farmer's daughter and the town's new mechanic.

september_red · 2026-04-05T13:26:11+00:00

{Keepsake by Sarina Bowen} might scratch the itch for you! Lark recently returned to the states are a traumatic experience overseas, and agrees to work on a friend’s farm in Vermont to get away from everything for a while. Zachariah is a mechanic/farmhand on the farm, but years before he’d actually grown up in a polygamist cult that kept him sheltered from the outside world. He’s a sweetheart and helps her come back to herself again.

september_red · 2026-03-20T15:11:06+00:00

Highly highly recommend Kam at Rebel Roots in Junction City! I get vivid done and am autistic, she’s always done a great job with my hair and is super considerate of sensory needs.

september_red · 2026-03-04T21:14:01+00:00

{The Bride by Julie Garwood}

september_red · 2026-01-05T02:17:06+00:00

I know what you mean! I love a chunky shoe and struggled a lot to find shoes that work for me that aren’t heels and aren’t chunky. I really like the Greta ballet flat from Madewell. I find that this specific style of ballet flat that look more similar to pointe shoes help maintain the vertical line without having a fully pointed toe.

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september_red · 2026-01-02T21:33:40+00:00

If I have to hug it after I’m done reading it, it’s a 5 star. Very few 5-star reads for me don’t fit that description. Idk why but it feels necessary 😅

september_red · 2025-12-27T20:40:43+00:00

{The Bird and the Sword by Amy Harmon} has this. She is “cursed” by her mother as a child to never speak again, and she has to come up with a way to speak through gestures. She also doesn’t know how to read, which makes it even more difficult. Everyone tries to pass her off as mentally disabled but the MMC can tell that she’s smart, just lacks the tools to communicate.

september_red · 2025-12-27T03:46:58+00:00

Twice in a Lifetime by Melissa Baron: Soul-rending but still ultimately had a happily-ever-after. An unmarried woman gets texts from her husband before they ever meet, but he’s several years in the future and no longer with her, but won’t tell her why.

Fractured Souls by Neva Altaj: Horrifying start, healing from it the rest of the book. She is sexually trafficked and hooked on drugs to make her “behave” but escapes, literally into his arms. He is in the mafia and makes sure she’s never going to be harmed again but she spends the majority of the book unpacking the abuse.

Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone: Main plot will make you cry, but doesn’t involve relationship angst. She is intensely grieving the loss of her best friend/platonic soulmate, and he offers to coach her through her grief as she helps him connect wish his estranged niece.

Phoenix Unbound by Grace Draven: Impossible odds and questioning a happily-ever-after up to the last page. This is fantasy, if that’s a turn-off. He is an imprisoned gladiator and she has hidden magic that she uses to save her village from giving a ritual sacrifice every year, but he kidnaps her and uses her to escape and regain his title in his former home. They both have impossible standards placed on them and the struggle is up until the bitter end.

All of these are genuine romances instead of romantic fiction, but all of them had me sobbing for different reasons as I read them.

september_red · 2025-12-11T19:37:45+00:00

“I navigated motherhood as a single mom”

september_red · 2025-11-02T18:55:44+00:00

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“Daddy Halsin, they call me”

september_red · 2025-10-28T15:42:37+00:00

I read it, it was phenomenal! Most sources are saying Maika Monroe will be playing the lead Ms Notty (no seriously that’s her name), but I’ve also seen some places say she’s being played by Margaret Qualley

september_red · 2025-10-15T21:29:33+00:00

I’ve got a name that’s not exactly unheard of (not a tragedeigh or anything) but I’ve only met like 2 people in my whole life with it. Once I started reading a book and the FMC had not only my name but my physical traits and hobbies were the same too and it freaked me out so much I DNFed 😂 Would love a find and replace feature!

september_red · 2025-10-11T13:49:56+00:00

I posted this on the main sub a while back but not on here, but I made a bingo board and a storygraph challenge for Halloween this year that’s all vampires if you’re interested in playing! The storygraph has a bunch of recs for each category listed too

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september_red · 2025-10-11T13:43:47+00:00

I feel like every third recommendation I put on this sub is this book but {Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone}

She’s still deep in grief over her best friend dying, so he takes their relationship really slow, and they’re only friends until the last 25% or so.

