Recommendation

Cozy Small Town Romance Books 

Something about small town romance novels just hits a little different… From rom-com to emotional roller-coaster, check out this list of small town romance books that will hit you right in the feels!

Heartless

by Elsie Silver

Chestnut Springs #2

➥ Contemporary Romance

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • age gap
  • boss & employee
  • single dad
  • grumpy X sunshine
  • opposites attract
  • cowboy hero
  • pregnancy
Blurb:

Working as a nanny for the world’s grumpiest single dad should have been simple. Except I can’t keep my eyes off him. And he can’t keep his hands off of me.

Cade Eaton is thirteen years older than I am and barely looks my way. Until I get him into the hot tub one night for a game of truth or dare. Then all bets are off—and so are our clothes.

He’s gruff, a little rough around the edges. But broad-shouldered ranchers with calloused hands and filthy mouths are this city girl’s kryptonite. So who am I to resist?

But it’s in our quiet moments together that he softens. It’s when he takes care of me that I realize his hardened exterior is just a façade. It’s when I watch him go all sweet with his little boy that I really fall for him.

Someone convinced him once that his best wasn’t good enough. But I’ve never felt more cherished than I do in his arms.

My contract may say this arrangement is only for two months.

But my heart says this is forever.


*·˚ Each book in this series features a different couple and can be read as a standalone, but for maximum enjoyment, follow the recommended reading order ˖*°

GOODREADS | AMAZON

Coach

by Devney Perry 

Treasure State Wildcats #1

➥ Contemporary Romance

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • workplace
  • enemies to friends to lovers
  • second chances
  • single dad
  • friends with benefits
  • sports romance
  • football
Blurb:

Football star. Single dad. And once, a long time ago, mine.

I’ve spent the better part of a decade forgetting Ford Ellis. If he had just stayed away from Montana, I might have erased the memory of his striking blue eyes and rugged smile forever. Avoiding him was easy when the only place I saw his face was on ESPN—and a remote control could fix that problem.

Except my boss just hired Ford as the new head coach for the Treasure State Wildcats. Not only will I be stuck watching him on the sidelines this season, but avoiding him will be impossible now that we’re working together.

Maybe I haven’t forgotten Ford. Maybe I still dream about what we might have been. Maybe he hasn’t forgotten me either.

Except those maybes won’t change the fact that we were never meant to be. Maybe he was mine once. But as of today, the only thing I’ll be calling Ford Ellis is Coach.


*·˚ Each book in this series features a different couple and can be read as a standalone, but for maximum enjoyment, follow the recommended reading order ˖*°

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MERIT

by Devney Perry

Treasure State Wildcats #4

➥ Contemporary Romance

Tropes:

  • sports romance
  • football
  • enemies to lovers
  • samll town romance
  • forced proximity
  • virgin heroine
Blurb:

The world loves Maverick Houston. Me? I’ve hated him since we were ten.

It’s not exactly easy to escape your childhood nemesis when your parents are best friends who live on the same block. Through countless vacations, parties and holidays, Maverick and I have spent the past decade trading insults.

Until that family dinner when his mother tells us she’s dying. When she asks us to forget the past and start fresh. That’s how I found myself on a date with the Treasure State Wildcats football star. The campus playboy. The boy I kissed when I was three. The man who is the bane of my existence.

He’s arrogant. He’s blunt. He’s too handsome for his own good. But if he has a single, redeeming merit, the guy sure does love his mom. And that’s why I started fake dating Maverick Houston. That’s why I made him a proposition of my own. That’s how this sham of a relationship ruined my life.

The world loves Maverick Houston. Me? I hate that he made me love him too.


*·˚ Each book in this series features a different couple and can be read as a standalone, but for maximum enjoyment, follow the recommended reading order ˖*°

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Every Summer After

by Carley Fortune

➥ Contemporary Romance

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • friends to lovers
  • second chances
  • it’s always been you
  • cheating
  • dual timeline
Blurb:

They say you can never go home again, and for Persephone Fraser, ever since she made the biggest mistake of her life a decade ago, that has felt too true. Instead of glittering summers on the lakeshore of her childhood, she spends them in a stylish apartment in the city, going out with friends, and keeping everyone a safe distance from her heart.

Until she receives the call that sends her racing back to Barry’s Bay and into the orbit of Sam Florek—the man she never thought she’d have to live without.

For six summers, through hazy afternoons on the water and warm summer nights working in his family’s restaurant and curling up together with books—medical textbooks for him and work-in-progress horror short stories for her—Percy and Sam had been inseparable. Eventually that friendship turned into something breathtakingly more, before it fell spectacularly apart.

