smalltown

Vanilla (with Sprinkles)

by Rosemary Victus

Tropes: multipov, dualpov, steamycontemporary

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Sam is so comfortable around Kalie because there is no way she's into him… Sam is wrong. Kalie left the west coast a year ago after a viral video blew up her whole life. She’s done wallowing and trying to take baby steps towards rebuilding herself. Sam was dumped by his girlfriend of five years. He's now that guy you know who talks about his ex way too often. As a chubby retail clerk nearing 30, trying to meet someone romantically seems futile. Kalie meets Sam at a New Year's party and settles for friends after a failed hook up attempt. Kalie can’t tell her new friends about her past; she has to at least pretend to be a sane person. Sam does whatever he can think of to conceal his growing crush. However, unbeknownst to Sam, his new friend, Kalie, is still trying her level best to bang the chubby retail clerk. [Read More]

The Penalty Box

by Rebecca Zorg

Tropes: slowburn, forcedproximity, firstperson

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He doesn't remember ruining her life. She's going to ensure he does. IVY Seven years ago, Gabriel Castellano took the best night of my life and turned it into a punchline, costing me the national team and the only future I'd planned. Now he's back. Traded to Whistler, parked in my booth with his new teammates, telling me to surprise him like he's never seen my face before. As far as he knows, he hasn't. So I did what any professional would do. I "accidentally" poured a pint of our worst IPA straight down his six-hundred-dollar shirt. Surprise. Here's the problem: his team just bought the sponsorship keeping my late father's bar alive—which makes the man I've spent seven years hating a fixture on the wrong side of my taps. And the longer he keeps showing up, the harder it gets to remember that I hate you was supposed to be the whole story. GABRIEL People have told me who to be since I was fifteen, and I've never once disappointed them. Golden boy. Franchise face. So I can't explain the bartender. She hates me—openly, specifically, like she's been waiting years to do it to my face. The worst part isn't that I don't know why. It's that I'm starting to think I should. The First Line, Book One. A slow-burn, high-angst, second chance, enemies-to-lovers hockey romance with a grovel that draws blood. [Read More]

Gold

by Runa Saevik

Tropes: forcedproximity, adventure, characterdriven

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Six weeks, a book about wine, no complications. That was the plan. Luca Casini's father left him one word before he died. Luca followed it across the border into Slovenia, telling everyone, including himself, that the trip was about research. Matej Kos makes cheese in a cave older than the border itself. He speaks rarely, builds walls that outlast empires, and has built a life in which no one can let him down, because no one is in it. Neither man came looking for company. Something fits almost at once, easy in a way neither trusts yet: coffee that goes cold while they talk, jokes pitched between insult and affection, whole days that fall into a rhythm before anyone decides they should. The wanting arrives, blunt and physical and impossible to talk their way around. But when a key hits the floor, everything quiet turns loud, and what the stone has been holding changes everything they thought they were building. Some places are inherited. Some are found. [Read More]

The Sniper and the Swan

by Halle Macpherson

Tropes: slowburn, firstperson, characterdriven

Five years ago, the mysterious masked musician known as Il Cigno vanished. Her disappearance has haunted him ever since. Matteo Rossi has two equally challenging roles: mercenary assassin and guardian to his boisterous thirteen-year-old niece, Alessandra. He knows how to track a target, take down a threat, and disappear without a trace. What he doesn't know how to handle is a teenager who has started breaking the rules—or the feisty music teacher who is encouraging her to do so. When Mia Mills built her new life as a music teacher in the Italian lakeside town of Lacustria, she had one rule: keep her head down and stay out of trouble. But Mia has never been the type to walk away from someone who needs her help. When her talented student Alessandra secretly applies for a prestigious music summer camp, Mia is determined to help her chase her dreams—even if it means going head-to-head with her overprotective guardian. Mia knows getting close to people only puts them in danger. But as she is drawn deeper into the Rossi household, she finds herself wrapped in the warmth of a family she never expected to become part of. With each day she spends there, she indulges in the most dangerous ideal of all: hope for the future. As Matteo and Mia try to resist the magnetic pull between them, the truths they are both hiding threaten to destroy everything they've built. Because some truths can set you free. And some can get you killed. [Read More]