Books like 'Hard Lessons'
Readers who enjoyed Hard Lessons by K.G. Reuss also liked the following books featuring the same tropes, story themes, relationship dynamics and character types.
contemporary romance small town mystery dark steamy age-gap alpha-mc university suspense
-
Paint It All Red by S.T. Abby
Rated: 4.57 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsHush, little baby, don't say a word... Will Logan choose them? Or will we watch them burn together? It's time to fuck with their minds. It's time to finish it all. It's time to paint it all red... Monsters don't usually wish for happily-ever-afters. **BE WARNED: Some descriptions are vivid and can be a trigger for sensitive readers... -
All the Lies by S.T. Abby
Rated: 4.54 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsTo understand the monsters in the world, you have to get inside their heads. It's a dangerous place to be, especially when you start to empathize and lose your own sense of morality.But that's never happened to me...I've never felt conflicted on any case. Right is right and wrong is wrong. It's simple. Black and white. There's no such thing as a gray area.But fuck this case... -
Highball Rush by Claire Kingsley, Lucy Score
Rated: 4.60 of 5 stars · 20 ratingsRough around the edges Gibson Bodine takes his lone wolf image seriously. The tough guy. The bad boy. Gibson lives alone. Works alone. He doesn’t do love. And he wouldn’t have it any other way. In Bootleg Springs—home of moonshine and the nosiest neighbors in West Virginia—secrets don’t keep forever... -
Gin Fling by Lucy Score, Claire Kingsley
Rated: 4.61 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsA slow grin spread across his face and I had to turn away from the wattage. It was like staring at the sun. The handsome sun that was making my core temperature rise and causing a hormone dump in my brain. — Shelby Thompson Personal trainer Jonah Bodine discovers more than he bargained for with the half-siblings he didn’t know he had in small-town West Virginia... -
-
Scarlet Angel by S.T. Abby
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsTo kill a monster, you have to be twice as monstrous. To love a monster, you have to share your soul...Logan Bennett makes me want to have a future not tainted by the constant hunger for revenge. Doesn't mean I can stop. Doesn't mean I want to stop. It just means I want more...one day... -
Rewriting the Stars by Claire Kingsley
Rated: 4.58 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsFirefighter Levi Bailey is used to being alone. Not that he’s lonely. How could he be, with a band of unruly brothers, and their wives and growing families. Maybe he’s the odd man out. The one brother who isn’t destined to be with his soulmate.Besides, he has her.She’s his Juliet, the only woman in the world he can’t ever have. To an outsider, it probably seems crazy... -
Exodus by Kate Stewart
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 37 ratingsCan you live a lie?It’s a ghost town, this place that haunts me, the one that made me.It’s clear to me that I’ll never outgrow Triple Falls or outlive the time I spenthere.I can still feel them all, my boys of summer.Even when I’d sensed the danger, I gave in.I didn’t heed a single warning. I let my sickness, my love, both rule and ruinme... -
Bohemian by Kathryn Nolan
Rated: 4.60 of 5 stars · 15 ratingsTwo souls, drawn together beneath a fierce sky… Calvin Ellis’s neat and orderly life is shattered when his grandfather dies, leaving him ownership of a quirky bookstore in Big Sur, California. The Mad Ones: once a place famous for poetry readings and bohemian rebellion, it now teeters on the brink of financial ruin... -
The Mercy of Promise by T.S. Joyce
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsSomething big is going on in this town.Police officer Darren Callaghan has been hunting for the cause of a burned mountain on the outskirts of Leadville, Colorado, but when a woman goes missing, he can’t help the feeling that they are connected somehow. A call comes in that some fences have been cut, and he finds a ragtag group of trespassers is squatting on some abandoned land outside of town... -
The Edge of Promise by T.S. Joyce
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsHell has felt like home lately to Naomi Dunbar, but her Maker is about to change everything. She has a secret crush on the man with the glowing gold eyes who saved her life, and gave her the gift of the wolf, but he is distant, and getting quieter by the day. The handsome, dominant Alpha is focused on healing her from the inside out, but it seems like it’s draining him to do it... -
Bourbon Bliss by Claire Kingsley, Lucy Score
Rated: 4.47 of 5 stars · 19 ratings“I didn’t reply. I couldn’t. Seeing this man’s naked private parts had not rendered me speechless but watching him lick ice cream off his finger had.” – June Tucker June Tucker doesn’t understand people. Numbers, data, and statistics? Those make sense. People? Not so much. In a town of Friday night fighters and moonshine-swilling line dancers, she’s the odd duck. And that suits her just fine... -
Her Shadows, His Secrets by C.C. Monroe
