Lyssa Kay Adams hits a home run with The Bromance Book Club, a contemporary romance about a husband and wife who learn to reconnect using the power of romance novels.

Due to an unexpected pregnancy and their subsequent marriage, Gavin and Thea Scott never had a chance to enjoy being newlyweds. After each lackluster intimate encounter between them, it becomes clear to Thea that something needs to change. At home with twin toddlers and a husband whose MLB career took off like a rocket, Thea very much feels like a single mom. When Gavin is home, he’s a man she doesn’t really recognize. When she brings up divorce, Gavin realizes he’s had his head in the sand for too long. He’s determined to save his marriage and make Thea feel loved and appreciated.

Enter the Bromance Book Club, a romance book club made up of Gavin’s fellow athletes who see romance novels as a way of understanding and improving their communication with women. The setup may seem farfetched, but it’s too charming to resist. The men think their current book club pick, Courting the Countess, may hold the secret to Gavin and Thea getting their groove back.

Readers who enjoy a heartfelt second-chance romance, especially between a married couple, should get their hands on this book immediately. There’s nothing wrong with beautiful, single and unattached twenty-somethings finding love, but the added stress of running a household with troublesome twins fully and truly embodies the romantic complacency that can happen in long term relationships. A first love is a beautiful thing, but how do we make that love last when life dishes out so many curveballs?

Adams creates a cringe-worthy look at modern romance with Gavin being too busy and Thea being too exhausted to do more than just go through the motions. It feels a little too real in the best way possible. Gavin is a likable hero whose cluelessness gets called out by not only his wife, but by his fellow book club bros too. There are some wonderful scenes of introspection as the men break down romantic scenes in romance like “the grovel” or “the big misunderstanding,” comparing where they’ve messed up in life and how romance can teach them to be better communicators. And as Thea regains control of her life and finds her voice, her arc becomes a wonderful and empowering lesson that it’s never too late to change course and make adjustments for the sake of your own happiness.

The Bromance Book Club is truly a novel for dedicated romance fans. Readers will be delighted at all of the meta winks and nudges to the genre we love so much. I can’t wait to see what the Bromance Book Club will read next and how it’ll help shape their next happily ever after.

Boy meets girl. Boy woos girl. Boy wins girl. Boy . . . sells girl out, and then flees the country, never to see her again—until 14 years later, when their paths cross once more.

Twice in a Blue Moon starts off simply enough: small-town California girl Tate Jones visits London with her grandmother. Vermont farm boy Sam Brandis is in London with his grandfather, and in a meet-cute lovingly borrowed from E.M. Forster and an acclaimed Merchant Ivory film adaptation, the pairs swap rooms so the ladies can have “a room with a view.” The view includes the hotel’s garden, where Tate and Sam meet nightly to stargaze and flirt, and to share their dreams and secrets.

Tate’s secret is a doozy. She’s the daughter of Ian Butler, the world’s most idolized actor. As a little girl, her red carpet images were recognized around the world. But when she was 8, her mother—heartsick about her husband’s blatant, unrelenting infidelity—took Tate and left the spotlight behind. Back in her tiny hometown, they buried their pasts, adopting the last name Jones. Only a handful of people know Tate’s true identity, and Tate shares it with Sam with all the overflowing trust of a girl in love for the very first time. But when she steps out of the hotel to find a waiting mob of paparazzi—tipped off by a well-paid “trusted confidante”—she gets her first broken heart, and resolves to be more careful about ever loving again.

Fast-forward 14 years. Tate, having used that unwanted reveal to launch an acting career, is about to start filming a role that could push her onto the A-list. The pressure has doubled, since a supporting role will be filled by her superficially doting, micro-aggressive father. Worst of all, she’s totally blindsided to show up on location and meet the screenwriter: Sam Brandis, writing under the pen name S.B. Hill. Pulling it together to give the screen performance of a lifetime will be hard enough, but when the cameras stop rolling and she has to write her own life’s dialogue, Tate grapples to find answers, inner strength and possibly forgiveness.

The best-friend writing team known as Christina Lauren never fails to delight. Twice in a Blue Moon is funny and engaging, whether Tate is bantering with her badass bestie, or navigating an awkward love scene with her adorable co-star. It also rings true on the low notes. Tate’s genuine heartbreak over her secret’s exposure comes both from being betrayed by Sam, and her personal sense of having betrayed her mother and grandmother’s trust. Her lack of faith in her own judgment—and in men, in general—requires Tate to reach deep to find the strength and conviction she thinks she lacks. It's a strikingly poignant note, and makes her journey toward trusting herself, and determining who else is worthy of her trust, all the more meaningful.

