She was this close to the Big Apple and everything she’d worked for—art school, a dream job, a life far from small-town Florida—when her aunt died and left her everything. Which sounds like good news until you read the fine print: she has to run the flower shop successfully for a full year before she can sell it. The flower shop currently provides better housing for raccoons than revenue for humans. 🌸
So she’s back in the last place she wanted to be, elbow-deep in a failing business and surrounded by the memories she left behind—including Kade Maverick, the guy who made high school miserable and somehow grew up into someone she can’t quite dismiss the way she used to. He has a scar from a motorcycle accident and a four-year-old niece he’s raising with a tenderness that makes it very inconvenient to keep disliking him. 🌺
He offers to help fix up the store. She says yes, mostly because the raccoons are winning. As the business starts to turn around, they spend more and more time together, and the comfortable distance she’d maintained starts closing faster than she’s prepared for. 💐
The Big Apple is still waiting. The job opportunity hasn’t disappeared entirely. But somewhere between the flower arrangements and the unexpected laughter and a man who turned out to be nothing like the boy she remembered, her carefully planned future starts looking a lot less certain than it did before she came home. 🗽
What makes this sweet: Dineen Miller’s romantic comedy follows an art school graduate forced back to small-town Florida to run her late aunt’s struggling flower shop for a year before selling—when high school bully Kade Maverick shows up changed, scarred, and tenderly raising his four-year-old niece, offering to help save the raccoon-infested store, her carefully planned escape to New York starts competing with something she never expected to find back home.
CeCe Bixby has spent six years rebuilding after her husband abandoned her—focusing on her work as a reporter and being a good mother to her son, keeping her walls high and her heart protected. When her name gets leaked in connection with a dangerously controversial story, small-town Huckleberry Ridge, Idaho feels like the safest place to disappear. Then she meets her new landlord. 🌾
Shane Wickham is a handsome widower carrying guilt so heavy it’s become his whole identity. He played an unintentional role in his wife’s death and has been punishing himself for it ever since, denying himself any possibility of happiness as a kind of permanent penance. He has no business noticing his new tenant. He notices her anyway. 🏡
CeCe is terrified of lowering her guard—not just for herself but for her son, who doesn’t need another person disappearing from their lives without warning. Every instinct she’s developed over six difficult years tells her to keep her distance from a man who makes her feel things she’d successfully stopped feeling. 💙
Shane’s guilt says he doesn’t deserve another chance. CeCe’s fear says she can’t survive another loss. Huckleberry Ridge, meanwhile, has opinions about both of them and very little ability to keep those opinions to itself. Two people with every reason to stay guarded, slowly discovering that the walls protecting them might also be the things keeping them from healing. 🌄
What makes this tender: K.T. Raine’s clean romance follows reporter CeCe Bixby fleeing to Huckleberry Ridge with her son after being dangerously linked to a controversial story, meeting landlord Shane Wickham—a guilt-ridden widower denying himself happiness after his wife’s death—as two people with every reason to stay guarded slowly discover that the walls protecting them from more heartbreak might also be keeping them from the healing only each other can provide.
Eve was aptly named. The first woman accepted into the Asset program. The first to rise to the top. The first to travel back in time, assigned one target: Enoch, one of the oldest vampires in existence. Simple mission—land, stake him, run, jump off something high, warp home, collect the life she’d earned. What could go wrong? 🗡️
Quite a lot, as it turns out. She was supposed to travel back seven days. Instead she lands in England in 1348, directly in the middle of the Black Plague, approximately seven centuries off target. The program did not adequately prepare her for this contingency. ⚔️
Enoch is nothing like she expected. He’s a wealthy landowner who protects his people openly, takes only what blood he needs, and has built something that looks uncomfortably like a community worth protecting. When Eve stumbles to his gate and falls ill with the plague, he nurses her back to health without hesitation—because apparently her target has principles, which complicates everything considerably. 🌹
She’s dangerous. He knows it. She’s also the most intelligent, beautiful, and genuinely fascinating person he’s encountered in centuries of existence, which makes the dangerous part significantly harder to act on. A hunter who was never supposed to feel anything for her prey is starting to feel quite a lot. The mission has gone spectacularly sideways, and neither of them is entirely sure they want it back on track. 💘
What makes this captivating: Casey L. Bond’s time travel fiction follows Eve, the Asset program’s first female time traveler, sent back seven days to stake ancient vampire Enoch—instead landing in plague-ravaged England in 1348 where Enoch nurses her back to health, revealing a principled protector nothing like her target briefing described, as the hunter sent to destroy him finds the mission growing impossibly complicated the more she comes to know the man she was sent to kill.
