10 Uplifting & Heartwarming Romance Books

Sometimes, love finds you when you least expect it…

Having worked for Southern Service Paws for a few years now, I like to think I’m prepared for just about any client meeting under the sun. I am dead wrong.

The day I meet with single dad, Jacob Broaden, about potentially matching his daughter with one of our service dogs, I learn a few valuable lessons.

1) Always set my alarm clock.
2) Single dads are way hotter than I previously thought.
3) It is possible to go from fantasizing about kissing someone to wishing they would be run over by a truck in a matter of two minutes.

Unfortunately, I don’t hold that opinion of him for very long. Not when he shows me a different side of himself—one that’s sweet as maple syrup and hot as apple pie fresh out of the oven. And after a few days of working closely with him and his daughter, he starts looking at me with fire in his eyes, making me dream of something I probably shouldn’t…
A family.

He’s coaching her love life…and losing control of his own.

Jake Evans knows a thing or two about heartbreak. Recently divorced and raising his four-year-old daughter on his own, the cowboy has sworn off women for good. When a job opens up at a dude ranch in his hometown, he comes running, emotional baggage in tow.

An unexpected bonus? Spending the summer with his childhood best friend.

Shelby Tucker was always better at sinking three-pointers than navigating relationships. With a promising new job on the horizon, her life needs a change. She’s determined to stop sitting on the sidelines while life happens all around her.

First thing to tackle? Dating.

But after one too many cringeworthy moments, Shelby turns to the one person she trusts completely. Jake reluctantly agrees to coach Shelby through the dating world, certain his heart is safe where it is. Soon they’re back to their old routines—placing bets, shooting hoops, and putting Jake’s strategies into play.

Except this time, every touch lingers. What once felt safe now feels dangerous. And the line between practice and something real is blurring fast.

When an accident threatens to fracture Jake’s carefully rebuilt life, he’s forced to confront the one truth he’s been avoiding: the woman he’s never allowed himself to date might be the one he can’t live without.

This is the third full-length novel in the Pride and Pranks Series. Each book can be read as a standalone, but you will see character crossovers!

Interior Design School? Check. Cute house to fix up? Check.

Sexy, grumpy neighbor who is going to get in the way of your plans? Check. Unfortunately.

Grace Travis has it all figured out. In between finishing school and working a million odd jobs, she’ll get her degree and her dream job. Most importantly, she’ll have a place to belong, something her harsh mother could never make. When an opportunity to fix up—and live in—a little house on the beach comes along, Grace is all in. Until her biggest roadblock moves in next door.

Noah Jansen knows how to make a deal. As a real estate developer, he knows when he’s found something special. Something he could even call home. Provided he can expand by taking over the house next door–the house with the combative and beautiful woman living in it.

With the rules for being neighborly going out the window, Grace and Noah are in an all-out feud. But sometimes, your nemesis can show you that home is always where the heart is.

True love is on the line in this charming, laugh-out-loud rom-com—created specifically for the audio format!

Paint your toes. Pick up the wrong coffee and bagel order. Drive from Brooklyn to Jersey in traffic so slow you want to tear your hair out. It’s amazing all the useless things I can accomplish while on hold for three hours with customer service. Three hours when I should be getting the Date-in-a-Box website ready to launch at the big business expo in a few days. Except my shiny new website is glitching, and my inner rage-monster is ready to scorch some earth… when he finally picks up. Not the robot voice I expected, but a real, live human named Cal. He’s surprisingly helpful and really knows his stuff, even if he’s a little awkward…. in an adorable way.

And suddenly I’m flirting with him? And I think he’s flirting back.
And suddenly it’s been hours, and we’re still on the phone talking and ordering each other takeout while he troubleshoots my website.
And suddenly we’re exchanging numbers and sending texts and DMs every day, leaving voice mails (who even does that anymore?!).
And suddenly I’m wondering if it’s possible for two people fall in love at first talk.

Because I’m falling… hard.

Laura’s business trip to the Channel Islands isn’t exactly off to a great start. After unceremoniously dumping everything in her bag in front of the most attractive man she’s ever seen in real life, she arrives at her hotel only to realize she’s grabbed the wrong suitcase from the airport. Her only consolation? The irresistibly appealing contents of the case: a copy of her favorite book; piano music; and a rugged, heavy-knit fisherman sweater only a Ryan Gosling lookalike could pull off. The owner of this suitcase is Laura’s dream man–she’s sure of it. Now, all she has to do is find him.

The mix-up seems written in the stars. After all, what are the odds that she’d find The One on the same remote island where her mom and dad had first fallen in love, especially as she sets out to write an article about their epic romance? Commissioning surly cab driver Ted to ferry her around seems like her best bet in both tracking down the mystery suitcase owner and retracing her parents’ footsteps. And if beneath Ted’s gruffness lies a wit that makes their cab rides strangely entertaining, so much the better. But as Laura’s long-lost luggage soulmate proves difficult to find–and as she realizes that the love story she’s held on a pedestal all her life might not have been that perfect–she’ll have to rethink her whole outlook on love to discover what she really wants.