When Percy returns to the lake for Sam’s mother’s funeral, their connection is as undeniable as it had always been. But until Percy can confront the decisions she made and the years she’s spent punishing herself for them, they’ll never know whether their love might be bigger than the biggest mistakes of their past.

Told over the course of six years and one weekend, Every Summer After is a big, sweeping nostalgic look at love and the people and choices that mark us forever.

Six summers to fall in love. One moment to fall apart. A weekend to get it right.

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All Rhodes Lead Here

by Mariana Zapata

➥ Contempotary Romance

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • slow burn
  • age gap
  • friends to lovers
  • grumpy X sunshine
  • single dad
  • cinnamon roll hero
Blurb:

Losing people you love is hard. Aurora De La Torre knows moving back to a place that was once home isn’t going to be easy. Starting your whole life over probably isn’t supposed to be. But a small town in the mountains might be the perfect remedy for a broken heart. Checking out her landlord across the driveway just might cure it too.

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Things We Never Got Over

by Lucy Score

Knockemout #1, interconnected series

➥ Romantic Comedy

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • grumpy X sunshine
  • enemies to lovers
  • single mom
  • sassy heroine
  • boss & employee
  • found family
Blurb:

Bearded, bad-boy barber Knox prefers to live his life the way he takes his coffee: Alone. Unless you count his basset hound, Waylon.
Knox doesn’t tolerate drama, even when it comes in the form of a stranded runaway bride.

Naomi wasn’t just running away from her wedding. She was riding to the rescue of her estranged twin to Knockemout, Virginia, a rough-around-the-edges town where disputes are settled the old-fashioned way…with fists and beer. Usually in that order.

Too bad for Naomi her evil twin hasn’t changed at all. After helping herself to Naomi’s car and cash, Tina leaves her with something unexpected. The niece Naomi didn’t know she had. Now she’s stuck in town with no car, no job, no plan, and no home with an 11-year-old going on thirty to take care of.

There’s a reason Knox doesn’t do complications or high-maintenance women, especially not the romantic ones. But since Naomi’s life imploded right in front of him, the least he can do is help her out of her jam. And just as soon as she stops getting into new trouble he can leave her alone and get back to his peaceful, solitary life.

At least, that’s the plan until the trouble turns to real danger.


*·˚ Each book in this series features a different couple and can be read as a standalone, but for maximum enjoyment, follow the recommended reading order ˖*°

GOODREADS | AMAZON

In a Jam

by Kate Canterbary

➥ Romantic Comedy

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • marriage of convenience
  • friends to lovers
  • second chances
  • grumpy X sunshine
  • single dad
  • sassy heroine
  • shy hero
Blurb:

When Shay Zucconi’s step-grandmother died, she left Shay a tulip farm—under two conditions.

First, Shay has to move home to the small town of Friendship, Rhode Island. Second—and most problematic since her fiancé just called off the wedding—Shay must be married within one year.

Marriage is the last thing in the world Shay wants but she’ll do anything to save the only real home she’s ever known.

Noah Barden loved Shay Zucconi back in high school. Not that he ever told her. He was too shy, too awkward, too painfully uncool to ask out the beautiful, popular girl.

A lifetime later, Noah is a single dad to his niece and has his hands full running the family business. That old crush is the farthest thing from his mind.

Until Shay returns to their hometown.

CW/TW: absentee parent(s), brief mention of parent death, brief mention of parent chronic illness, mention of incarceration, mention of temporary foster care placement, reference to teenage teasing/bullying (not detailed, not explicit), brief incidence of fat-shaming, living with a neurodivergent child

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Part of Your World

by Abby Jimenez

Part of Your World #1

➥ Contemporary Romance

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • age gap
  • rich heroine
  • class difference
  • cinnamon roll hero
  • angst
  • opposites attract
Blurb:

After a wild bet, gourmet grilled-cheese sandwich, and cuddle with a baby goat, Alexis Montgomery has had her world turned upside down. The cause: Daniel Grant, a ridiculously hot carpenter who’s ten years younger than her and as casual as they come—the complete opposite of sophisticated city-girl Alexis. And yet their chemistry is undeniable.

While her ultra-wealthy parents want her to carry on the family legacy of world-renowned surgeons, Alexis doesn’t need glory or fame. She’s fine with being a “mere” ER doctor. And every minute she spends with Daniel and the tight-knit town where he lives, she’s discovering just what’s really important. Yet letting their relationship become anything more than a short-term fling would mean turning her back on her family and giving up the opportunity to help thousands of people.