Petty in Pink
Layla Schmidt has artfully dodged Cupid’s arrows for six years now with impressive agility, keeping things casual with her standing booty call Grant—no romance, no strings, no expectations beyond physical satisfaction. As far as Layla’s concerned, it’s the perfect setup for both of them given her painful track record with commitment and the disasters that followed. 💘
With her painful past involving heartbreak that shaped her current philosophy, the lively teacher wants nothing to do with commitment anymore after learning that lesson the hard way. And Grant Gerwig, dedicated oncologist whose schedule barely allows for sleep, is too busy saving lives for the demands of a real relationship. Truthfully, Grant wants to make the time for more with Layla, but he knows better than to push where she won’t budge—she’s made her boundaries crystal clear from day one. 👨⚕️
Their emotional standstill can’t last forever though, as much as they both pretend otherwise. When a coworker’s wedding brings a blast from Layla’s past walking back into her life—specifically, the ex who shattered her ability to trust—it blows a hole through her future too by forcing her to confront feelings she’s been avoiding. Swirling emotions lead to impulsive decisions made in moments of panic, and after an adrenaline-fueled night where caution gets thrown aside, she finds herself unexpectedly pregnant. 🤰
Layla and Grant have a lot to talk about now that their carefully maintained casual arrangement has been completely upended by biology. And a lot to prepare for beyond just nursery furniture and baby names—like whether they can transition from friends with benefits to actual partners, from avoiding emotions to embracing them. Falling in love was never supposed to be part of their equation when they established this arrangement six years ago, but even the best-laid plans unfold with some surprises along the way. Maybe the thing they’ve been avoiding is exactly what they both needed all along. 👶
What makes this heartwarming: L.J. Shen’s romantic comedy follows teacher Layla Schmidt dodging Cupid’s arrows for six years with standing booty call Grant Gerwig, dedicated oncologist too busy for commitment—when a coworker’s wedding brings a blast from her past, swirling emotions lead to impulsive decisions and unexpected pregnancy, forcing them to talk about transitioning from friends with benefits to actual partners when falling in love was never part of their equation.
Nora, Daisy, and Soraya think their marriages are just fine—not perfect perhaps, but stable enough after years together. Until their husbands prove them spectacularly wrong in ways that shatter their carefully constructed lives. Nora’s husband says he needs distance to “find himself” and flits off to a wellness retreat in Chile. Daisy’s confesses to an affair with someone younger and more exciting. And Soraya’s sends her a pic of that special part of himself—meant for another woman whose name she doesn’t recognize. 💔
At a loss for what to do when their worlds implode simultaneously, they follow their intuition right into Lady’s Mantle Apothecary, a mysterious shop that seems to appear exactly when needed. As they embrace their untapped magic under the guidance of an enigmatic shopkeeper who knows more than she reveals, their fortunes begin changing fast in ways both satisfying and surprising. 🔮
Getting even with their exes through well-placed hexes is deeply satisfying and more effective than therapy, but the real magic happens when they start opening their hearts to new possibilities beyond revenge. Nora discovers that true love might have been right in front of her all along in the form of her childhood best friend who’s seen her through everything. Daisy finds herself falling for her ex-husband’s handsome business partner, a former TV star who sees the real her beneath the suburban mom exterior. And Soraya, who never dated before marriage after a traditional upbringing, experiences an unexpected attraction to the mysterious owner of the game shop across the hall. 💕
With the help of their enigmatic shopkeeper mentor and their growing bond as friends, these three women discover that the best revenge isn’t just about hexes and karma striking exes where it hurts—it’s about finding your own path to love, friendship, and claiming your power that was always there waiting. And that transformation is positively magical, more powerful than any spell they could cast. 🌟
What makes this empowering: Maisey Yates’s divorce fiction follows Nora, Daisy, and Soraya thinking their marriages are fine until husbands prove them wrong—fleeing to Chile wellness retreats, confessing affairs with younger women, sending intimate pics meant for others—following intuition to Lady’s Mantle Apothecary where they embrace untapped magic, discovering the best revenge is finding their own paths to love and claiming power through childhood best friends, ex’s business partners, and game shop owners.
When a mysterious time capsule leads a Toronto history teacher to England on what should be just a research trip, she discovers some loves are worth crossing oceans—and decades—to find, from New York Times bestselling author Hannah Bonam-Young who knows how to craft stories about unexpected connections that feel inevitable in hindsight. 💌
When the history teacher receives a letter from her deceased grandmother revealing a secret love affair in the 1950s that no one in the family knew about, it leads her to investigate a time capsule hidden decades ago in a place that holds the key to understanding her grandmother’s past. The letter is cryptic, romantic, and heartbreaking—filled with references to a man her grandmother loved but couldn’t have, choices made that shaped generations, and regrets carried to the grave. 📜
But it’s the charming grandson of her grandmother’s lost love who changes everything when they meet while she’s researching the time capsule’s location in the English countryside. He’s searching for answers about his own grandfather’s mysterious past, and together they uncover a love story that transcends time and circumstances. As they piece together what happened between their grandparents in post-war England, they begin writing their own story that mirrors and heals the one that came before. ❤️
Their connection is immediate and undeniable despite the absurdity of meeting this way—brought together by grandparents who loved and lost decades ago. Proving that sometimes the heart knows exactly where—and when—it belongs, even if logic says the whole situation is impossibly romantic and slightly ridiculous. The past and present intertwine as they discover that some connections transcend generations, that love stories can have second chances through descendants, and that crossing an ocean to find your person is sometimes exactly what fate requires. Time will tell if they’re brave enough to claim the happiness their grandparents couldn’t have. ✈️
What makes this romantic: Hannah Bonam-Young’s contemporary romance follows a Toronto history teacher receiving a letter from her deceased grandmother revealing a secret 1950s love affair, leading her to England investigating a time capsule—when she meets the charming grandson of her grandmother’s lost love also searching for answers about his grandfather’s mysterious past, they uncover a transcendent love story while writing their own, proving the heart knows exactly where and when it belongs.