The smuggest and grouchiest firefighter in Huckleberry Hill hates exactly one person. Me.

Our offices face each other across the hall, which means I get a front-row seat to Patton Cross pretending I don’t exist.
He scowls. I sparkle. We’re a disaster waiting to happen—and now we’re stuck planning the Fireman’s Ball together.

Suddenly, he’s remembering my coffee order. Saying please. Getting close enough that I can smell woodsmoke—and trouble.

Then a blizzard hits and we’re snowed in. The tension we’ve been fighting ignites into something that could melt ice.

But we both have a secret and when the truth comes out, I’m left wondering if the man who finally made me feel seen was fighting the flames … or just playing with fire.

At sixteen, Emmie Blue stood in the fields of her school and released a red balloon into the sky. Attached was her name, her email address… and a secret she desperately wanted to be free of. Weeks later, on a beach in France, Lucas Moreau discovered the balloon and immediately emailed the attached address, sparking an intense friendship between the two teens.

Now, fourteen years later, Emmie is hiding the fact that she’s desperately in love with Lucas. She has pinned all her hopes on him and waits patiently for him to finally admit that she’s the one for him. So dedicated to her love for Lucas, Emmie has all but neglected her life outside of this relationship—she’s given up the search for her absentee father, no longer tries to build bridges with her distant mother, and lives as a lodger to an old lady she barely knows after being laid off. And when Lucas tells Emmie he has a big question to ask her, she’s convinced this is the moment he’ll reveal his feelings for her. But nothing in life ever quite goes as planned, does it?

In this resplendent debut novel, a beautiful love story unfolds for tenderhearted Gracie Harris—a mom of two and recent widow—as she navigates the unexpected curveballs that adulthood throws and takes her second chance to find love.

Gracie Harris never intended to become the queen of grief. But when an essay she writes the night of her husband Ben’s memorial goes viral, she lands a popular column on love and loss and an impressive book deal.

Now, the biggest tragedy of her life is the center of her world. With a looming book deadline and her kids at summer camp, Gracie escapes for a summer of solitude to the ramshackle mountain house she and Ben bought for their family before his death. When charming contractor Josh arrives on her doorstep to help renovate the home, Gracie discovers an unexpected connection that is energizing . . . and surprisingly flirtatious.

As her feelings and resilience grow, Gracie must decide whether she’s ready to embrace a new version of her life. Gracie’s first Happily Ever After didn’t last as long as she’d expected. Now she has to wonder: Could Josh be her chance for a second great love story?

From the beloved author of Four Weekends and a Funeral, a nostalgic, heartwarming romance about a Type-A woman who road trips through the Minnesotan woods with her non-committal childhood best friend . . . only for their long-suppressed sparks to burn like wildfire.

Twenty-nine-year-old Charley Beekman is thriving. Is she financially strapped, languishing in her legal career, and very likely the youngest divorcee at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse on a Friday night? Yes. But now that she’s accepted the inherent flaws that lie in all romantic relationships, she finally has life all figured out! She’s definitely due for an upswing.

So when her free-spirited sister announces her plan to elope with her messy on-again-off-again childhood sweetheart, Charley knows she has to stop the wedding, even if it means road-tripping into the northern woods of Minnesota in a camper van with her childhood best friend, Ethan, who’s as gorgeous as he is chronically unreliable.

But when their cozy journey ignites a spark she’s tried to ignore for years, Charley tries to write off her feelings as fleeting. Because after failing at marriage so spectacularly with the most responsible man she’s ever known, Charley definitely shouldn’t risk it all for her non-committal, nomadic, musician best friend . . . right?

When a spate of bad luck upends her life, Eliza moves to a charming—and mysterious—Midwestern lake town, where she just might find herself while trying to find the truth.

Eliza has always had a plan—until her meticulously plotted life implodes, and her engagement falls apart. At thirty-two, she suddenly finds herself second-guessing the picture-perfect future she’d always envisioned, one that included raising 2.5 children near her tight-knit Italian family in San Francisco.

Then she is offered the chance to start over in Juneberry Lake, a small Midwestern town eager to lure remote workers to their picturesque community. Shocking everyone, including herself, she packs up her apartment and buys a lake house sight unseen.

Juneberry Lake is as delightful as it looked in the pictures. And the pictures didn’t even include Joel, a fellow new arrival who works alongside her every day in an adorable coffee shop. But if Eliza is hoping to spy her uncertain future in the shimmering waters of Juneberry Lake, she’ll find herself out of luck. Because her friendly Midwestern neighbors are keeping a marvelous secret—one that will help Eliza see that her recent spate of bad luck was never her fault…and that the tide can turn when you least expect it.