Book picks similar to
The Choices I've Made by J.L. Berg


romance
second-chance
contemporary-romance
contemporary

Plain Jayne


Laura Drewry - 2014
      Worn out from the long drive back home, Jayne Morgan can only smirk at the irony: Of course the first person she sees from her old life is Nick Scott. Once best friends, they lost touch when Jayne left town at eighteen, but nothing could keep them apart forever. Jayne has returned to take over her grandmother’s bookstore, determined to put all her bittersweet memories and secret disappointments strictly in the past — until, that is, Nick insists she bunk at his place.   Nick never did care what people thought about having a girl for a best friend — or the “scandal” she caused by showing up to his wife’s funeral four years earlier — so he’s got no problem with the gossips now. Jayne was always the one person he could count on in his life. Now Nick is starting to realize that he never wants her to leave again... and that being “just friends” isn’t going to be enough anymore.  Includes a special message from the editor, as well as an excerpt from another Loveswept title.

Fearsome


S.A. Wolfe - 2013
    She has worked hard fulfilling her role as a child prodigy and graduating college years before her peers. She’s the good girl, the brilliant girl.Unfortunately, she’s also the dateless young woman.That all changes with one phone call. Jess’s rigid, predictable life upends when she must visit a small, obscure town to deal with a relative’s death. This isn’t just any little speck of a town, though. Long lost memories come crashing down on Jess’s world when two men, the Blackard brothers, seem to lure her in. Dylan is cover model handsome, and pursues Jess the minute she comes to town. Then there is tall, dark and gorgeous Carson, who hides his own secrets behind his hardened reserve. For someone who has been governed by her own obsessive behaviors and fears, Jess lets her guard down and jumps at the opportunity to have an affair with a man she actually finds attractive for a change.There’s just one problem. Jess discovers that she can’t have a simple romantic fling because true passion does indeed come with some very big strings attached to it. She will have to own up to her own truths about love and face the two extraordinary men; both troubled in their own ways and both determined to have her.This novel contains graphic sexual content and strong language. It is intended for mature readers.

Mister Tonight


Kendall Ryan - 2018
    And the more I drank, the more I wanted to do something reckless to celebrate.By reckless, I mean the sexy and alluring man dressed in a business suit standing near the bar. You know his type—tall, dark, handsome. I was sure he was out of my league, but I’d had just enough alcohol that things like that no longer seemed to matter. I’m not fat, mind you, but you can tell I like french fries, so there’s that.He took me home, and I enjoyed the hottest birthday sex of my life. Well, until it came to a screeching and rather unwelcome halt.There’s nothing quite like being interrupted mid-ride with a little voice asking, “What are you doing to my daddy?”Just kill me now . . . or so I thought.Come to find out, the man I rode like a bull at the rodeo is my new landlord.

Beneath This Mask


Meghan March - 2014
    Son of a congressman. Successful businessman in my own right. With a résumé like mine, women have never been a challenge.Until I met her. This sexy, tatted-up bad girl wasn’t part of my plans, but that punch to my gut every time I see her tells me I have to know more.She’s a mystery. An enigma. A challenge. I’m going to figure her out — and then I’m going to make her mine. We’ll find out what she’s hiding... beneath this mask.

Take Two


Laurelin Paige - 2014
    On the night of her graduation from film school, straight-laced Maddie Bauers fell completely out of character for an oh-my-god make-out session with a perfect stranger. Complete with the big O.Seven years later, that romantic interlude is still fresh in her mind. That stranger is now a rich and famous actor. And she’s one very distracted camera assistant working on his latest production. She might consider another tryst…if he even remembers her.Micah Preston does indeed remember Maddie. Too bad he’s sworn off Hollywood relationships. He allows himself as much sex as he likes—and oh, he does like—but anything more is asking for trouble. For the woman, not for him. Yet knowing Maddie could want more than a movie-set fling doesn’t stop him from pursuing her like a moth drawn to hot stage lights. But as the shoot nears its end, it’s decision time. Is it time to call, “Cut!” on their affair, or is there enough material for a sequel?Warning: Contains a dreamy movie star hero, a focus-pulling heroine, off-the-charts instant chemistry, steamy sex in near-public locations, and a new use for lip gloss.

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

Shuttergirl


C.D. Reiss - 2015
    A girl paparazzi. What could go wrong?I never forgot her. Not for one minute. Not from the last time I saw her, at seventeen, to today. I measured all women against her and all women came up short.But being with her was unfeasible in high school, and it’s taboo now.I see her sometimes, but I’ve never spoken to her. She runs, or I run. We’re in the same town, on the same block, in the same building, and the gulf between us is just too wide to cross.Until tonight.He was my high school crush, back when I lived in a world that didn’t want me. He was the perfect boy, and I was the outcast kid from the other side of town. And when he held my hand I thought I could fit in, just a little. I thought I could be his and he could be mine.Then he left, and my life fell apart.Now we are the king and queen of opposite sides of Hollywood. And we haven’t spoken a word to each other.Until tonight.

Cruel and Beautiful


A.M. Hargrove - 2015
    (Rated R) Cate Forbes , a dedicated college student with a carefully plotted future, doesn’t know the first thing about love. When she accepts a blind date with a rumored tasty piece of eye candy, she thinks she can get by with a night of fun. Cate’s plans quickly unravel when she gets one look at the sexy… Drew McKnight. The relentless hockey-playing medical resident knows what he wants— a career in Oncology and Cate. Although he’s heard the gorgeous brunette is a little relationship skittish, a single night out isn’t what he has in mind. Determined to have her — in every way possible— he shows her just what a future with him would hold. Only life has other plans. The unthinkable happens and everything begins to shatter. Both in too deep, they will have to fight the cruel and hang onto the beautiful.

