Here are 100 books that You Deserve Each Other fans have personally recommended if you like
You Deserve Each Other.
Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.
I am, first and foremost, an avid reader. And romance, especially romantic comedy, is my go-to choice. And if that romantic comedy has a fake-dating theme…YAY! It was only natural that I write that theme. I believe that life throws you love at the most unexpected times and unexpected places. I love writing character-driven stories, and what better way to have them show off their true selves than by pretending to be in a relationship with a stranger?
This is the book I compare all other fake-dating books to.
The meet-cute sucked me in. In a panic, Olive kisses the closest (and only) man she sees, hoping her friend will believe she’s on a real date in a biology lab. Now, her friend thinks she’s dating Adam, the smug young professor who seems to hate graduate students.
Let the conflict begin.
I love that Olive is a STEM graduate student searching for a method of early detection of pancreatic cancer—the kind that killed her mom. She’s smart and passionate about her work.
And I fell for Adam hard. Hazelwood only gives us Olive’s viewpoint, so I was trying to read his intent right along with her.
And then there was the “aha” moment when I finally tied the prologue to the story.
I will always and forever recommend this book.
The Instant New York Times Bestseller and TikTok Sensation!
As seen on THE VIEW!
A BuzzFeed Best Summer Read of 2021
When a fake relationship between scientists meets the irresistible force of attraction, it throws one woman's carefully calculated theories on love into chaos.
As a third-year Ph.D. candidate, Olive Smith doesn't believe in lasting romantic relationships--but her best friend does, and that's what got her into this situation. Convincing Anh that Olive is dating and well on her way to a happily ever after was always going to take more than hand-wavy Jedi mind tricks: Scientists require proof. So,…
During my MFA, I learned to write family dramas and character-driven fiction, but I wanted more comfort, joy, and… romance! I knew the swoony and funny aspects of rom-coms could lift heavier emotional subjects like grief and loss, allowing readers to explore these resonant aspects of life safely, with a guaranteed Happily Ever After. All the books on this list explore a full emotional range of the human experience through extraordinary, utterly magical love stories about otherwise ordinary, flawed people. I hope they make you laugh, swoon, maybe shed a few cathartic tears, and come out the other side feeling better than when you turned the first page.
This enemies-to-lovers story about a romance writer and a literary fiction writer who strike a bet to write their next book in each other’s genre blew me away with its hilarious dialogue and realistic emotional stakes.
January struggles to write another Happily Ever After upon learning her recently deceased father had a secret life with another woman. She goes to deal with his beach house, only to find that her college writing rival is her neighbor for the summer.
As part of Gus and January’s renewed rivalry, they go on a series of dates to teach each other about their genre, and they develop mutual professional respect that bleeds into attraction.
One highlight is when they write flirty notes and hold them up through their neighboring windows. This is a true rom-com, so hilarious and sexy, but it commits to realism and reaches for heavy, heart-wrenching emotional stakes and the…
FROM THE #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR OF PEOPLE WE MEET ON VACATION AND BOOK LOVERS!
A romance writer who no longer believes in love and a literary writer stuck in a rut engage in a summer-long challenge that may just upend everything they believe about happily ever afters.
Augustus Everett is an acclaimed author of literary fiction. January Andrews writes bestselling romance. When she pens a happily ever after, he kills off his entire cast.
They’re polar opposites.
In fact, the only thing they have in common is that for the next three months, they're living in neighboring…
My name is Elle Rivers, and I’ve been a romance reader and writer for over ten years. I started reading when I was in high school because I was a lonely kid who loved watching people fall in love. I love the romance genre because it always has a happy ending, and reading about characters overcoming their struggles reminds me that I can also face any hard moments in life. I try to write the same kinds of characters in my books. They’re all a piece of me, and I am so excited that others can read them, too.
This book is about a woman named Stella, who enters a competition to save her Christmas Tree farm from financial ruin, but she needs a fake boyfriend to sell the story.
Who is better than her best friend, Luka, who she secretly has a crush on?
I am a sucker for Christmas romance novels, and the obvious LONGING from Luka was my favorite part of the book. We spend the entire novel in Stella’s head, and I love it when the main male character is obviously in love with them but she can’t see it yet.
Two best friends fake date to reach their holiday happily ever after in this first romantic comedy in the Lovelight series.
A pasture of dead trees. A hostile takeover of the Santa barn by a family of raccoons. And shipments that have mysteriously gone missing. Lovelight Farms is not the magical winter wonderland of Stella Bloom’s dreams.
In an effort to save the Christmas tree farm she’s loved since she was a kid, Stella enters a contest with Instagram-famous influencer Evelyn St. James. With the added publicity and the $100,000 cash prize, Stella…
Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.