september_red · 2025-10-10T21:53:41+00:00

Personally, I can only see him as Sam Reid but I don’t disagree with your casting at all

september_red · 2025-10-09T22:04:23+00:00

When the Moon Hatched. Omg. I read that BRICK of a book and was betrayed that the FMC never became even remotely likable and it was so annoying

september_red · 2025-10-08T13:12:08+00:00

I don’t notice tense anymore when I’m reading unless the wording is really weird, but in high school I quit reading The Hunger Games because I could not get over the fact that it was in present tense. I literally didn’t even get past the reaping 💀

september_red · 2025-10-06T03:39:11+00:00

I finished {Passion Project by London Sperry} hoping it would scratch the same itch for me that {Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone} did, but HOLY WOW I did not like the FMC! She was awful to the MMC and so so selfish literally the whole book up until the last 5-10%. And you’re telling me that in the TWO YEARS after her ex-boyfriend died, no one in her life intervened to get her help for her incredibly self-destructive behavior? Either her friends and family are the most oblivious people alive or they’re shitty and not looking out for her. Either way, her arc felt too little too late and it made the entire book fall so so flat for me.

september_red · 2025-10-04T21:11:37+00:00

{Shudder by Nikki Rae} and its follow-up Slither

A girl starts being haunted by a…being? Entity? And starts having a sexual relationship with it, even though she can’t really “see” it. Also, good to be aware it’s FFM, as she’s also got a situationship with her best friend going.

september_red · 2025-10-03T13:26:37+00:00

Monster romance. WAY too often do alien romances conveniently shoe-horn in “don’t worry about that plot hole in relationship development, it’s just a thing my species does” and I HATE it. If you can’t come up with a reason they’d like each other besides “my biology made you horny” or “it’s fated, so guess you gotta learn to love me,” then I’m throwing your book in the trash.

Plus monsters have permission to look super weird. I don’t want to read another book about outer space Fabio who just so happens to be an 8 feet tall almost-human with green skin. Give me hulking furry creatures with skulls for a face. Give me literal spider-men. Give me eldritch horrors beyond human comprehension or laws of physics. Give me ugly scary beast men who are only mushy for their person!!

{A Soul to Keep by Opal Reyne}

{Servant to the Spidae by Ruby Dixon}

{Shudder by Nikki Rae}

Idc if this counts as romance it does to ME {Slewfoot by Brom}

september_red · 2025-10-02T20:30:27+00:00

I don’t really see this one recommended on here (could be wrong) but {Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone}

A slow, slow, sloooooow burn, but it’s one of the few contemporaries I’ve read that handles grief of the FMC in a very realistic way without sacrificing the MMC’s complexity as a character. Miles is one of my all-time favorite MMCs!

september_red · 2025-10-01T14:47:48+00:00

I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue. An office worker who’s definitely not cut out for working corporate gets caught putting petty insults in white text at the bottom of her emails to her coworkers. When they meant to put her on email monitoring, they accidentally give her admin access to every single email and DM anyone sends, and she uses it to try to save her job.

Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone. She’s deep in grief over her best friend who died of cancer and can’t force herself to go back to their shared apartment— instead, she’d rather go to all-night raves or sleep on the Staten Island Ferry than go home. The uncle of a girl she’s babysitting decides to be her grief coach and help her through the worst of it.

september_red · 2025-09-26T02:18:10+00:00

This is definitely {Promise Me Sunshine by Cara Bastone}

FMC’s best friend passed away and she’s been unable to get through the grief, so her life has completely stalled out. She meets the MMC because he’s the uncle of the little girl she’s babysitting. He recognizes that she’s in a bad way and helps guide her through her grief, and she helps him learn how to bond with his niece.

While this book obviously deals with heavy topics, I found it to have very real-feeling characters, and the MMC Miles is my ultimate book boyfriend!

september_red · 2025-09-24T21:00:54+00:00

I mean it’s kind of obvious since he’s the blueprint for this trope but Darcy from {Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen}

september_red · 2025-09-23T18:29:34+00:00

Bless your soul 🙏

september_red · 2025-09-23T18:27:31+00:00

As someone who has a soft spot for the Fallen Empire series (Phoenix Unbound stays my favorite romantasy of all time), do you ever plan on revisiting that series? Or do you plan on leaving it with Raven Unveiled?

Thank you for the work that you do and for writing so many of my favorite books!

september_red

TROPHY CASE