Rated: 4.70 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHannaI hid in the shadows all my life. That was where I felt I belonged the most, because I was ridiculed by the ones I loved, by society’s view of women like me.But now I believe someone is out to hurt me, yet I don’t know who it could be. I didn’t think I had anyone to fear, except for in the shadows, the same ones that used to keep me safe... -
Until Susan by C.P. Smith
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFrom the world of NYT and USA Today bestselling author, Aurora Rose Reynolds. See how the Mayson clan began. You've read their sons' stories, now it's James and Susan's turn. Experience the boom all over again in this action-packed novella of insta-love and suspense from Author CP Smith... -
Veils: A Killers Novel Book 4 (The Killers) by Brynne Asher
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 16 ratings“Give me a memory, Noah.” That’s what she said … the woman who rendered me stupid in the shadows at a wedding reception. I did everything I could to figure her out. She wore more veils of armor than I’ve seen in a lifetime. On the outside, she was strong and self-assured. But within those beautiful, guarded blues? She was laced with vulnerability and grief. We had one night... -
-
Lady Luck by Kristen Ashley
Rated: 4.34 of 5 stars · 29 ratingsTy Walker was wrongly imprisoned and for the five years he was inside, he honed his plan so when he gets out, he has nothing but vengeance on his mind.But then he walks straight to stylish, leggy, beautiful, goofy Lexie Berry and he suddenly has something else to think about... -
What He Is Now by T.S. Joyce
Rated: 4.58 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsNash Hudson has done it.After years of being a bachelor werewolf, the Second of the Pack has finally used his one Turn to save the life of a quirky beauty he spent a fun night with, and now reality is setting in. She survived it. She really survived it, and now he and Summer have to figure out where they belong in each other’s lives... -
The Finish Line by Kate Stewart
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 34 ratingsSecrets and Lies...I’ve lived the entirety of my life wrapped up in subterfuge for one purpose—revenge.Through the years, I lived more as an enigma than a man.For so long, I denied I had a beating heart of my own. Until her. Until she unearthed the starving vessel inside, forced me to acknowledge it, forced me to understand that I’m capable of bleeding the same as any other.For that, we paid... -
Fractured Sky by Catherine Cowles
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 19 ratingsDamaged. Broken. Destroyed. I’ve heard it all. A single moment of trusting the wrong person shattered my life into pieces, and my family has never looked at me the same. It’s impossible to convince them that I’m anything more than the broken girl they rescued all those years ago.Until I meet him.Ramsey’s grumpy demeanor and menacing scowl scare most of the world away. But not me... -
King Me by Lucy Lennox
Rated: 4.44 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFalcon: Three years ago I arrived at the scene of an art heist to find Kingston Wilde tied to a radiator, claiming to be an innocent bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time. It was only later I learned he was actually, the elusive art thief I’d been tracking for years. And I was the one who’d let him sweet-talk his way out of my grasp... -
Surrender to Me by Kelly Elliott
Rated: 4.60 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsArabella Adams was the one woman I would have laid my life down for, no matter the circumstance, because that’s what you would do for your soulmate. But when she broke up with me our senior year of college—for no reason or explanation at all—my world as I knew it fell completely apart... -
10-Code by Freya Barker
Rated: 4.60 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAs a forty-one-year-old mother of three boys, working two jobs, Marya Berger doesn’t have the time or energy to consider a relationship. Especially after a lifetime of poor choices in the romance department. But when the disappearance of a young boy strikes a little too close to home, and a younger man she’s tried to ignore offers his help, she doesn’t stand in the way... -
The Outskirts by T.M. Frazier
Rated: 4.39 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsSawyer wants a life of her own. Finn wants to forget he ever had one. After a tragedy, Finn Hollis escapes into the swamp to be alone. That is until Sawyer Dixon shows up, all SCORCHING HOT innocence, claiming she owns the land less than fifty feet from his front door. Sawyer gets under his SKIN, but even worse? She makes him CRAVE things... -
Ink's Whirlwind by Ciara St. James
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsAs Ink watched his president fall for a woman, he’s thrilled to realize that he’s sure he’s found his too. Even better news is the two women are best friends. Everything looks to be perfect. Or it does until Ink realizes Alisse isn’t willing to give him the time of day.He’s spent months trying to get her to give him a chance... -
Deacon by Kristen Ashley
