If you love a happy ending as a dessert after a multi-course meal of sexual tension and drama, second chance romance is the trope for you. These books often juggle multiple timelines, misunderstandings, and major angst. Delicious! Here are some of my favorites.

Lilie Vale’s The Shaadi Set-Up

Rita is in a committed relationship with the perfect guy, but when she signs them both up for a Desi matchmaking site, the algorithm informs her that her true match is Milan, the high school boyfriend who ghosted her and broke her heart. A slow, sizzling burn as Rita finds her way out of love with one boyfriend and back into it with the man her family has always adored. 

Stylo Fantôme’s degradation

He was a billionaire a-hole in training, she was his girlfriend’s little goody-two-shoes little sister. Years after their single encounter convinced Tatum to flip the bird to the sedate future her family planned for her, she runs into just-as-evil Jameson, and this time she’s the one with nothing to lose. They’re both hot messes with commitment issues and exhibition kinks. He has a butler and she has a porn star roommate. It’s a love story and a hate story.

Eloisa James’s This Duchess of Mine

The fifth entry in James’s Desperate Duchesses series but can be read as a standalone, Jemma was married off to beautiful but straightlaced duke Elijah as a teenager, only to discover that he already had a mistress—one who made office calls. Gemma appropriately flounced off to Paris for eight years to have affaires with Frenchmen, wear fashionable dresses, and get very good at chess. Now Elijah, who believes he’s doomed to die young, wants Gemma back to conceive an heir, beat her at chess, and marry her off to his best friend. Spoilers—naked chess occurs.

Jessica James’s The Ex Vows

Georgia and Eli were meant to be from the moment they met as kids, and despite five years apart, she’s still bewildered that they broke up. In flashbacks to their first meetings and the present day narrative where their mutual best friend’s wedding reunites them, James flawlessly and believably weaves a story of how two people who are perfect for each other can fall apart, fix themselves, and come back together. 

Julie Soto’s Forget Me Not

Ama and Eliot practically walk around in t-shirts that say I’m Not Over My Ex. But they’re both so prickly—Ama via her perfectionism, which is helpful in her work as a wedding planner and not so much in relationships, and Eliot via his sky-high emotional defenses—that they’re both convinced they never should have risked their first relationship, let alone a second chance. Everything is beautiful and everyone hurts. 

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