100 books like The Vow

This story about 40-year-old Jenna Jones restarting her beauty journalism career and falling in love with a young videographer half her age has all the steaminess and will they/won’t they that you can want in a romance. But it’s also the unofficial sequel to Williams’ cult classic, Accidental Diva, and features dynamics friendships throughout. Whether it’s with Billie, the main character from Accidental Diva, and Elodie—her longstanding friends that keep her sane, or with the newfound friends she makes as she journeys through her reignited career, you’re bound to identify with these women and their friendship.

I loved the plucky, flawed, and funny protagonist, Becky Bloomwood. She had an engaging voice and got herself into hilarious situations. This was one of the rare books that made me laugh out loud and it was what sparked my interest in writing a humorous chick-lit novel of my own. I also enjoyed the other books in the series, which follow Becky as she becomes a wife and eventually a mother. The series was a great example of an author creating character arcs for both the protagonist and supporting characters that evolve throughout different stages of their lives. 

A contemporary YA novel, this book will still appeal to all the adults who can remember what it was like trying to figure out who you were as a teenager, how your friends fit into your life, and what it means to shake things up but still maintain who you are at your core. Main character, Codi Teller, is lucky to have two very close friends by her side through it all, but she develops an additional, unexpected friendship with cool kid, Ricky, when she stumbles upon him kissing another boy at a party. Ricky brings Codi into his world full of new experiences, late nights, and a cute girl named Lydia who Codi definitely has a crush on. 

When this book premiered in the mid-nineties, I was fairly young but absolutely shook by these grown thirtysomething women’s stories of not just finding romance but finding themselves with a lot of help from their friends. You will be hard-pressed to pick a favorite character among Savannah, Robin, Bernadine, and Gloria but I will give you a tip: Don’t even try. They are all strong, exuberant, and self-determined professional women at the centers of their families and communities. The search for real, true, lasting love plays out across one year in Arizona that changes their lives. On nearly every page, McMillan will entertain you or break your heart but never let you forget the power of best girlfriends.

Jane Austen would have made such a great therapist! Her razor-sharp observations, combined with profound insights into people and relationships, make this book an all-time favorite of mine. I love her descriptions of falling in (and out of) love and how fallible each of her characters is, reminding us of our humanity–especially when it comes to matters of the heart.

What also strikes me is how true it is that pride, image, and status can still play out in our more modern relationships today. This book feels very old-fashioned in places, but it warns us how easily we can hurt other people and damage relationships, sometimes irrevocably. There’s a lot to learn from Emma, and I enjoy seeing relationships depicted in fiction, where so much can be explored through a fascinating and absorbing story, too.

This book has so much to discuss, the old west, history, fun characters, family dynamics, and romance.

The opening scene puts the reader in the midst of cowboy country with laugh out loud action. The action and adventures that continue all the way to the end makes the reader ready to relive it by talking about it to others! 

The author does a fabulous job providing well-rounded characters with goals, ambitions, and faults, prompting discussions about who might be the favorite. Jeb, who can’t stay out of trouble, or Chloe who is not afraid to stand up to the wild cowboy.  

I’ve read this entire series, but each book, including this one, can be read as a stand-alone without having read any of the others. 

Neurodivergent people are notoriously averse to small talk, but where to go from there?

Intellectual Foreplay provides an extensive collection of conversation topics and questions one can use to get to know someone better, whether you’re already close or just getting started.

In between, this book provides a treatment of how this sort of conversation works and, crucially, actions that can be taken in response to the answers one receives.

It’s an interesting book, even if it’s not particularly interesting to read straight through. Reference volumes often aren’t, so this is not a point against it.

Such a powerful book! It's all about the danger of failing to choose, but presented in such a way that the lesson seeps in slowly. Perhaps an ultimate example of "show, don't tell."

I first read it during a difficult season in life where I too felt like I was facing two mutually exclusive options. Each of them foretold a loss and made me sad to contemplate the absence of the other. I then went back to the book a few years later for a second reading and found it just as powerful but less sad—perhaps because I'd improved in my ability to make clear choices.

In Only Ever Yours, baby girls can no longer be born naturally, and instead they are made in laboratories, and then raised communally in schools.

They are trained in the arts of pleasing men, and some will be selected by eligible bachelors, leaving the rest to become concubines (sex slaves) or chastities (teachers). We follow the story of frieda and her best friend isabel as they go through the final preparations of school and prepare to be chosen. However, when isabel disappears, all of frieda’s loyalties and perceptions of their world will be put to the test.

I have so much admiration for Louise O'Neill's unflinching depiction of the pressures on the young women in this fictional society – the constant obsessions with looks and weight, the way they are taught to be competitive with each other, the slow degradation of frieda’s sense of self.

By manipulating and extending… show more.

I loved reading this book and I have used it in teaching. This is the most comprehensive book on mate choice. It will be defining the field for a long time. Rosenthal looks at everything that has to do with mate choice and provides an authoritative view of mate choice. He looks at the complexity of mate choice in its full range. If you look for the most complete book on mate choice, this is it.