Literary agent Nora is the cold city professional that small-town romance novels leave behind, and editor Charlie is her sharp-tongued rival in the same business. When her sister drags her to a North Carolina town for the summer, Charlie turns out to be there too, and their sparring slowly becomes something neither expected.
Hannah Bellinger takes a film job in the fishing town of Westport and moves in with Fox Thornton, the handsome, easy-going local everyone expects to stay single forever. As roommates they slip from friendship into something deeper, and Fox must decide whether he is brave enough to be loved.
In Edwardian England, Robin Blyth is handed a dull government post and finds it is a cover for liaising with a hidden world of magic. His prickly counterpart Edwin Courcey blames him for a curse that puts them both in danger, and the two must work together before their time runs out.
Casey Hicks, a cheerful young hockey star who talks to everyone, shares a house with Landon Stackhouse, the quiet, prickly backup goalie newly called up to the Calgary team. A season of games, small routines and slow trust turns the unlikely roommates into something neither of them expected.
Romance writer January and literary novelist Gus become summer neighbours in a lakeside town, both blocked and both skeptical of each other's genre. They make a bet to write in the other's style and slowly trade barbs for late-night talks, discovering the grief and hope behind their different worldviews.
Single mother April Parker plans to sell her house now that her daughter is leaving for college. Her friend Mitch Malone agrees to help with repairs if she will pretend to be his girlfriend at a family dinner. The favour turns into a weekend away, where one hotel bed forces both to admit what they have been avoiding.
Naomi arrives in the small town of Knockemout to help her estranged twin, who promptly robs her and leaves her stranded with the young niece she never knew she had. With no car, job, or home, she turns for help to Knox, the town's grumpy, bearded barber, who claims he wants nothing to do with anyone but keeps turning up as she starts over.
Toronto city girl Calla flies to remote Alaska to see the father she has not seen since her mother took her away as a toddler. There she clashes with Jonah, the proud bush pilot who flies for her father's charter company and thinks she does not belong. Weeks in the unforgiving landscape slowly wear down both their defences.
Glenna Dobbs is already the town pariah after taking the blame for her father's exposé of the local sheriff. When the backlash turns threatening, Cash Wall—the loud, cheerful man who bullied her in school—offers to be her fake boyfriend, and Glenna has to survive the arrangement with the town's most popular man and his stubborn, gentle heart.
Daphne Pembroke needs help to free her kidnapped brother, so she hires Rupert Carsington, a strong, reckless nobleman with more charm than sense. Their search for him and a stolen papyrus takes them up the Nile, where tomb robbers, the desert and their growing feelings prove equally dangerous.
Anne Rollins is deep in debt when Mal Ericson, the wild drummer of the band Stage Dive, offers her money to pose as his girlfriend and repair his party-boy image. A cheerful man with no filter, Mal turns the arrangement real long before Anne is ready for it.
Win Hathaway has loved Kev Merripen, the brooding Romany boy taken in by her family, since childhood, and has spent years recovering from illness for his sake. Kev believes he is too dangerous to deserve her, and keeps his distance even as she decides to make him hers.
At ten, Miranda Cheever was told she had no great beauty to look forward to. At twenty, she is still quietly in love with Nigel Bevelstoke, the viscount who once comforted her and who now believes he is done with love. Her diary records a patient hope that he might finally see her as a woman.
Reginald Davenport, a notorious gambler and heavy drinker, has spent years waiting to inherit an earldom, only to see the title go to another man. He is offered Strickland, the Dorset estate where he grew up, and there finds Alys Weston running the property as its steward - a woman who has let the absentee owner assume she is a man in order to keep the post. As Reggie confronts his addiction, their working partnership deepens into friendship and then love.
Penelope Featherington has watched Colin Bridgerton from the edge of every ballroom for years, certain he will never see her as more than his sister's friend. When Colin returns to London, their long acquaintance begins to change, and the secret behind the ton's anonymous gossip sheet threatens to upend them both.
After a bad breakup and a lost job, Maddie Moore inherits a third of a rundown inn in Lucky Harbor, Washington. She and her two half-sisters plan to repair it, and the town's contractor, Jax Cullen, keeps finding reasons to help. Maddie wants a fresh start, not another man, but Lucky Harbor has other ideas.
After a traumatic loss, Bree Prescott rents a cabin in Pelion, Maine, hoping to disappear. There she meets Archer Hale, a young man who cannot speak and lives apart from the town. As they grow close, the town's old secrets and Archer's isolation threaten the life they begin to build.
After a Hollywood party scandal, Piper is cut off and sent to a rainy Washington fishing town to run her late father's bar. The town's grumpy sea captain wants her gone, but the summer pushes the socialite and the fisherman into an uneasy partnership that softens into more.
Valentine Napier, Duke of Montgomery, returns from exile to his London house, where his housekeeper Bridget Crumb is secretly searching for letters he uses to blackmail her mother. Valentine is vain, amoral and dangerous, yet Bridget refuses to be cowed. Their contest of wills becomes a slow, intense attraction.
Ruthie Midona runs a retirement village and keeps her life small until the owner's tattooed, easy-going son, Teddy Prescott, is installed in an on-site cottage and made assistant to two eccentric residents. Teddy has no plan and no filter, but his warmth slowly coaxes Ruthie out of the careful shell she built around herself.
Clara leaves her buttoned-up East Coast life to move across the country to the man of her dreams, only to find he has sublet her room to someone else. Sharing the apartment with easygoing Josh, whose job would scandalise her family, forces an uneasy friendship that slowly becomes more.
Patroclus, a prince in disgrace, is sent to train under Achilles, the golden boy destined for glory. Their friendship deepens into love as the Trojan War calls them both toward a fate only one of them will regret.
Minerva Highwood, a bluestocking, needs to reach Scotland to present her geological discovery. The rake Lord Payne agrees to escort her, and they pose as eloping lovers to travel unnoticed. Four hundred miles of mishaps in a cramped carriage, and each night there is only one bed, turn their bickering into something neither expected.
After a riding accident ends her barrel-racing career, Emmy Ryder returns to her family's Wyoming ranch, the hometown she once fled. Luke Brooks, her older brother's best friend and the town's favorite bad boy, is suddenly everywhere. Neither wants to risk the family they share, but staying away proves impossible.
Start with “Book Lovers”, “Hook, Line, and Sinker”, “A Marvellous Light”: they are the closest to “Simple Jess” in tropes and mood. Under each book in the list you will see what exactly it has in common.
How are similar books chosen?
We compare tropes (for “Simple Jess” these are Himbo, Small Town Romance, Forced Proximity), genre, plot, era and tone. It is not “readers also bought”; it is similarity in the content itself.
Are there recent books in this list?
Yes. Among the newer ones are “Book Lovers”, “Hook, Line, and Sinker”, “A Marvellous Light”. Switch the “Modern” filter to keep only books from 2000 onward.
