I fell for the boy next door when we were teenagers—that all-consuming first love that makes you believe in forever. And then my father ripped it all away from us with one cruel ultimatum, one devastating choice that shattered both our hearts and sent us on completely different paths. I left town. He stayed. And we never spoke again. 💔
The first person to catch my eye in a long time—years of avoiding romantic entanglements, actually—is a colleague who tells me what we just did over his desk during a late night at the office will never happen again. He’s clear about it. Professional. Final. Except the chemistry between us suggests this is absolutely not over, no matter what he says out loud. 🔥
And then my mother calls with news from back home—news that requires me to return to the small town my father forced me to leave seven years ago. I have to head back knowing with absolute certainty that the boy I still love, the one who’s haunted every relationship I’ve tried to have since, will show up too for the same family obligation. It’s unavoidable. It’s terrifying. It’s been seven years but it feels like yesterday. 🏡
When I finally see him again, it’s crystal clear we have unfinished business—the kind that’s been festering for years, the conversations we never had, the goodbye that was stolen from us, the what-ifs that have poisoned every relationship since. But it doesn’t matter what we feel or what we never said. His life is in the Vegas spotlight now, where he plays professional football for the Aces and goes home every night to his wife and the picture-perfect life I used to dream about having with him. He moved on. I’m supposed to have moved on. ⚡
My life is in Chicago now, where I’ve built a successful career and embark on a torrid affair with my colleague that’s definitely violating workplace policies and probably destroying our professional relationship. It’s messy and complicated and everything I swore I wouldn’t do. But it’s easier than dealing with the unresolved feelings from seven years ago that are currently standing in my childhood home looking at me like no time has passed at all. 💼
And then two little pink lines show up on a pregnancy test with the power to change absolutely everything. The first time I saw those lines years ago, my world imploded—my father’s ultimatum, the choice I was forced to make, the future that was stolen before it began. 👶
This time will be different. It has to be. But different how? When the father could be either the football star with the wife or the colleague who said this would never happen again? When going home has reopened every wound I spent seven years trying to heal? When every choice I make now will affect not just me but the life growing inside me? ⭐
What makes this compelling: Lisa Suzanne delivers an angsty sports romance exploring second chances, complicated paternity, and a woman caught between her past and present—perfect for readers who love emotional football romances with high stakes and even higher drama.
Journalist Sadie is home for the first time in fifteen years, staying in her small childhood bedroom that feels even tinier now as she deals with her estranged father’s death and the surprising inheritance he left behind. She never expected to be back in this town, never wanted to confront the memories she’s spent over a decade avoiding, and certainly never planned to face the complicated feelings about a father she barely knew. But death has a way of forcing confrontations you’re not ready for. 📰
When Sadie meets Rebecca, the reclusive new owner of the solitary cottage at the edge of nearby Whisper Lake, she’s taken aback by the older woman’s intensity and the unexpected request that comes out of nowhere: “I need to find my family. Will you help me?” It’s said with such urgency, such desperate hope, that Sadie can’t quite dismiss it. She’s even more surprised when afterwards, Rebecca acts as if she never made the plea at all, as if the conversation never happened, leaving Sadie questioning whether she imagined the whole encounter. 🏡
Reluctantly, driven by journalistic curiosity and something deeper she can’t quite name, Sadie is drawn in to the mystery surrounding Rebecca. With the help of Dan, Rebecca’s handsome neighbor who’s protective of the older woman but clearly concerned about her increasingly strange behavior, Sadie begins to uncover the woman’s haunting secret. The investigation leads them to discover the tragic story of when a young girl called Becky lived in another cottage nearby decades ago—a story involving loss so profound it never truly healed, wounds that have festered for half a century. 🔍
As Sadie digs deeper—interviewing old-timers who remember the tragedy, searching through newspaper archives from the 1970s, piecing together a heartbreaking puzzle—she starts seeing uncomfortable parallels between Rebecca’s story and her own. Both women lost something irreplaceable. Both ran from their pasts. Both built walls so high they forgot what connection felt like. The more she helps Rebecca face her ghosts, the more Sadie realizes she’s been avoiding her own for fifteen years. 💔
By helping Rebecca confront the past and find the family she lost, could it be time for Sadie to face the trauma in her own history—the reasons she left, the father she couldn’t forgive, the home she swore she’d never return to? As the time to leave Temple River draws close, as her assignment here technically ends, will she learn the importance of family and love and the grace of forgiveness? Or will she keep choosing to protect her heart no matter the cost, even if it means spending the rest of her life running from the only place that ever felt like home? ✨
And what about Dan, who’s been beside her through every revelation, whose steady presence makes her feel less alone than she has in years? Can she risk staying for him, for Rebecca, for herself? Or will fear win again? 🌟
Why this resonates: Phillipa Nefri Clark delivers an emotional women’s fiction romance about facing buried trauma, the healing power of helping others, and learning that sometimes going home is the only way to move forward—perfect for readers who love small-town settings, family secrets, and second chances at belonging.