My name is Elle Rivers, and I’ve been a romance reader and writer for over ten years. I started reading when I was in high school because I was a lonely kid who loved watching people fall in love. I love the romance genre because it always has a happy ending, and reading about characters overcoming their struggles reminds me that I can also face any hard moments in life. I try to write the same kinds of characters in my books. They’re all a piece of me, and I am so excited that others can read them, too.
This novel is set in the fictional amusement park of Honeywood Acres, and it follows two characters who pretend to date as their characters in the park. I love a good fake dating story, especially when it’s for a job, and the two leads hate each other at the start of the book.
It’s a slower burn, which is always fun because it gives us time to fall in love with the characters. The author has a talent for world-building, and I got lost in this book!
Well, truly, who doesn’t want to live inside of a magical castle? A few years ago, I was lucky enough to become the owner of a crumbling Victorian house. It was in bad shape—a hoarder had lived there before with lots of cats and also, somehow, rats?—but the place had “good bones.” My husband and I were determined to scrape away all of the rot and give it new life—all while I was writing my middle-grade novel. Now that both projects are done, I truly feel like I live in an enchanted space.
I am a huge fan of Roshani Chokshi’s work—but she outdid herself with this book. The writing is thickly luxurious, and the House of Dreams, where much of the story takes place, feels like it sits at the borders of a fae otherworld. The magic is palpable. And deliciously foreboding.
A sumptuous, gothic story about an obsessive female friendship cursed to end in tragedy, a marriage unraveled by dark secrets, and the danger of believing in fairy tales - the breathtaking adult debut from New York Times bestselling author Roshani Chokshi.
Once upon a time, a man who believed in fairy tales married a beautiful, mysterious woman named Indigo Maxwell-Castenada. He was a scholar of myths. She was heiress to a fortune. They exchanged gifts and stories and believed…
As the sex and relationship advice columnist at Men’s Health Magazine, I’m obviously pretty damn obsessed with sex. I find it fascinating on so many levels, which is why I not only have a ton of it but also made it my career. For so long, I struggled with sexual shame, and one thing I realized as a writer is that I’m not special. Sure, I’ve probably been to more sex parties than you, but if I’m struggling with shame, being bisexual, and embracing my kinks, then other folks are, too. And just like I’m obsessed with sex, I’ve become obsessed with helping others remove sexual shame.
I loved this collection of fictional essays. Each story wasn’t just “hot” and “smutty;” they had a larger message. One story spoke to power dynamics, while another addressed shame or the desire to be loved, etc.
Sexuality, desire, and arousal are so complex and individual, and I feel like this book explored so much. It really “went there.” Through reading these fictional stories, I felt empowered to do more sexually and push the boundaries of what sex can mean to me.
Kink is a groundbreaking anthology of literary short fiction exploring love and desire, BDSM, and interests across the sexual spectrum, edited by lauded writers R.O. Kwon and Garth Greenwell, and featuring a roster of all-star contributors including Alexander Chee, Roxane Gay, Carmen Maria Machado, and more.
A Most-Anticipated book of 2021 as selected by * Marie Claire * O, The Oprah Magazine * Cosmopolitan * Time * The Millions * The Advocate * Autostraddle * Refinery29 * Shape * Town & Country * Book Riot * Literary Hub *
Return to Hope Creek is a second-chance rural romance set in Australia.
Stella Simpson's career and engagement are over. She returns to the rural community of Hope Creek to heal, unaware her high school and college sweetheart, Mitchell Scott, has also moved back to town to do some healing of…
I have always gravitated towards women’s issues both in my writing and how I lead my life. I believe that women need to speak their truth to each other and gain the support of their friends who are likely going through the same thing. I have also spoken about and been on panels about women’s empowerment in midlife. I am a woman in the middle of her life, and I have lived through so many of the issues that I speak about.
Sometimes a woman can get herself into a situation that she doesn’t see coming and is nervous about telling anyone.
In this book, the protagonist, Lily, is one of those women. I’m drawn to stories where you go on a journey with the main character as she finds her voice and begins to stand up for herself and realizes she’s worth much better in life, than the way she’s being treated.
Many women feel shame around getting themselves into these kinds of situations, but we are all human, and it can happen subtly, so subtly that you don’t see it coming. Lily becomes a strong woman, and that strength is something I admire.
Before It Ends with Us, it started with Atlas. Colleen Hoover tells fan favorite Atlas’s side of the story and shares what comes next in this long-anticipated sequel to the “glorious and touching” (USA TODAY) #1 New York Times bestseller It Ends with Us.
