Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Best Romance of 2018

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day!  Here are 10 of the highest rated romance novels from 2018.

All Your Perfects by Colleen Hoover - Quinn and Graham's perfect love is threatened by their imperfect marriage. The memories, mistakes, and secrets that they have built up over the years are now tearing them apart. The one thing that could save them might also be the very thing that pushes their marriage beyond the point of repair. All Your Perfects is a profound novel about a damaged couple whose potential future hinges on promises made in the past. This is a heartbreaking page-turner that asks: Can a resounding love with a perfect beginning survive a lifetime between two imperfect people?

Alphas Like Us by Krista Ritchie - Maverick, know-it-all bodyguard Farrow Keene knows publicly dating American royalty comes with a great cost. Everyone wants a piece of their relationship. And as a protective boyfriend, he’s not here for the malicious hands that grab at their love life and seek to rip them apart.
But Farrow is confident — he’s confident that he could’ve never prepared for the storm to come.
Maximoff Hale isn’t a big fan of change. And to regain the charity CEO position he lost, he agrees to a task that he’s always rejected. One that could uproot his unconventional world.
But Maximoff is afraid — he’s afraid of the consequences that could destroy his boyfriend and his family.
Changes are on the horizon. Big. Messy. Complicated. Changes.

Birthday Girl by Penelope Douglas - He took me in when I had nowhere else to go. He doesn't use me, hurt me, or forget about me. He doesn't treat me like I'm nothing, take me for granted, or make me feel unsafe. He remembers me, laughs with me, and looks at me. He listens to me, protects me, and sees me. I can feel his eyes on me over the breakfast table, and my heart pumps so hard when I hear him pull in the driveway after work. I have to stop this. It can't happen. My sister once told me there are no good men, and if you find one, he's probably unavailable. Only Pike Lawson isn't the unavailable one. I am.
I took her in, because I thought I was helping. She'd cook a few meals and clean up a little. It was an easy arrangement. As the days go by, though, it's becoming anything but easy. I have to stop my mind from drifting to her and stop holding my breath every time I bump into her in the house. I can't touch her, and I shouldn't want to. The more I find my path crossing hers, though, the more she's becoming a part of me. But we're not free to give into this. She's nineteen, and I'm thirty-eight. And her boyfriend's father.  Unfortunately, they both just moved into my house.

From Lukov With Love by Mariana Zapata - If someone were to ask Jasmine Santos to describe the last few years of her life with a single word, it would definitely be a four-letter one.
After seventeen years—and countless broken bones and broken promises—she knows her window to compete in figure skating is coming to a close.
But when the offer of a lifetime comes in from an arrogant idiot she’s spent the last decade dreaming about pushing in the way of a moving bus, Jasmine might have to reconsider everything.
Including Ivan Lukov.

The Hookup by Kristen Ashley - When the new girl in town, Eliza "Izzy" Forrester decides to hit the local drinking hole, she's not ready to meet the town's good, solid guy. She's definitely not prepared to engage in her very first hookup with him. Then Izzy wakes up the next morning in Johnny Gamble's bed and good girl Izzy finds she likes being bad for Johnny. Even so, Izzy feels Johnny holding her at arm's length. But Johnny makes it clear he wants more and Izzy already knows she wants as much of hot-in-bed, sweet-out-of-it Johnny Gamble. Floating on air thinking this is going somewhere, Izzy quickly learns why Johnny holds distant. He's in love with someone else.

Love in Catalina Cove by Brenda Jackson - In the wake of a devastating teen pregnancy that left her childless and heartbroken, Vashti Alcindor left Catalina Cove, Louisiana, with no plans to return. Now, over a decade later, Vashti reluctantly finds herself back in her hometown after inheriting her aunt's B and B. Her homecoming gets off to a rocky start when the new sheriff, Sawyer Grisham, pulls her over for speeding, and things go downhill from there. The B and B, a place she'd always found refuge in when it seemed like the whole world was against her, has fallen into disrepair. When a surprising benefactor encourages Vashti to reopen the B and B, Vashti embraces a fresh start, and soon old hurts begin to fade as she makes new memories with the town--and its handsome sheriff. But some pasts are too big to escape, and when a bombshell of a secret changes everything she thought was true, Vashti is left reeling. With Sawyer and his teenage daughter determined to see her through the storm, though, she's learning family isn't always a matter of blood--sometimes it's a matter of heart.

