     She never expected to be divorced at twenty-seven, but now that the court date has passed, it’s official. The paperwork is final. Her feelings on it aren’t. Spending the summer in a small mountain town outside Seattle is exactly what she needs. The peaceful scenery is a given, the cat with the croaky meow is a surprise, but the real kicker? A broody neighbor with nice arms, a strange reputation, and absolutely no interest in her. Anderson Black is perfectly fine being lost. He doesn’t care about the town’s new resident — he’s too busy fighting his own demons. But when he’s brought face to face with Wren, he can see her still-fresh wounds from a mile away. What he doesn’t see coming is his need to know who put them there — or his desperation to mend them. Sometimes getting lost is the way to find yourself. Sometimes healing only adds a new scar. And sometimes the last place you expected to be is exactly where you find home.

Trailer Park Heart


Rachel Higginson - 2018
    It’s my legacy. That’s how my mama lived. And that’s how her mama lived. It’s the life I was born into and it’s the life I swore I would leave the second I was old enough to make it out. Only legacies have a funny way of sneaking up on you. An innocent decision the night of high school graduation led to a series of complications in my plans to escape. Seven years later, I’ve resigned myself to this small town and the roots I’m tied to. Nothing could make me leave. And nothing could make me spill the secrets that keep me here. Until he walks back into town with a chip on his shoulder and a stupid hunch nobody else in town has been smart enough to follow. Levi Cole is my opposite. Born on the right side of the tracks with family money to spare, he’s the kind of black sheep that can afford to be rebellious—because his family will always pay for his mistakes. He’s also the only living heir to Cole Family Farms, after his brother Logan was killed in duty seven years ago. He sees something in my life that he thinks he has a right to. But he’s wrong. And obnoxious. And he needs to take his stubborn good looks and that intense way he looks at me and go back to wherever it was he came from. I know better than to trust men like him. I was born and raised in a trailer park, I know nothing good happens to girls like me—girls with trailer park lives and trailer park hearts. Especially from gorgeous, kind, pigheaded men like him.

When We Collide


A.L. Jackson - 2012
    Trapped in a world of false ambitions and feigned affections, William knows he’s reached a breaking point and something’s going to give.Maggie had lived her entire life without hope until one man showed her what it meant to be loved. He’d been her light in a lifetime of darkness. Six years ago, that darkness stole him away. Without him, she’s surrendered herself to an existence she doesn’t know how to escape.When the family William left behind is struck by tragedy, he is called back to the one place he’s sworn to never return to again.In a moment that will change his life forever, William comes face to face with the girl who, with one look, captured his heart. He is unable to ignore the buried desires and the hope for the future they’d once believed they’d have.Now William is ready to fight to take back what had been stolen from him six years before.But he never imagined what that fight might cost him.A.L. Jackson gives you an intimate look into the lives of a family bound by an unseen connection in this romantic thriller with a supernatural twist.

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.)

The Devil Wears Black


L.J. Shen - 2021
    J. Shen comes a second-chance romance about love, loss, finding yourself, and getting lost in the right person.Maddie Goldbloom stitched up a plan to ensure everything in her life was perfect—from a career in fashion to a chic NYC apartment to a pediatrician boyfriend.When her ex, Chase Black, storms back into her life with an outrageous request, her immediate reaction is to refuse him. But he only wants to fulfill his father’s last wish. So even though he’s the man who broke her heart, playing his fiancée shouldn’t be hard, especially if it means she gets to watch the arrogant devil squirm a bit.What ensues is a chain of events that detonates Maddie’s life—and when Chase’s walls come down, they both are forced to face reality.They say keep your enemies close. But what if your enemy is also the man you love?

Coldhearted Boss


R.S. Grey - 2019
    Say no more. I throw on baggy clothes, tuck my long hair under a baseball hat, and apply for a job. Unfortunately, my half-baked idea of disguising myself as a guy is flawed from the beginning. As Shakira says, these hips don’t lie. Still, I like to think I might have pulled the whole thing off save for one thing: I know my boss. Last month, we met at a bar, and after a fiery first encounter, it seems we’re destined to be sworn enemies. Ethan Stone is ruthless and arrogant, a man I never would have crossed had I known how much he likes to toy with his prey. He should just fire me and be done with it. Instead, he decides to make me his personal slave. Oh right, I think they’re calling it personal “assistant” these days. It’s torture, all of it—his bad attitude, his ruggedly chiseled face, his desire to grind me into dust. Every one of our friction-filled battles burns hotter than the last. A girl can only hold out for so long. Soon, I’m bound to go up in flames. My objective? Survive the heat long enough to send home a paycheck.My real objective? Stop having X-rated fantasies about my coldhearted boss.

Purple Orchids


Samantha Christy - 2015
    Lovers. Enemies.Sometimes the lines between them are blurred.Gavin McBrideShe blindsided me. Broke me. Shredded me.And now she’s back, thinking I did the very same thing to her.Someone is lying. It's not me. But the thing is - it's not her either.When I reach out to her, I get more than I bargained for. Much more.Baylor MitchellI was eighteen when he left me.I found a way to survive. Without him. Without us. Without the future he promised.Now, a chance meeting threatens everything I know to be true.But loving him again isn't worth the risk I'd have to take or the secret I'd be forced to reveal.Or is it?One day… one moment… one letter.One lie.That’s all it took to change the course of their lives.Get this sizzling second-chance romance now.

Dr. Stanton


T.L. Swan - 2017
    Then Cameron Stanton is my Santa Claus. I can’t tell you the exact moment I fell in love with him. Only that I did. With every glance, every touch, every minute…. he stole a little more of me. They say that all men are created equal. Well that’s a blatant lie! I know because I met Gods gift to women in Vegas, I pretended he was my husband to get rid of another man. He took our fake marriage seriously and it became his personal goal to consummate. He spoke to me in French and I lied to him in German. His laughter was addictive. But I thought what happens in Vegas would stay in Vegas. Until it didn't. Dr. Stanton turned up where I least expected and my lies came back to haunt me. The attraction is palpable. The secrets unchangeable. I need him more than air. This is a stand alone, contemporary romance.