A trip back to the small Indiana town of Riverbend to finalize my grandmother’s last will and testament throws my world completely off its axis. I wasn’t prepared to learn the stipulations of her will—that inheritance comes with strings attached, conditions I never saw coming. Or that she’d left her beloved mercantile Quintessential Treasures to Kandace Sheers, my college summertime love, the girl I let slip away because I was too focused on my Chicago career to fight for what we had. 💔
Imagine my greater surprise when I learn about the secret that’s been roaming Riverbend for the last five years, a secret nobody bothered to mention in any phone call or email. Here are a couple of hints: She’s five years old. She has her mother’s silky auburn hair and unmistakably my golden eyes. She calls Kandace “Mommy” and has no idea who I am. 👧
The answer is devastatingly simple once you do the math: I have a daughter. A daughter I knew nothing about. A daughter who’s been growing up without me while I’ve been building a life in Chicago that suddenly feels hollow and meaningless compared to what I’ve missed. Five years of first words, first steps, birthdays, bedtime stories—all gone, all happened without me because Kandace never told me and I never came back to check. 😱
The reasonable thing to do? I take responsibility for the girl, establish some kind of custody arrangement, maybe set up child support, and go back to Chicago where my life and career await. It’s clean. It’s logical. It’s what any rational person would do when they discover they’ve accidentally been a deadbeat dad for five years. 🏙️
It turns out, Grandma had other plans because life’s never that simple, especially not when your grandmother’s will specifically requires you to spend six months in Riverbend working at the mercantile alongside the woman you never stopped thinking about and the daughter you never knew existed. Six months of forced proximity. Six months of getting to know a child who should have always been part of my life. Six months of working side by side with Kandace, who’s somehow even more beautiful than I remember and significantly more angry about my sudden reappearance. Can’t imagine why. ⏰
As I settle into small-town life that I thought I’d outgrown, as I fumble through learning how to be a dad to a five-year-old who’s suspicious of this strange man who keeps showing up, as I work alongside Kandace organizing inventory and helping customers at Quintessential Treasures, something shifts. Maybe Chicago isn’t where I’m supposed to be. Maybe success isn’t just about career advancement and corner offices. Maybe the life I’m supposed to be living is right here in Riverbend, in this cluttered mercantile full of treasures, with the girl who got away and the daughter I’m desperately trying not to let down. 🏪
But can Kandace forgive me for not being there? Can my daughter learn to trust me when I’ve been absent her entire life? And can I prove that I’m not just here because Grandma’s will requires it, but because this is where I actually belong? ✨
Have you been Aleatha’d? Aleatha Romig delivers an emotional secret baby romance about second chances, small-town redemption, and a man learning that the best inheritance isn’t property—it’s family you didn’t know you were missing.
Good Girl (The Siren Island Series Book 1)
When Samantha books a last-minute trip to Siren Island, it’s because she has finally hit a wall. Worn-out from playing corporate games, defeated by yet another relationship that went nowhere, and dead tired of pretending everything’s fine when it’s definitely not—Samantha is ready to run away from it all. Her whole life has been spent playing by the rules society set for her, and for what? An empty apartment that echoes her loneliness, a career with no upward movement despite years of dedication, and one failed relationship after another with men who wanted her to be someone she’s not. 😞
When it all blows up in her face during one particularly terrible week, what’s a rule-following good girl to do but take a completely out-of-character last-minute trip to the ridiculously named Laughing Mermaid Bed & Breakfast on an unknown speck of an island in the Caribbean? Maybe a little tropical sun will help her figure out what she actually wants from life instead of what everyone else expects. 🌴
Lucas is no stranger to burn-out himself. He landed on Siren Island seeking solace from his own troubled past, running from memories and mistakes that haunt him. What he didn’t expect was to find that his mysterious neighbors at the quirky Laughing Mermaid bed & breakfast would show him there’s more to this world than he ever could have believed—magic hiding in plain sight, possibilities he’d dismissed as fantasy, and a community that accepts people exactly as they are. 🌊
When Samantha arrives as their guest—depleted, wound tighter than a spring, and desperately needing respite from her structured life—Lucas can’t help but feel like he could be exactly the man she needs, even if he’s still figuring out who that man is. Irresistibly drawn to her uptight demeanor and the vulnerability hiding beneath her perfect facade, Lucas is determined to unwind Samantha and show her that life on Siren Island could be the answer to all her problems. But can a good girl who’s never broken a rule in her life trust a man who’s running from his past? And will the island’s magic be enough to heal them both? ✨
Why this deserves your attention: Tricia O’Malley launches the Siren Island series with enchanting romance, island magic, and a stressed-out heroine discovering that sometimes the best thing you can do is throw away the rulebook entirely.
