Get lost in a love story this Valentine's Day
With Valentine's Day just around the corner, it is the perfect time to read about LOVE! We have hand-picked some of the most swoon-worthy romance novels and memoirs that are bound to get you feeling the warm fuzzies. From powerful and inspiring, to hilarious and raw, there is bound to be a winner in amongst these recommendations!
‘It Ends With Us’ by Colleen Hoover
Blurb:
SOMETIMES THE ONE WHO LOVES YOU IS THE ONE WHO HURTS YOU THE MOST.
Lily hasn't always had it easy, but that's never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. She's come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up – she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lily's life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.
Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. He's also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily, but Ryle's complete aversion to relationships is disturbing.
As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan – her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.
With this bold and deeply personal novel, Colleen Hoover delivers a heart-wrenching story that breaks exciting new ground for her as a writer. It Ends With Us is an unforgettable tale of love that comes at the ultimate price.
‘Love Stories’ by Trent Dalton
Blurb:
A blind man yearns to see the face of his wife of thirty years. A divorced mother has a secret love affair with a travelling priest. A widower miraculously finds a three-minute video recorded by his wife before she died. A tree lopper's heart falls in a forest. A working mum contemplates taking the photographs of her late husband down from the fridge. A girl writes her last letter to the man she loves, then sets it on fire. An ageing gigolo regrets the one that got away. A palliative care nurse helps a dying woman converse with the angel at the end of her bed. A renowned 100-year-old scientist ponders the one great earthly puzzle he was never able to solve: 'What is love?' Endless stories. Human stories. Love stories. Inspired by a personal moment of profound love and generosity, bestselling author - and one of Australia's finest journalists - Trent Dalton spent two months in 2021 pounding city pavements, speaking to Australians from all walks of life and asking them one simple and direct question: 'Can you please tell me a love story?' For two straight weeks he sat at a desk with a sky-blue 1960s Olivetti typewriter, on the bustling corner of Adelaide and Albert streets, Brisbane, with a sign saying, 'Sentimental writer collecting love stories. Do you have one to share?' The result is Love Stories - a warm, wise, poignant, funny and moving book about love in all its guises, including stories, observations and reflections on lovers in parks; people in cemeteries, hospital wards, pubs and bingo halls; and newlyweds walking out of registry offices. There will be stories of people falling into love, falling out of love, and never letting go of the loved ones in their hearts. And woven through it all will be remembrances of Trent's own special moments, and of the people whose love stories have made him the man and writer he is today. A heartfelt, deep, funny, wise and tingly tribute to the greatest thing we will never understand and the only thing we will ever really need: love.
‘She Gets the Girl’ by Rachael Lippincott & Alyson Derrick
Blurb:
She’s All That meets Adam Silvera’s What If It’s Us in this swoon-worthy hate-to-love YA romantic comedy from #1 New York Times bestselling co-author of Five Feet Apart Rachael Lippincott and debut writer Alyson Derrick.
Alex Blackwood is a little bit headstrong, with a dash of chaos and a whole lot of flirt. She knows how to get the girl. Keeping her on the other hand . . . not so much.
Molly Parker has everything in her life totally in control, except for her complete awkwardness with just about anyone besides her mum. She knows she’s in love with the impossibly cool Cora Myers. She just . . . hasn’t actually talked to her yet.
Alex and Molly don’t belong on the same planet, let alone the same college campus, but when their paths cross unexpectedly, and Alex discovers Molly’s hidden crush, they realise they might have a common interest after all. Because maybe if Alex can help Molly to get her dream girl, she can prove to her ex that she’s serious about love.
As the two embark on their five-step plans to get their girls to fall for them, though, they both begin to wonder if maybe they’re the ones falling . . . for each other.
‘We Love Love’ by Laura Byrne and Brittany Hockley
Blurb:
True love. Crushing failure. Hot dates. Wild ambition. Motherhood. Sisterhood.
Brittany Hockley and Laura Byrne, former Bachelor finalists and hosts of the number-one podcast Life Uncut, have bumbled their way through it all. And they're here to make you feel a little less alone in the chaos.
Through interviewing the experts, dispensing advice and tackling questions about love and life - both big and small - on Life Uncut, Laura and Britt have created a community of open-hearted and supportive women. Now they've distilled their most trusted and true advice into a book that's as much about romance as it is about loving ourselves. WE LOVE LOVE is an encyclopaedia of life as Britt and Laura have lived it, full of hard-won wisdom, hilarious anecdotes, serious challenges and refreshing honesty.
From attachment styles to ghosting, pregnancy loss to impostor syndrome, long-distance relationships to sexual kinks, and with some unfiltered stories from listeners thrown in along the way, Laura and Britt give their take on pretty much everything from, well, A to Z with their signature wit and authenticity.
Life can be a hot mess at times, but with friends like these, you'll never be short of love.
‘How We Love’ by Clementine Ford
Blurb:
There is love in this place, just like there is love everywhere we care to look for it. There is beauty and there is hope and there is a boy and there is a mother and there is the past and there is the future but most importantly there is the now, and everything that exists between them that has got them from one moment to the next. The now is where we find the golden glow where, for the briefest of moments, the sky rips open and we see what it is we are made of.
Tell me a story, he asked me.
And so I began.
Clementine Ford is a person who has loved deeply, strangely and with curiosity. She is fascinated by love and the multiple ways it makes its home in our hearts and believes that the way we continue to surrender ourselves to love is an act of great faith and bravery.
This tender and lyrical memoir explores love in its many forms through Clementine's own experiences. With clear eyes and an open heart, she writes about losing her adored mother far too young, about the pain and confusion of first love - both platonic and romantic - and the joy and heartache of adult love. She writes movingly about the transcendent and transformative journey to motherhood and the similarly monumental path to self-love. 'We love as children, as friends, as parents and, yes, sometimes as sexual beings, and none of it is more important than the other because all of it shows us who we are.'
How We Love is heartfelt, funny, confessional, revelatory, compassionate - and essential reading. It shows us to ourselves in moments of unwavering truth and undeniable joy.