Some—including me—might quibble that Tate gives her trust back to Sam a little too quickly. (I’m the Old Testament type who thinks betraying men should get struck with lightning bolts from on high—preferably aimed at their crotches.) But it’s hard to argue with a character who has fought this hard to figure out what she wants, and who finally finds the courage to go and get it.

A picture may be worth a thousand words, but sometimes a song can capture a whole era—a slice of your life recreated whenever you hear that opening riff. The movie The Breakfast Club made the song “Don’t You (Forget About Me)" so indelibly iconic as the theme song for high school archetypes that when I saw the title of this book—and immediately got the song in my head—I wondered if it would be able to live up to the nostalgia it would trigger. Rest assured, it does.

Like The Breakfast Club, Mhairi McFarlane’s glorious, hilarious heartbreaker of a story begins with high school students pushed together by circumstances out of their control, vividly aware of their places in the social hierarchy, baffled and delighted by their mutual attraction. Their strictly-in-secret love story is sweet, innocent and almost breathless in its sweaty-palmed elation.

And then the film reel cuts out and the story picks up twelve years later.

Our heroine, Georgina Horspool, never left her native Sheffield. Never achieved her dream of becoming an important writer. Never quite found her niche at all, in fact, and has the rug of her unsatisfying life doubly pulled out from under her in just one night. First, she’s fired from her (miserable) waitressing job. Then she finds her (egocentric cad of a) boyfriend in bed with his assistant. Desperate for any opportunity that’ll keep her from being the object of pity (again) at the family’s weekly brunch, she jumps at the chance to tend bar for a private event at a new pub. It goes well, she’s offered a job and she’s eager to accept—but then she learns that the job means working with Lucas McCarthy who is, of course, the boy she loved a decade-plus ago and lost somewhere along the way.

So far, so expected. McFarlane’s writing is funny and charming enough to keep her readers engaged, but the beats in the first part will feel familiar as the story shifts from The Breakfast Club to Bridget Jones’s Diary. Still, as the story progresses, the madcap humor starts to mingle with deeper emotions. Georgina is self-aware in a way that Bridget never managed. Her relationships with her friends and family delve below the surface, uncovering real emotions and deep-seated issues. When she talks about discovering a beloved parent’s infidelity, there’s no punch line payoff. It feels real and visceral. When her dreadful ex tries to win her back, it’s not funny—it’s an awful ordeal that Georgina correctly identifies as manipulative and bullying. And readers should be aware that this novel contains a graphic description of sexual assault that could be triggering to some individuals. It is devastating and unflinchingly honest, but it is not gratuitous. Understanding the details of what occurred is pivotal to understanding the plot and characters.

Any romance reader will be able to peg that Lucas and Georgina are made for each other, but they have to put in some real work—on both sides—before they’re emotionally ready for happily ever after. McFarlane doesn’t skimp on sly humor or wacky characters, but no plot point has an easy fix and no character feels two-dimensional. Even the broadest personalities are loving, or loyal or cruel in tactile and vivid ways. And as the book progresses, you realize how much depth and truth there was to the characters and the story all along.

Zoey Castile is back with the third installment of her Happy Endings series, Flashed. It begins as just another sexy story about a hot male model and stripper (who’s a player on the soccer pitch and off). But it evolves into so much more. Once Patrick Halloran is disfigured from a life-altering accident, his inner beauty is able to shine through, giving this romance a hint of Beauty and the Beast with some reverse ugly duckling thrown in.

The woman who finally breaks through Pat's self-imposed isolation is Lena Martel, an aspiring artist working her way through college by keeping house. As you can imagine, it is unusual to work for a grumpy hermit of a man who has zero communication skills. Until they begin messaging each other. Sexily. Without the benefit of face-to-face interaction, Pat and Lena are forced to wade through getting to know each other with no posturing, allowing them to focus more on who they are, deep inside where the vulnerable bits are safely hidden.

For a man whose livelihood has always been his body—his strength, speed and beauty—Pat finds relying on his wits is new. But for Lena, an artist used to experiencing and touching and feeling life around her, relying on digital communication tests her, too. Patrick and Lena are incredibly likeable characters, and they defy the odds by sticking with one another. Great romances remind us that the heart wants what the heart wants, and it knows when it’s time to move forward. Even if you’re a man who wonders if his is the face the woman of his dreams can love forever.

This is a story for all the less than perfect people out there who have relied on being nice, funny and kind; who are often overlooked at first pass because they’re not shiny and sparkly and perfect. Those who know the truth about love and relationships because at the end of the day (and when it really, truly counts), substance trumps shine any day.