It was supposed to be a simple favor for my very important boss, Frank Kaminsky of the Salt Lake Slammers professional basketball team—go to his good friend Tex Jameson’s luxury ranch in the middle of nowhere and provide personal medical care for his recently injured teenage son. Easy assignment, get paid well, maybe ride a horse for the first time. I thought it’d be a working vacation of sorts, a chance for my city-girl self to experience something I would never otherwise do, complete with Instagram-worthy sunsets and cowboy boots I’d never actually wear again. 🏥
But everything is upside down from the moment I arrive, and absolutely nothing is as I thought it would be.
For one, this patient is definitely not a teenage boy. Not. Even. Close. 🤠
He’s a real-life, blue-eyed, tough-as-nails, thirtysomething cowboy named Grady who is so ridiculously strong he looks like he could lift a car just for the heck of it. Muscles on muscles, permanent scowl, and an attitude that makes it crystal clear he doesn’t want a “city doctor” anywhere near him or his ranch. He’s also stubborn beyond belief, rude in ways that should not be attractive but somehow are, and we don’t get along at all from the first moment we meet. Our arguments could probably be heard in the next county. 💢
Add in the heart-melting vision of him as a single dad to the cutest little girl on the planet—a tiny tornado named Birdie who wraps me around her finger in approximately five minutes—and I’ve found myself in a whole different dimension of trouble. Because watching this grumpy, impossible man soften when he braids his daughter’s hair or reads her bedtime stories is doing dangerous things to my heart. 👨👧
The more time I spend on this ranch, the more I realize Grady’s grumpiness is armor protecting a man who’s been hurt, who’s raising his daughter alone while running a massive operation, who doesn’t trust easily but loves fiercely. And suddenly my temporary assignment is feeling less temporary and more like the beginning of something I’m not sure I’m brave enough to want. 💕
What makes this irresistible: Max Monroe delivers grumpy-sunshine cowboy romance with a single dad who’s determined not to fall for the city doctor—until his heart and his daughter conspire against him in the most delightful way.
She’s the love of my life…and I’ll do anything to win her back.
ISABELLA LAWSON is the happiest she’s ever been, simply because ALEXANDER WALKER loves her. With him by her side, Bella begins to understand her worth for the first time—she’s not too much, not too demanding, not fundamentally unlovable like past relationships made her believe. Xander sees her, really sees her, and that changes everything about how she moves through the world. The only problem? Not everyone wants to see Bella thriving in Xander’s life, and some people will do absolutely anything to tear them apart. 💕
Schemes orchestrated by jealous exes, calculated betrayals by people they thought were friends, and secrets deliberately weaponized at the worst possible moment lead to the shattering of two hearts that seemed unbreakable. The pain is so overwhelming that Bella’s best option—maybe her only option for self-preservation—is to leave Boston entirely and focus on herself for a change instead of picking up pieces of another broken relationship. She puts strict rules in place to keep from getting hurt again, building walls higher than she ever has before. 💔
When she returns to Boston months later, she’s stronger, more self-assured, and determined not to let anyone—especially not Xander—dismantle the progress she’s made. She’s rebuilt herself from the ground up, and she’s not going back to being that girl who lost herself in someone else.
Xander’s love for Bella has never wavered for even a moment, despite how painful it was to be cut out of her life so easily, to lose her without even getting a chance to explain or fight for what they had. He understood why she ran, even respected her need for space, but that doesn’t mean he accepted it as permanent. When Bella returns to Boston, Xander’s committed to convincing her they’re the perfect match, to change the rules she set for herself that keep him firmly in her past. 🏈
Rekindling their passion is tempting—dangerously tempting—but will succumbing to their desires only cause more pain when the same problems resurface? And will the person lurking in the shadows, the one who destroyed them the first time, succeed in destroying them for good? ⚡
What makes this a must-read: Anastasija White delivers an emotional second-chance sports romance about a hockey player determined to prove he’s learned from his mistakes and a woman learning that sometimes the best rules are made to be broken.
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