Robbie by Ella Frank - Relationships are complex. Love ever-changing. And when it comes to rules of the heart, they were made to be broken…
That’s what Robert Antonio Bianchi was telling himself, anyway.  Otherwise, he really had no excuse for what—or who—he’d done.  No excuse, except for his lonely heart, a pitcher of margaritas, four Bitter Bitches, and the apparent need to confess all his weaknesses to the two men he knew would bring him nothing but trouble.
But trouble was nothing new. 
Just ask his crazy sisters or any of his friends, and they’d be the first to tell you: If there was a bad decision to be made, Robbie always had a knack for making it. 
And thus begins the story of the priest, the princess, and the prick.

Sex, Not Love by Vi Keeland - My relationship with Hunter Delucia started backwards.  We met at a wedding—him sitting on the groom’s side, me sitting on the bride’s. Stealing glances at each other throughout the night, there was no denying an intense, mutual attraction. I caught the bouquet; he caught the garter. Hunter held me tightly while we danced and suggested we explore the chemistry sparking between us. His blunt, dirty mouth should’ve turned me off. But for some crazy reason, it had the opposite effect on me. We ended up back in my hotel room. The next morning, I headed home to New York leaving him behind in California with the wrong number.
I thought about him often, but after my last relationship, I’d sworn off of charming, cocky, gorgeous-as-sin men. A year later, Hunter and I met again at the birth of our friends’ baby. Our attraction hadn't dulled one bit. After a whirlwind trip, he demanded a real phone number this time. So I left him with my mother’s—she could scare away any man with her talks of babies and marriage—and flew back home.
I’d thought it was funny, until the following week when he rang the bell at Mom’s house for Sunday night dinner. The crazy, gorgeous man had won over my mother and taken an eight-week assignment in my city. He proposed we spend that time screwing each other out of our systems. 
Eight weeks of mind-blowing sex with no strings attached? What did I have to lose?

The Simple Wild by K. A. Tucker - Calla Fletcher was two when her mother took her and fled the Alaskan wild, unable to handle the isolation of the extreme, rural lifestyle, leaving behind Calla's father, Wren Fletcher, in the process. Calla never looked back, and at twenty-six, a busy life in Toronto is all she knows. But when her father reaches out to inform her that his days are numbered, Calla knows that it's time to make the long trip back to the remote frontier town where she was born.
She braves the roaming wildlife, the odd daylight hours, the exorbitant prices, and even the occasional--dear God--outhouse, all for the chance to connect with her father: a man who, despite his many faults, she can't help but care for. While she struggles to adjust to this new subarctic environment, Jonah--the quiet, brooding, and proud Alaskan pilot who keeps her father's charter plane company operational--can't imagine calling anywhere else home. And he's clearly waiting with one hand on the throttle to fly this city girl back to where she belongs, convinced that she's too pampered to handle the wild.
Jonah is probably right, but Calla is determined to prove him wrong. As time passes, she unexpectedly finds herself forming a bond with the burly pilot. As his undercurrent of disapproval dwindles, it's replaced by friendship--or perhaps something deeper? But Calla is not in Alaska to stay and Jonah will never leave. It would be foolish of her to kindle a romance, to take the same path her parents tried--and failed at--years ago.

The Smallest Part by Amy Harmon - It was a big lie. The biggest lie she’d ever told. It reverberated through her head as she said it, ringing eerily, and the girl behind her eyes—the girl who knew the truth—screamed, and her scream echoed along with the lie. 
“Are you in love with Noah, Mercedes?” Cora asked. “I mean . . . I know you love him. You’ve been friends forever. We all have. But are you in love with him?” 
If it had been anyone else—anyone—Mercedes would have stuck out her chest, folded her skinny arms, and let her feelings be known. She would have claimed him. But it was Cora. Brave, beautiful, broken Cora, and Cora loved Noah too. 
So Mercedes lied. 
And with that lie, she lost him. With that lie, she sealed her fate.
She was the best friend, the bridesmaid, the godmother, the glue. She was there for the good times and the bad, the ups and the downs, the biggest moments and the smallest parts. And she was there when it all came crashing down. 
This is the tale of the girl who didn’t get the guy. 

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