
It Happened One Summer
Tessa Bailey
Bellinger Sisters #1
A Beverly Hills party girl exiled to a small fishing town butts heads with a gruff, bearded sea captain.
Description
Piper Bellinger is fashionable, influential, and her reputation as a wild child means the paparazzi are constantly on her heels. When too much champagne and an out-of-control rooftop party lands Piper in the slammer, her stepfather decides enough is enough. So he cuts her off, and sends Piper and her sister to learn some responsibility running their late father’s dive bar... in Washington. Piper hasn’t even been in Westport for five minutes when she meets big, bearded sea captain Brendan, who thinks she won’t last a week outside of Beverly Hills. So what if Piper can’t do math, and the idea of sleeping in a shabby apartment with bunk beds gives her hives. How bad could it really be? She’s determined to show her stepfather—and the hot, grumpy local—that she’s more than a pretty face. Except it’s a small town and everywhere she turns, she bumps into Brendan. The fun-loving socialite and the gruff fisherman are polar opposites, but there’s an undeniable attraction simmering between them. Piper doesn’t want any distractions, especially feelings for a man who sails off into the sunset for weeks at a time. Yet as she reconnects with her past and begins to feel at home in Westport, Piper starts to wonder if the cold, glamorous life she knew is what she truly wants. LA is calling her name, but Brendan—and this town full of memories—may have already caught her heart.
Bellinger Sisters series
Books like this

Beautiful Dreamer
Melissa Brayden
A driven city broker returns to her small hometown and falls for the warm, sweet woman she once overlooked.
9 tropes in common

One Look
Lena Hendrix
A grumpy single-dad NFL coach can't resist his chaotic, sunshine new neighbor in a small town full of feuds.
11 tropes in common

Rock Bottom Girl
Lucy Score
Broke and dumped at 38, she fakes a relationship with the town's bad-boy coach — and the orgasms are very real.
8 tropes in common

A Merry Match: A spicy, secret identity holiday romance
Hailey Rodger
She drags Wayward Hollow's grumpiest café owner into running a Christmas gingerbread booth — and into her heart.
11 tropes in common

Whisky Business
Elliot Fletcher
A faded actress returns to her Scottish island home — and finds a grumpy distiller living in her inheritance.
10 tropes in common

Ember Meadow
Abigail Morgan
A no-dating rule meets an old flame next door — and a haunted cabin with a mind of its own.
9 tropes in common

Only By Your Touch
Catherine Anderson
A small-town outcast with a healing touch finds his own wounds mended by a brave single mother.
9 tropes in common

Fangirl Down
Tessa Bailey
His only fan becomes his caddy — and the grumpy golfer discovers she's the real prize.
9 tropes in common

Walk This Way: a grumpy sunshine romance set on a hike in the Scottish Highlands
Lexi Vale
A heartbroken city girl and a brooding Scotsman clash — then spark — on a Highland hiking trail.
11 tropes in common

Whiskey Business
Willow Sanders
A sunshine woman won't stop knocking until a grumpy recluse opens his distillery — and his heart.
9 tropes in common

All Rhodes Lead Here
Mariana Zapata
A heartbroken woman hides in a mountain town — and slowly melts her grumpy landlord's walls.
10 tropes in common

Simply Irresistible (Lucky Harbor, #1)
Jill Shalvis
Three sisters return to a sleepy coastal town to fix a crumbling inn — and find love along the way.
9 tropes in common

Wild Open Hearts
Kathryn Nolan
A grumpy ex-biker and a bubbly vegan billionaire fake a partnership — and combust for real.
10 tropes in common

Late Bloomer
Mazey Eddings
A lottery winner buys a flower farm for solitude — but the furious woman who claims she owns it won't leave.
10 tropes in common

Secretly Yours
Tessa Bailey
She left a drunken secret admirer letter for the grumpy professor who just hired her to tend his gardens.
9 tropes in common

A Cowboy in Essex
Lesley Jones
A fashionable Essex blogger crash-lands into a Colorado cowboy's life during a snowstorm — and neither survives unscathe
10 tropes in common

The Orc's Sweetheart: A Small Town Monster Romance
Elle Sterling
A cottagecore dreamer moves to an island town and falls for the grumpy orc whose quiet life she's disrupted.
10 tropes in common

Big Duke Energy: A Grumpy/Sunshine Standalone Romantic Comedy
Emma Hart
A blocked romance author rents a duke's estate — and accidentally writes him as her next spicy hero.
11 tropes in common

Instant Attraction (Wilder, #1)
Jill Shalvis
A by-the-book accountant takes a wild job at an adventure company — and wakes up to find the brooding owner in her cabin
8 tropes in common

And One Last Thing ...
Molly Harper
After blasting her cheating husband in a mass email, a scorned woman hides at a lake cabin — and meets her grumpy next-d
10 tropes in common