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 26 ratingsDeacon has an ugly history, a history that broke him, leaving him a ghost of a man. Out of necessity, he left the normal world to descend into the criminal world and found he fit. So he stayed. Cold as ice and living off the grid, Deacon has no intention to connect, not with anyone. Then he returns to some remote cabins in the Colorado Mountains and finds they have new owners... -
-
Booted by Pam Godwin
Rated: 4.43 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsThe night I’m released from prison, she’s in my bed.It’s been eight years since I touched a woman, and the Native American beauty is half-dressed, beaten, bruised, and devastatingly exquisite.We’re toxic together, but we want the same things. Blood. Vengeance.Violent relief in a warm body.Beneath her touch, I’m alive.Against her skin, I’m redeemed.Buried inside her, I forget the past... -
Fallen Jester by Devney Perry
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFrom USA Today Bestselling Author Devney Perry comes a small town, surprise pregnancy romance. Leo Winter loves his life. He works when he needs money. He rides when he craves freedom. He frequents the local bar when he wants a good time. The Tin Gypsies might be a memory, but the bachelor life he lived with his motorcycle club still suits him fine... -
Keep This Promise by Corinne Michaels
Rated: 4.38 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsI am about to lose everything.My home. My name. My future.My husband was involved in something that could cost us our lives, and on his deathbed, he demands my daughter and I flee Britain. I had no idea he found her biological father, Holden James, in Rose Canyon, and that’s where we’d start over.The moment we see each other, feelings I’d long forgotten rush over me... -
Bang Switch by Lani Lynn Vale
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsLachlan Downy was a lover, not a fighter. Okay, he wouldn't lie, he was a fighter, too. But nobody had to know that. Especially not Memphis Tennessee Conner and her stuffy attitude when it came to cops and ‘men like him.’ Memphis knew cops. Her daddy was a cop. He was also the president of a motorcycle club... -
Fear the Beard by Lani Lynn Vale
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsTally is a twenty-year-old single mother struggling to finish nursing school. Has she made mistakes in life? Sure, but her daughter isn’t one of them. She works hard, she studies even harder, and she’s only a few weeks away from graduating. She’s living her life the best she knows how when she witnesses a near miss motorcycle accident between a car and a biker... -
The Moth and the Flame by B.B. Reid
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsThey're the best of friends or the worst of friends. Neither one is letting go.THE FLAMEHere lies Louchana Valentine. She was a homeless, orphaned virgin.I never cared what my gravestone would say until I landed in deep with a powerful gangster. Lucky for me, my best friend happens to be ruthless too. I should feel guilty that he's forced to turn on the man who's been a father to him... -
Love Me by Ashley N. Rostek
Rated: 4.33 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsColt is my comfort.He’s the first one to hold my hand when life becomes hard.Creed is my support.He always has my back, is always ready to help me battle the world or my insecurities.Keelan is my joy.He effortlessly makes me laugh and exudes a light even when days become dark.Knox is my strength.He holds me together even when I want to break... -
Favorite Mistake by Lisa Suzanne
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe boy next door isn’t next door anymore.He’s in Vegas, preparing for the upcoming NFL season, and I’m still stuck in the small Midwestern town where we grew up.We should be together, but people wanted us apart. They won. Secrets are uncovered and lives are forever torn apart.Maybe it was a mistake to try to recapture what we once had after everything we’d been through... -
Honest Mistake by Lisa Suzanne
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsHe’s not the boy next door anymore, and I’m not the girl I used to be, either.His life is in the spotlight as one of the most popular professional football players on the Vegas Aces, while I can’t afford to have my secrets exposed. But as we work together on a project benefitting our small Midwestern town, we easily slip back into the friendship we once shared... -
Hidden Mistake by Lisa Suzanne
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsThe boy next door is back, and so am I.He’s spending his NFL off-season in our small Midwestern town after seven long years away, and I’m in town for different reasons.Memories shift to reality as we find ourselves in the place where we first fell in love. We’re different people now, but I’m falling fast and hard for the man he is now.But he’s married... -
-
Battles of the Broken by Anne Malcom
Rated: 4.42 of 5 stars · 12 ratingsSouls are interesting things. Not something you can prove you possess. Not something that can be measured, like a heartbeat. But something that can be destroyed by the absence of a heartbeat. No, you cannot prove you possess a soul. But once that soul dies, there doesn't need to be proof that you don't have one. Once that blackened pit opens inside you, the world can see it... -
