100 books like Sunkissed

This beachside romance features a female entrepreneur who started her business at a young age, which I related to immediately, having started self-publishing books as a freshman in college.

She’s a go-getter with a knack for business and fights for her passions despite the people in her life telling her she shouldn’t. I adored the enemies-to-lovers romance between Cooper and Mac, as well as the message that not everyone is what they initially seem. 

This was one of the first romance novels I’d ever read—ironically while I was on vacation—and for that reason alone, it will always hold a special place in my heart.

It’s a compelling summer romance about young love with undertones of social issues, and it highlights the challenges of making difficult decisions at a young age. The main character can either choose to support her family or fight to be with the boy-next-door despite her mother’s disapproval and pressures to uphold the family image.

I personally love books where the characters fight against the status quo, and this book absolutely delivered.

This book is all about second chances and restructuring the foundation of what was once a beautiful friendship into so much more.

The plotline and the characters tugged on my heartstrings like no other, and I loved the development from their childhood into adulthood. I’m also an absolute sucker for emotional scars, and this book delivered in every sense of the trope.

This forced proximity, opposites attract romance has always been a favorite of mine.

I read it when I was in high school, and it’s one that I always come back to. It’s the kind of book that inspired me to start writing and made me want to continue to write romance. The plotline will leave you smiling at the pages throughout the characters' banter and strengthening relationship with the kids they’re forced to babysit for a summer job.

A great beach-read story about a father who keeps trying to marry off his daughter.

Ella is spunky, with a mind of her own, and determined to find her own husband. She posts an ad of her own looking for a perfect lover, not a husband. What she gets is a bad boy who has lots of experience but is running from his past. The man is hot and utterly perfect. When these two get together, the sparks ignite!

It’s witty, funny, and a great read. I loved it!

In 1950s Sewanee, Chang and Katherine slowly fall in love and find that the Souths of Korea and Tennessee are not that different after all, both subject to lingering issues of class, family, race, and civil war. I love the poetic language in this novel, as well as its ambitious story and the complexity invested in every relation.

As a longtime fan of Jane Austen, this modern retelling of Sense and Sensibility is the epitome of romance for me, containing all the feels. There is a beautiful sense of longing, as Elaina attempts to be the voice of reason in her highly emotion-driven family while struggling between her natural caution and a yearning attraction for Ted Farris. It’s the sense of emotional constraint that makes this romance so powerful to me, as Elaina’s qualities of reticence seem rare these days. If you want an inspiring, sweet romance with a hint of Jane Austen, then this is a great book to check out.

I had a great deal of respect for this author from reading her Psychology Today columns. Sophia Dembling is an introvert and from her research and personal experience knows that relationships between different personality types can be challenging to say the least. 

She takes us through all aspects of the dating process and doesn’t slam extroverts. What she does is show us, through her great wit and transparency, how we are not perfect but that we can balance each other. 

Dembling teaches introverts “how to let someone into their hearts while honoring the solitude we need..” I found myself laughing many times, even while reading the table of contents. “Whee! Fun With Extroverts” and “I Love you But Please Don’t Call Me.” And she helps extroverted readers understand and empathize with introverts who don’t find joy in too much socializing. 

I’d talk about Mariana Zapata for days without coming out for air. The queen of slow-burn will leave you squirming in your seat shouting “Just kiss already!” on the top of your lungs. It’s a sweet blooming romance between childhood friends who spent years apart. If you read The Wall of Winnipeg and Me, you were probably waiting for Zack’s story. Bonus? Zack is the sweetest and the pure definition of a cinnamon roll hero.

Set in wartime Shanghai in a time of espionage, betrayal, and murder. Chang knew of what she wrote – her own husband worked for the pro-Japanese collaborationist Chinese government of Wang Jing-wei and was considered a traitor. It’s a wartime novel where bombs don’t fall and soldiers don’t fight but everyone, including the main character of Wang Chia-chih (based on a real-life Nationalist Chinese spy Zheng Pingru, but with a fair amount of Chang herself thrown in), is faced with issues of resistance, collaboration, fighting back or staying quiet. A novella, but no less a masterpiece for being short.