smalltown

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 make sure he does. IVY Seven years ago, Gabriel Castellano took the best night of my life and turned it into a punchline. It cost me my spot on the national team and the only future I'd ever planned. Now he's here. 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 partnered with The Penalty Box, keeping my late father's bar alive, and the town wants repairs that cost more than we clear in a season. Which makes the man I've spent seven years hating the closest thing I have to leverage. And every night he comes back, hating him gets more expensive. 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 had it ready for years. The worst part isn't that I don't know why. It's that I'm starting to think I should. A slow-burn, high-angst hockey romance with: - Enemies to lovers—he doesn't remember her. She remembers everything. - Forced proximity, one blizzard, one bar - A second chance carrying a seven-year grudge - A grovel that draws blood - Found family, a bar worth fighting for, and one mechanical wolf - Dual POV · Slow burn · Open door · Guaranteed HEA For readers who loved the grovel in Elle Kennedy's The Mistake and the BC-set slow burn of Stephanie Archer's Behind the Net. The First Line, Book One. [Read More]

Gold

by Runa Saevik

Tropes: forcedproximity, characterdriven, adventure

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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]

Never Your Valentine

by Jordan Bloom

Tropes: firstperson, dualpov, foundfamily

Never Your Valentine is an opposites attract, grumpy-sunshine romcom packed with sizzling banter, small-town charm, and enough slow-burn heat to melt a Michigan winter. [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]

Poison Apple: Snow White and the MC Beast

by Katlyn S. Coen

Tropes: slowburn, forcedproximity, firstperson

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White as snow, red as blood, black as ebony. Fairy-tale beauty made flesh had one rule: Nobody gets close to her son. Fate—or the Norse Gods—had other plans: Shove me on a pitch-black parking lot. Drop a six-foot-six Sons of Ragnarök patch-wearer—inked, ruthless, and fourteen years my senior. I’m frozen in terror. My fearless two-year-old with zero sense of danger? Both arms. Open wide. And the Beast takes my boy like he’s always belonged to him. — Annika’s already buried one man she loved. She’s still haunted by the ghosts of her past. Drugs. Whores. Viking brutality. Ronny “Leif” Reinhardt rules the Sons of Ragnarök with absolute power. Innocence has never been his weakness. Until a tiny redhead barrels into his life and the beast finally meets his match. The feeling is foreign, dangerous, and fuckin’ addictive. Suddenly he’s everywhere. Watching. Guarding. Smirking. He calls it coincidence. Her head? Calls it obsession. Screams: run! Her body? Starts sending SOS. But the most terrifying part? He doesn’t rip Annika’s clothes off. He looks her in the eyes and asks, “May I?” There’s no going back. The poison apple is already bitten. ONE BITE, and you’ll be stuck in Germany’s industrial wasteland where the darkness hits harder—not for lack of light, but because hope, love, and beauty only increase the level of destruction. A dark, twisted Snow White retelling × outlaw biker romance. ONE BITE, Snow White… and the Beast never lets you go. Five books. One arc. This is where the saga begins. One warning before you bite: It is not for soft Disney princesses. But it’s not for those expecting blood, grief, and questionable consent on every single page either. The full dark romance × twisted Brothers Grimm fairy tale retelling potential isn’t delivered like instant soup. Think of a five-course menu. It doesn’t start with the heavy tastes. It starts with an amuse-bouche. [Read More]

Just Her Holiday Type

by Brisa Carleton

Tropes: forcedproximity, firstperson, dualpov

“Funny, romantic, and magical. I wanted to curl up inside this story until Christmas.” - Abby Jimenez, #1 NY Times Bestselling Author Every December Plum Hayes writes the kind of cozy Christmas romance movies her readers watch and love. Too bad she stopped believing in holiday magic the night her own happily-ever-after fell apart. Two weeks from deadline and out of holiday spirit, she's been packed off to Pine Tree, a snow-globe town with all the charm but surprisingly few of the Christmas traditions for which it used to be known. There she finds the typewriter. And the typewriter magically manifests her leading man, named, dressed, and behaving to her exact specifications. Zach is perfect. The problem is Ethan. Ethan, the no-nonsense, flannel-wearing owner of the antique shop downstairs, who is holding things together with his own two hands, says inconvenient true things, and looks at her in a way no script could ever quite capture. With Christmas Eve closing in and her deadline looming, Plum is going to have to choose between the perfect man and the right one. Just Her Holiday Type is a sweet, swoony, laugh-out-loud Christmas romcom about deadlines, do-overs, and what happens when you stop writing the script and start living it. For anyone who's ever wanted to believe in holiday magic again. [Read More]