Bringing Daniel into her world is impossible, and yet she can’t just give up the joy she’s found with him either. With so many differences between them, how can Alexis possibly choose between her world and his?


*·˚ Each book in this series features a different couple and can be read as a standalone, but for maximum enjoyment, follow the recommended reading order ˖*°

GOODREADS | AMAZON

Funny Story

by Emily Henry

➥ Contemporary Romance

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • sort of fake relationship
  • cinnamon roll hero
  • exes getting revenge
  • friends to lovers
  • opposites attract
  • roommates
  • found family
Blurb:

A shimmering, joyful new novel about a pair of opposites with the wrong thing in common, from #1 New York Times bestselling author Emily Henry.

Daphne always loved the way her fiancé, Peter, told their story. How they met (on a blustery day), fell in love (over an errant hat), and moved back to his lakeside hometown to begin their life together. He really was good at telling it… right up until the moment he realized he was actually in love with his childhood best friend Petra.

Which is how Daphne begins her new story: stranded in beautiful Waning Bay, Michigan, without friends or family but with a dream job as a children’s librarian (that barely pays the bills), and proposing to be roommates with the only person who could possibly understand her predicament: Petra’s ex, Miles Nowak.

Scruffy and chaotic—with a penchant for taking solace in the sounds of heart break love ballads—Miles is exactly the opposite of practical, buttoned-up Daphne, whose coworkers know so little about her they have a running bet that she’s either FBI or in witness protection. The roommates mainly avoid one another, until one day, while drowning their sorrows, they form a tenuous friendship and a plan. If said plan also involves posting deliberately misleading photos of their summer adventures together, well, who could blame them?

But it’s all just for show, of course, because there’s no way Daphne would actually start her new chapter by falling in love with her ex-fiancé’s new fiancée’s ex… right?

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Ignite

by Melanie Harlow 

Cloverleigh Farms #6

➥ Contemporary Romance

  • small town romance
  • age gap
  • alpha male
  • grumpy X sunshine
  • friends to lovers
  • single dad
  • military
Blurb:

My new neighbor is a firefighter—and a scorching hot single dad—but I swear I didn’t set off that smoke alarm on purpose.

(And I was beyond mortified when he rushed in and saw me naked.)

Nothing happened, of course—because I, Winnie MacAllister, romance junkie and owner of a constantly broken heart, have sworn off men for one solid year.

Even protective men with chiseled jaws, bulging biceps, and deep brown eyes that make my breath come faster. Even former SEALs with broad chests and strong hands that make my skin sizzle. Even gorgeous, grumpy guys who have their hands full raising two adorable little girls and claim they don’t believe in love.

Until Dex kisses me one night, and I drop all my defenses.

(Also my underwear.)

He says he’s not gentle, and he’s right. He says I should take the dream job I’m offered in another state, and he’s right. He says he’s too old for me and could never be the man I deserve.

He’s wrong.

Dex and I might be twelve years apart, but the fire between us is the kind that will never burn out.

How can I convince him to give happily-ever-after with me a chance?


*·˚ Each book in this series features a different couple and can be read as a standalone, but for maximum enjoyment, follow the recommended reading order ˖*°

GOODREADS | AMAZON

Disgrace

by Brittainy C. Cherry 

➥ Contemporary Romance

Tropes:

  • small town romance
  • age gap
  • enemies to friend to lovers.
Blurb:

Each day I prayed for my husband to love me again.

After fifteen years together, he walked away from me, and into the arms of another.

I didn’t know how to cope. I didn’t know my worth. I didn’t know how to exist without him by my side.

All I wanted was for him to come back to me.

Then, Jackson Emery appeared.

He was supposed to be a distraction for my mind. A summer fling. A confidence boost to my bruised heart.

We were perfect for one another, because we both knew we wouldn’t last. Jackson didn’t believe in commitment, and I no longer believed in love. He was too closed-off for me, and I was too damaged for him.

Everything was fine, until one night my heart skipped a beat.

I didn’t expect him to make me laugh. To make me think. To make my sadness somewhat disappear.

When our time was up, my heart didn’t know how to walk away.

Each day I prayed for my husband to love me again, yet slowly my prayers began to shift toward the man who wasn’t right for me.

I prayed for one more smile, one more kiss, one more laugh, one more touch…

I prayed for him to be mine.

Even though I knew his heart wasn’t destined to love.

*This book was previously known as Between the Notes.*

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