For The Sugar Maple Inn, I swapped billionaire hottie Reese Spencer’s boardrooms for base camps. Then I gave him one big problem: a woman who couldn’t care less about his bank balance.

I LOVE a billionaire romance. There’s something irresistible about a hero who operates on a bigger scale.

So when I started thinking about Reese Spencer, the hero of my new small-town romance The Sugar Maple Inn, I knew I wanted to keep all the things I enjoy about the billionaire romance trope. But I also wanted to have some fun with it.

Swapping the boardroom for the wilderness

I wanted to make Reese a little different from the other billionaires I’d read in romances. So I decided to make him Canadian, rugged and happiest outdoors.

More importantly, I started thinking about what having that much money would actually mean to him. For Reese, wealth means freedom. He can go wherever he wants. He doesn’t even have a permanent home. He can spend his time traveling and pursuing the things he cares about, particularly wildlife and conservation, rather than sitting at the top of a corporation simply making more money.

So when he sets his sights on the Maple Inn, an old inn on an island in the middle of Solace Lake, he doesn’t want to turn it into some flashy billionaire playground. He imagines a wildlife retreat with fishing, birdwatching and nature trails.

(There’s another, more personal reason he wants that particular island too. But I won’t spoil that here).

A self-made billionaire who remembers having nothing

There was another side of Reese that became important as I wrote him: he didn’t grow up with money. His mum worked in care and Reese remembers very clearly what it was like being the poor kid. He also remembers the people who made sure he knew his place because of it. I really wanted to create that that tension in him. He now inhabits this extraordinary billionaire world, but he hasn’t forgotten what life looked like from the other side. In fact, some of the attitudes he encounters among wealthy people make him deeply uncomfortable.

What happens when a billionaire meets the one woman he can’t impress?

Readers of The Cherry Blossom Boathouse will already know Grace, with her pink-tipped hair, Dr Martens and tendency to say exactly what she thinks… sometimes softened with coffee and cinnamon rolls.

She’s a single mom who has spent years working in her mom’s café and is finally ready to build something of her own. Unfortunately, the thing she wants is the Sugar Maple Inn. The same Sugar Maple Inn Reese wants.

Now, obviously, this presents a slight problem when one of you is a billionaire. Reese could outbid Grace without blinking. She’s looking at pouring her savings into the place and taking out a loan that terrifies her. Financially, this should be the least evenly matched rivalry imaginable.

Except Grace refuses to see it that way. She’s not dazzled by Reese’s money. She’s certainly not going to step aside and let him have the inn simply because he can afford to pay more for it.

And Reese, rather inconveniently, starts to admire her for it.

This was where the billionaire romance trope became really interesting to me. Because yes, Reese can buy things. Lots of things. But I didn’t want money to solve the things that actually mattered in the story.

He can afford the Maple Inn, but buying it isn’t as straightforward as writing a cheque. He has Grace to contend with, not to mention the people who own it and the wider Solace Springs community.

What if the woman falls for the man before she knows he’s the billionaire?

One of my favorite parts of Reese and Grace’s relationship is that they actually meet before they meet.

Grace has been chatting on Reddit to someone called WildTrailGuide, who originally helps her with the business side of her plans for the inn. I’ve always loved the You’ve Got Mail appeal of an online romance and secret identity trope, but it felt particularly right for a billionaire romance because it allowed Grace to meet Reese without his money getting there first.

Online, he isn’t Reese Spencer, billionaire. He’s just a man Grace likes talking to. She gets to know his humor, his thoughts, his past. Meanwhile, in real life, she thinks he’s an infuriating billionaire who’s trying to steal her inn.

Taking the billionaire out of his natural habitat

Naturally, once I’d created a billionaire who’d spent years leading expeditions in remote corners of the world, I had to strand him somewhere.

So when an autumn storm traps Reese and Grace overnight on Maple Island, Reese should be completely in his element. Unfortunately, surviving the wilderness is a lot easier than ignoring the woman he’s secretly falling for…. especially when they’re stuck in the honeymoon suite with only one bed.

And that, really, was the fun of writing Reese: keeping everything I love about a billionaire romance hero, then putting him in situations where all his money, confidence and experience can’t help him. Because Grace doesn’t want his billions. She just might want him.

If you like your billionaire romances with a little less boardroom and a lot more autumn, The Sugar Maple Inn has rivals-to-lovers, secret identities, an online romance, forced proximity, one bed, small-town cosiness and a rugged billionaire who is about to discover there are some things money really can’t buy.

The post From Boardrooms to Base Camps: How I Put My Own Spin on the Billionaire Romance Hero appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

About The Cherry Blossom Boathouse: The Cherry Blossom Boathouse is a small-town sweet and spicy bookshop romance about a British woman who falls into a lake, builds a bookshop, and tries very hard not to fall for the grumpy boat captain who fished her out. Releases May 26th 2026.

If you’re anything like me, you don’t just fall for the characters in a romance, you also fall for the place. And when that place involves water and a slightly questionable dock where people definitely shouldn’t be having important conversations because they might risk falling in? I’m in.

As for lakes specifically? I have a particular soft spot for lakes because as I live right near one.