Fluffy


Julia Kent - 2019
    Of course it did. I’m a professional fluffer. It’s NOT what you think. I stage homes for a living. Real estate agents love me, and my work stands on its own merits. Sigh. Get your mind out of the gutter. Go ahead. Laugh. I’ll wait. See? That’s the problem. My career has used the term “fluffer” for decades. I didn’t even know there was a more… lascivious definition of the term. Until it was too late. The ad for a “professional fluffer” on Craigslist seemed like divine intervention. My last unemployment check was in the bank. I was desperate. Rent was due. The ad said cash paid at the end of the day. The perfect job! Staging homes means showing your best angle. The same principle applies in making a certain kind of movie. Turns out a “fluffer” doesn’t arrange decorative pillows on a couch. They arrange other soft, round-ish objects. The job isn’t hard. Er, I mean, it is — it’s about being hard. Or, well… helping other people to be hard. Oh, man… And that’s the other problem. A man. No, not one of the stars on the movie set. Will Lotham – my high school crush. The owner of the house where we’re filming. Illegally. In a vacation rental. By the time the cops show up, what I thought was just a great house staging gig turned into a nightmare involving pictures of me with an undressed star, Will rescuing me from an arrest, and a humiliating lesson in my own naivete. My job turned out to be so much harder than I expected. But you know what’s easier than I ever imagined? Having all my dreams come true.

On a Tuesday


Whitney G. - 2017
    Became best friends, then lovers, on a Tuesday. And everything fell apart on a Tuesday... Charlotte Taylor has three automatic strikes in my book: 1) She hates me. She also claims that I'm a "domineering jerk with a huge, overbearing ego." (I do have something huge. It's not my ego, though.) 2) She takes our mandatory tutoring sessions way too seriously. 3) She's sexy as hell...And a virgin. At least, those were her strikes before our study sessions started lasting longer than they were supposed to. Until one innocent kiss became a hundred dirty ones, and until she became the first woman I ever fell hard for. Our future together after graduation was supposed to be set: Professional football for me. Law school for her. But she left me at the end of the semester with no explanation, and then she completely disappeared from my life. Until tonight.We met on a Tuesday. Became everything, then nothing, on a Tuesday. And now it's seven years later, on a Tuesday... **This is a full length second chance romance, inspired by Adele's "When We Were Young"**

The Image of You


Melanie Moreland
    Braving danger and devastation, he is determined to tell the world the stories he captures through his lens.Until a misstep leads him to her.Alexandra Robbins.With her fiery red hair and crystal-blue eyes that hide her secrets, she draws him in. And he is willing to change his life for her.Except her past holds her captive. Nothing seems to free her, and despite his best efforts, she is lost to him. But her image never fades from his mind—or his heart.Until their paths cross again.And this time, he is determined to keep her. He won’t lose focus until she is back in his arms and his life.Permanently.(Formerly published as My Image of You, 2017)>

Kaleidoscope Hearts


Claire Contreras - 2015
    And all those feelings I’d turned into anger are brewing into something else, something that terrifies me. He broke my heart last time. This time he'll obliterate it.This is a standalone.

Play On


Samantha Young - 2017
    Nora O’Brien chased a dream from Indiana to Scotland, so sure it was the right thing to do. Three years later she was left in her adopted country with nothing to her name but guilt and regret.Until Aidan Lennox entered her life.Older, worldlier, a music producer and composer, the sexy Scot should never have made sense for Nora. But somehow in each other they found the light they were looking for, the laughter and the passion—the strength to play on despite their past losses.But when life dealt Aidan another unlucky hand, instead of reaching for her he disappeared. The agonizing loss of him inspired something within Nora. It fired her spirit— the anger and hurt pushing her forward to take control and reach for her dreams.Finally pursuing a career on stage while she put herself through college, everything is how Nora wants it. She’s avoiding heartbreak and concentrating on her goals.Sounds easy but it’s not. Because Aidan is back. And for some reason he hates Nora.He’s determined to be at war with her.And she has absolutely no idea why.

The Boy Next Door


Ella James - 2017
    That’s what he was. Dash Frasier—my hero from the day we met, when I was six and he was nine. His sister was my best friend, the three of us one happy crew. Then one sweaty summer night changed everything. No one understood me like Dash. No one made me feel so loved. That’s why, when he skipped town, it wrecked me.Now I’m older. Wiser. I’ve just snagged my dream job, writing at a film studio. The lead animator on my project? You guessed it.He’s not the boy next door. Not anymore.I’m guarding my heart this time. But Dash has secrets that could break us both.

Jesse


J.A. Huss - 2019
    I fell so hard for this girl I made all the promises. Only with Emma, I really meant them.And then I disappeared.But it wasn’t my fault. Let’s just call my reason “Family Business”. I’d tell you what that business is, but then I’d have to kill you. Just kidding. I can’t tell you what my family business is because it’s so secret, even I don’t know.My point is… I didn’t ghost. It was a weird twist of circumstances. And OK, yes. I did hook up with pretty much every girl on the island that week. But after I met Emma, I was ruined. She was the only one I wanted.It’s been thirteen years. I’m a changed man.I STILL want her. I have ALWAYS wanted her. But it’s kind of hard to tell her that with a gag in my mouth and a hood over my head. Bossy Brothers: Jesse features a bachelor auction gone wrong, four smart ladies who botch a crazy revenge kidnapping, a power dream date with fast cars, private jets, and expensive yachts, and a happily ever after that proves… sometimes the best man for the job is a woman.