Lily and her ex-husband, Ryle, have just settled into a civil coparenting rhythm when she suddenly bumps into her first love, Atlas, again. After nearly two years separated, she is elated that for once, time is on their side, and she immediately says yes when Atlas asks her on a date.
I am an award-winning author of two five-star rated memoirs: “My Whorizontal Life: An Escort’s Tale” and “A Someday Courtesan,” and the creator/performer of the 90-minute solo show: “My Whorizontal Life: The Show!” I co-host the podcast My Index to Sex. and I am a Juilliard Drama Graduate and the former #1 escort in the country. Thinking about how I grew up in a safe, typical suburb in the middle of America made me wonder if the things that happened to me with men as a girl happened to many women as we came of age in the 70s.
This is a lovely memoir of falling in true love for the first time. The author was the same age as me when she fell in love for the first time in a magical Paris when she was there as a serious musical student.
As I read, I was transported with her to that time and sent spinning back into my own life at the same age as a serious drama student falling in love in Amsterdam.
The book is romantic at first and so true to the heart, as well as the experience of losing oneself to another for the first time. I loved experiencing Paris with her and her love of music. A not famous author who deserves to be.
PARIS, 1976: Twenty-year-old American student Julie Scolnik had just arrived in the City of Light to study the flute when, from across a sea of faces in the chorus of the Orchestre de Paris, she is drawn to Luc, a striking (married) French lawyer in the bass section. This moving tale of an ebullient young American and a reserved Frenchman will transport readers to the cafés, streets, and concert halls of Paris in the late seventies, and, spanning three decades, evolves from deep romance to sudden heartbreak, and finally to a lifelong quest for answers to release hidden, immutable grief.…
I’m a romance writer who moved around often as a child. Whenever I started a new school, I’d bring a book with me. Even now, I always run errands with a print book and my Kindle as I’m a writer, wife, and mother of four. Two of my children have medical conditions, and I’ve spent time in various doctor and hospital waiting rooms. I’ve taken books into MRI booths where I’d read while my daughter underwent an MRI. I gravitate toward emotional romances that keep me entertained while possessing a thread of humor or something unique about them so I can lose myself in their world anytime, anywhere.
I love books featuring strong chemistry between the two leads, and Nora and John’s chemistry leapt off the page. I also love series that have a strong family connection, and this is the first in a series with three sisters.
John enlists Nora’s help to uncover the identity of his birth mother, and this inspirational romance pulled on my heartstrings. I loved John, especially as he was the type of hero who was silent and impactful. The book was well-written and had enough scenes revolving around food to make me hungry. John and Nora’s story stayed with me long after I finished turning the last page.
After a devastating heartbreak three years ago, genealogist and historical village owner Nora Bradford has decided that burying her nose in her work and her books is far safer than romance in the here and now.
Unlike Nora, former Navy SEAL and Medal of Honor recipient John Lawson is a modern-day man, usually 100 percent focused on the present. But when he's diagnosed with an inherited condition, he's forced to dig into the secrets of his past and his adoption as an infant, enlisting Nora to help him uncover the…
James Malloy is a ferry captain--or used to be, until he was unceremoniously fired and replaced by a "girl" named Courtney Farris. Now, instead of piloting Brenton Island’s daily lifeline to the glitzy docks of Newport, Rhode Island, James spends his days beached, bitter, and bored.
As a child, I loved singing and acting and fantasized about what it might be like to be a famous movie star. Though the practical side of my brain led me to become a lawyer instead, my fascination with Hollywood never waned. When I set out to write my first novel, I finally had the opportunity to explore celebrity culture. But I'm just a regular person, living a very normal life. The books I’m recommending lift the curtain on fame and explore the ultimate fantasy: what if a beloved, uber-famous actor or actress actually fell in love with you?
Talk about swoon-worthy: recently divorced regular gal Nora is a Hallmark-style screenwriter until her latest script is tapped for the big screen starring the “sexiest man alive,” Leo.
I was drawn in by the fantasy of crushing on a movie star, but I stayed for the relatability and depth of the main character. This was one I read in about twenty-four hours because I needed to know whether Nora would find her happy ending.
I also appreciated that this book left some things to the imagination. It was heavier on the romance than the sex.
"Readers who loved Emily Henry's Book Lovers are sure to savor Nora Goes Off Script." —Shelf Awareness
Named one of the Best Beach Reads of Summer 2022 by The Washington Post • USA Today • Cosmopolitan • Southern Living • Country Living • Business Insider • Buzzfeed • Book Riot • The Augusta Chronicle
Nora’s life is about to get a rewrite…
Nora Hamilton knows the formula for love better than anyone. As a romance channel screenwriter, it’s her job. But when her too-good-to work husband leaves her and their two kids, Nora turns her…
