New York Times Best Books 2017

For seven years, Elena Vale loved her husband quietly. She waited through missed anniversaries, cold conversations, public humiliation, and the endless shadow of the woman he could never forget. Everyone called her lucky to be married to Adrian Laurent, the untouchable billionaire whose name opened every door in the city. But they never saw what happened behind closed doors. The silence. The loneliness. The way he looked through her instead of at her. Until one night, something inside Elena finally broke. Not loudly. Not dramatically. She simply stopped waiting. And that was when Adrian began noticing everything. The untouched side of the bed. The missing messages. The absence of the woman who had loved him more faithfully than anyone ever had. But the more Elena pulled away, the more dangerous Adrian became. Because for the first time in years, he was terrified. Terrified that the only woman who had ever truly belonged to him no longer wanted to stay. And by the time he realized what he was losing… someone else had already noticed her too.

She married him knowing one thing clearly: love was never part of the agreement. Their marriage was built on terms, not promises. A shared home. A shared bed. A public image to maintain. Nothing more. He was distant, controlled, and never cruel — but never warm either. To him, she was a wife in name, a solution to a problem, a role that needed to be filled. What neither of them expected was how silence could become dangerous. How intimacy without love could still leave marks. How wanting someone could come long before admitting it. As the line between obligation and desire begins to blur, she must decide how long she can stay where she isn’t truly chosen — and he must face the truth he never planned for. Because sometimes, the most dangerous thing isn’t loving someone too much… It’s realizing you never meant to love them at all.

"You're evil, Jake. I curse the day I met you, and the day I said yes to you. You're the biggest mistake of my existence," I muttered, my voice tight with pain and hatred. "I know. No explanation can atone for the pain I caused. I have nothing but words.... but please, Jessy. Let me speak. Let me tell you I'm sorry," He murmured, voice trembling with emotions. I refused to let him see my heart. I refused to give him any clue that he still had power over me. I exhaled sharply and masked my emotions behind a calm facade. Jessica Wilson thought marrying billionaire Jake Stone would save her dying mother but instead, it imprisoned her in a cold, controlled marriage she barely survived. Two years after escaping, Jessica returns to New York stronger, fearless, and determined to live for herself alone. But fate has other plans. The moment Jake discovers she's back, the one who once broke her becomes obsessed with getting her back, this time not out of obligation, but love. However, Jessica is no longer the naive 24years old girl he once controlled. Now, she's his greatest loss and his biggest challenge. And as enemies rise, secrets unfold, and past wounds reopen, and one question remains. Can a man who once destroyed her ever deserve her again?

At seventeen, love feels infinite and endings feel impossible. Arielle never planned to fall in love during her final year of high school. Noah never planned to let his guard down. But when quiet glances turn into late conversations and unspoken feelings surface, they find themselves caught in a connection neither of them is ready to name or walk away from. Set against the fragile edge of senior year, Promises We Made at Seventeen is a slow-burn, dual-POV romance about first love, fear, and the weight of choices made too young to fully understand, yet too deep to ignore. As expectations, rumors, and the future press in, Arielle and Noah must decide whether honesty is worth the risk and whether promises made before adulthood can survive what comes after. Tender, dramatic, and emotionally raw, this story explores what it means to love someone while still learning who you are, and how some promises no matter how small can change the course of a lifetime.

Betrayal has a way of breaking a heart so deeply that even time struggles to heal it. She once believed in forever. She loved him beyond reason—stood by him, sacrificed for him, and called him her husband with pride. But the night she needed him the most, he chose someone else… and she was left behind, shattered in silence. No explanations. No mercy. Just heartbreak. With nothing left but her dignity and pain, she walked away from the life she built with him, promising herself she would never love again. But life had other plans. When she least expected it, she met him, the billionaire CEO who carried his own darkness, a man the world admired but no one truly knew. Cold, distant, and emotionally locked away… until she stepped into his world. He didn’t plan to care. She didn’t plan to heal. But somehow, in the ruins of their broken pasts, something fragile began to grow… something neither of them could control. Yet just when she starts to believe in love again, her past returns with truths she was never meant to know. Now she must choose between the pain that once destroyed her… and the love that might either save her or break her forever.

Helen Sinclair walked out of a penthouse with nothing but a bag she'd packed four months before she needed it. No note. No explanation. Just a text — I can't do this anymore — and she left. She had married Alexander Sinclair because her father's company was drowning and the Sinclair name was the only life raft available. Nobody told her that. She figured it out herself, eighteen months too late, sitting on a cold bathroom floor with a positive pregnancy test while her husband's voice carried through the wall on another call that mattered more than she did. So she left. Three years later she is Helen Carter, living in Boston. Small apartment, a plant named Gerald, a job she earned herself. A quiet life entirely hers. She is also fourteen weeks pregnant with a child Alexander doesn't know exists. Then Julian Cross calls. He knows you're in Boston. He's coming himself. Alexander arrives with no team, no lawyers, no plan — which is so unlike him it frightens her. He says he just needed to see she was okay. She almost believes him. Then his eyes drop to her stomach and she watches him understand everything without a single word. What follows is a collision neither of them is prepared for. Alexander, who has never chased anything, now refuses to leave. Helen, who rebuilt herself from nothing, refuses to be pulled back. Julian Cross is realizing he has feelings for the woman his employer never deserved. And Nina Sinclair is about to blow everything open before Helen gets to decide anything herself. This is not a story about a woman who gets rescued. It's about one who makes the man who lost her prove he's worth finding again — on her terms, or not at all.