Put two people near a lake and something in the story just clicks for me. Especially when it comes to small-town romance, because lakeside towns feel more self-contained in a way that other towns aren’t. There are only so many places to go, which means characters keep running into each other, perfect fodder for those enemies to lovers and grumpy sunshine tropes.

So, if you’re up for those misty morning lakeside vibes, these are the lakeside romance novels I keep recommending… plus one brand new summer release that I may have a personal stake in.

One Golden Summer by Carley Fortune: The lakeside romance readers can’t stop recommending

If you haven’t read Carley Fortune yet, this is a great place to start, though fair warning: you will immediately want to read everything else she’s written.

Alice returns to Barry’s Bay, a small lake town in Ontario, for the summer with her grandmother. She’s a photographer who has spent years watching other people’s lives through a lens, which suits her just fine. Then Charlie Florek shows up and fine stops being the right word (or maybe the right word as he is mighty fine as this dude is confident, flirtatious and has dimples).

I loved the way Carley Fortune writes this lake setting, especially the cottage vibes, as it made me feel like I’ve actually been there. The romance builds at a gorgeous pace, and the warmth between Alice and her grandmother also gives the book real heart beyond that hot central relationship. It hit number one on the New York Times bestseller list when it came out in May 2025, which surprised nobody who had already read her previous books.

Summer at Willow Lake by Susan Wiggs: A second chance lakeside romance that started it all.

This is the one that started it all for a lot of readers when it came out several years ago, and it holds up better than you might expect from a series opener that’s nearly a decade old.

Olivia Bellamy is a Manhattan career woman who returns to her family’s summer camp in the Catskill Mountains to oversee a renovation she didn’t volunteer for. Camp Kioga is where she spent her summers growing up, which means every corner of it holds something she thought she’d left behind… including Connor Davis, the brooding gorgeous contractor she has a complicated history with (who doesn’t love a second chance romance?!).

What I enjoyed about this book is that the renovation plot actually earns its place in the story. Olivia isn’t just fixing buildings, she’s figuring out what she wants her life to look like, and Camp Kioga forces her to sit with that question in a way her Manhattan life never did. I went straight to book two the moment I finished, which tells you everything you need to know about how the first one landed.

Love Next Door by Helena Hunting: An enemies to lovers lakeside romance for readers who like their banter sharp and their heroes complicated.

Pearl Lake this time, and a much spikier dynamic!

Dillion Stitch comes back to her hometown to help her family, not to fall for the man who has just moved into the cottage next door. Donovan ‘Van’ Firestone arrives at Pearl Lake to deal with his late grandmother’s cottage and is charming and a total button-pusher. What the banter covers up, though, is a man whose life has just quietly fallen apart, which Pearl Lake was supposed to be an escape from.

I love the way these two keep finding new ways to irritate each other before they work out what’s actually going on. This book is a great example of how an enemies to lovers dynamic works so well in a lakeside small-town setting because there are only so many places to be, which removes the option of them avoiding each other when they very much want to.

The Lakeside Inn by Leeanna Morgan: A sweet small-town romance for readers who like a grumpy artist and a family mystery

This one sits at the sweeter end of the spectrum and totally earns its place here.

Penny Terry returns to Sapphire Bay, a small town on the shore of Flathead Lake in Montana, after a family loss, and ends up inheriting a house. Her neighbor Wyatt is a famous artist who moved to this quiet small-town to escape the world, only to find that four sisters and a golden Labrador had other ideas. What follows is a friends to lovers story with a mystery subplot and the kind of community cast that made me want to relocate.

I love how Leeanna Morgan writes small-town settings with proper affection, and Flathead Lake is such a beautiful backdrop. If you prefer your romance on the lower-heat end, this is a strong pick and a series worth starting from the beginning.

The Cherry Blossom Boathouse by Laura Bloom: a sweet and spicy grumpy sunshine romance, filled with small-town charm and quirky characters

Full disclosure: this one is mine!

Sophie Bennett arrives in Solace Springs, a small lakeside town in Washington State, with plans to turn a derelict boathouse into a community bookshop. She falls into the lake within ten minutes of arriving and gets rescued by Luke Rhodes, the gorgeous, grumpy local boat captain… and her new neighbor.

Luke isn’t impressed with Sophie’s renovation plans nor her color-coded spreadsheets, and thinks she has way too much optimism than the situation warrants. And yet he keeps turning up to help her with the renovation anyway. Somewhere between the paint arguments and the renovation disagreements, something shifts between them… and let’s just say that by the end, they find some very creative ways to test the structural integrity of a floating lake garden.

Solace Springs, the lakeside small-town it’s set in has cherry blossoms dropping petals onto the water in spring, and a cast of small-town characters who know everybody’s business and consider that a public service. I love the fact reviewers are also saying its cozy, fast-talking community charm is giving them Gilmore Girls and Virgin River vibes.

So there we have it, five lakeside romances to dip your toe in. Whether you’re drawn to the sun-warmed docks of a Canadian lake, or the cherry blossom-lined shores of a small Washington State town, I hope you find your small-town dock this spring.

The post The Best Lakeside Romance Books for a Summer Escape appeared first on The Nerd Daily.