100 books like The Ex Talk

I’ve never been to the Galápagos Islands, but after reading Shipped, I wish I could afford to go! In this enemies-to-lovers romance, Henley and Graeme are office rivals who work for the same adventure travel company but have never met in person. When the opportunity for a promotion arises, their boss sends them both on a company cruise to the Galápagos archipelago, where they’ll have to come up with the best marketing pitch for the area. This book has so much going for it: hilarious travel hijinks, sizzling sexual tension, and detailed descriptions that bring the islands to life. By the end of the book, I was convinced I needed to add this destination to my travel bucket list!

This charming, deeply romantic tale about an editor whose big promotion is contingent on her helping a popular author overcome a terrible case of writer’s block reminded me of all the reasons I adore reading and writing love stories.

Working with this author leads Lanie to question her long-cherished beliefs about what she wants (and needs) in a romantic partner. She opens her heart to new ideas and experiences as well as to love, and her journey, both personally and professionally, culminates in such an epically swoon-inducing way that you will be hard-pressed not to shed happy tears (I did!).

Like the book’s heroine, Lauren Kate clearly reveres the written word, and this story is a beautifully composed valentine to all bibliophiles.

An office rivalry between software developer Emma and app developer Rishi takes an interesting turn when they’re sent to Bangalore to work on a project together.

Back in his home country, Rishi’s family pressures him to get married to a woman of the right caste/religion. Emma offers to create an algorithm to help Rishi find the perfect wife who might be a lot closer than he thinks!

This book does a wonderful job of delving into the challenges of an American woman dating an Indian man as well as the dynamics and relationships within an Indian family. Brooke Burroughs brings India to vibrant life on the page, and I felt as though I was falling in love with the country (and Rishi!) along with Emma.

I can always count on Melanie Summers to make me laugh, and she did that repeatedly with this delightful story about a newly minted chef who gets stuck cooking for an author on a private Caribbean island.

There’s friction between Emma and Pierce from the get-go as he’s on a deadline and doesn’t appreciate her high-end cuisine. When he has a comical accident that renders his typing hand unusable, Emma steps in to help Pierce complete the final installment of his fantasy series (an affectionate spoof of Game of Thrones with expert world-building!).

I thoroughly enjoyed the organic development of Emma and Pierce’s relationship and was on the edge of my seat waiting to see how they’d overcome the obstacles in their path and achieve their happily ever after!

The Motion of the Ocean has been a longtime favorite sailing memoir of mine, not in the least because I read it during my own sailing years and felt connected to the author.

I appreciate her humorous, honest, conversational, and compelling writing style and love the title of the book, which inspired me to keep adventuring by sailboat and even to write my own memoir.

The narrative focuses on Janna and her husband’s relationship on a small boat in a remote area of the world. It’s a story not unlike mine in regards to relationship idiosyncrasies, the Pacific territory, the couple’s ages, and some of their experiences.

Janna was a teacher in a previous life as well and shares my love for travel and writing. This is an entertaining, well-written book.

This is the book that made me want to write a historical romance. The protagonist, Miss Jane Fairfield, is outlandishly rich. But she can’t get married and leave her younger sister, who has epilepsy, to the well-meaning but cruel treatments recommended by their uncle, who is also their guardian. Since her money makes her an appealing target for many an impoverished rake, Jane has to work extra to become unappealing while still seeming like she’s trying to attract a man. She wears obnoxiously bright clothing, insults people with the kindest tone, and—in one desperate attempt to make a man be mean to her—takes the food right off his plate. This is a book about people trying to put you in your place and keep you small. And let me give you a hint: it’s a romance, so there’s definitely a Happily Ever After, and that includes small-minded people getting their… show more.

I don’t usually read sweet, fade-to-black romance (I’m a fan of the full-steam-ahead stuff), but there is so much deadpan Native humor I was howling with laughter the whole time. The Crooked Rock Urban Indian Center staff and regulars are wonderful characters. How they establish this new community in the city, displaced from their tribal communities, is so recognizable for someone who lives 500 miles away from my tribe.

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.

West Virginia’s Jayne Anne Phillips made a noisy arrival on the literary scene with her triumphant collection of short stories, Black Tickets. One of the first of the “dirty realists,” Phillips paints the backroads and forgotten lives of rural West Virginia during a time when that state, and many like it, were on no one’s radar. As one of her characters says, “This ain’t the South…this is the goddam past.” Phillips captures the loneliness and the disconnected lives of young women and men in a way few books have done.  

Stories within stories, each honing and enhancing the other, is one of my favorite tropes across literature, and it finds a special expression in Erin Morgenstern’s The Starless Sea.

Unlike the other novels in this list, this one begins in our “normal” world, albeit a magically enhanced version of it. (You and I live there already, of course.) Fairy tales weave into and through the story as our young protagonist tries to find his way in the world, inextricably drawn back to these mystical tales.

Morgenstern’s prose will sweep you away while also meditating on the power of prose to sweep you away, and then we’re all in this tangle of a love of stories and the magic of fairy tales, exactly where we wanted to be all along.