The Price Of Scandal by Lucy Score
Rated: 4.29 of 5 stars · 21 ratings“I’m the fixer your board hired to clean up your mess.” “So you show up here, break into my house, and take a bath?” Emily Stanton’s perfect life just became a disaster. She has a trust fund brother looking for a handout, a father who is more board member than dad, and a mother who thinks she should give up on this whole billionaire CEO thing and meet a man with a pre-nup and a yacht... -
Perfect Wreckage (The Wrecked Series) by Catherine Cowles
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsMy past taught me to play it safe.To stay far away from handsome men who promised it all.My life was good without them. Stable, secure, predictable. But one kiss showed me that I’d been playing it safe for far too long.One night, and all I wanted was more of his wildfire.One challenge and my carefully constructed walls tumbled down... -
Buckled by Pam Godwin
Rated: 4.36 of 5 stars · 14 ratingsI protect what’s mine. The ranch, my family, our buried secrets. Nothing will stop me from reassembling the life that went terribly wrong. Not the law. Not our enemies. Not even Maybe Quinn. The gorgeous, quarrelsome journalist shouldn’t have meddled. I shouldn’t have let her stay. But she’s hiding something in those deceptive blue eyes... -
Fighter by S. Massery
Rated: 4.67 of 5 stars · 6 ratingsThey branded me as a thief – but with everything at stake, they’ll soon find out I’m a fighter.Sterling Falls is a dark, gothic reverse harem romance series with enemies to lovers, romantic suspense, and new adult themes. Fighter is book 2 in the Sterling Falls Series and a continuation of Thief - it is not a standalone... -
There with You by Samantha Young
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsFor Regan Penhaligon, there’s no better place to run to than the exclusive Ardnoch Estate in the remote Scottish Highlands. Her impulsive behavior has finally caught up with her and Regan’s visit with her sister, Robyn, is an opportunity to hide from someone who has grown dangerously obsessed with her... -
Body and Soul by Lucy Lennox, Sloane Kennedy
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsOz: Escaping the international modeling scene to design my own fashion collection is the first step to shucking my bobble-headed supermodel reputation and proving to the world I’m more than just a pretty face. But the minute I have to accept roadside help from the sexy man next door, I feel like the airhead people think I am... -
Before This Ends by Aurora Rose Reynolds
Rated: 4.31 of 5 stars · 16 ratingsMiles Thatcher and I would not have gotten together if my life had gone according to plan.Recently single with her whole life up in the air, Emma Abate knows that getting into any kind of relationship, is a bad idea. Especially when the man she finds herself drawn to is Miles Thatcher, a single father, and a man that seems determined to break down every barricade she places between them... -
Waking Olivia by Elizabeth O'Roark
Rated: 4.23 of 5 stars · 26 ratings"That girl isn't just trouble of the not-a-team-player, not-a-reliable-runner variety. She's trouble of the devious, manipulative, too-f***ing-hot-for-her-own good variety. She's the kind of girl who causes trouble merely by existing, and then makes sure to cause more. And the last thing I need right now is more trouble."A failing farm.His father’s debt.And a struggling college track team... -
After the Fall by Giana Darling
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsI was settin’ up to live a good life, the kinda life I’d fought hard to deserve. With a good woman––the best woman––at my side, a degree under my belt, and the whole world at my feet, I was livin’ the kinda happily ever after usually denied the rebellious and the criminal. I’d turned my back on that kinda life, thinkin’ I needed that clean, wholesome kinda happy... -
-
Give Me Love by Corinne Michaels
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsNew York Times best-selling author Corinne Michaels brings the second book in the Rose Canyon series with this small-town second-chance romance.I am in the most inconvenient marriage of convenience ever. What started out as two friends who wanted to make their military lives easier turned into a mess. Why? Because I stupidly fell in love with my husband... -
Outlaw's Promise by Helena Newbury
Rated: 4.28 of 5 stars · 18 ratingsShe was just a kid when she found me lying injured beside the road and saved my life. I promised her I'd return if she ever needed me. Twelve years later, I answer the phone and hear her voice: a biker gang's about to sell her to the highest bidder. Like hell they are! I tear the place apart and we roar off on my Harley.. -
Fearless by Tracy Lorraine
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsAn all-new and addictive dark, why-choose, captive romance from the USA Today & Wall Street Journal bestselling author, Tracy Lorraine.You know what they say about things that are too good to be true…We might have been in a safe house recovering, but we were in danger, and still the four of us found a way to be together.We’d even managed to find something that I never thought possible.Peace... -
Unholy Soul by Andi Rhodes, Lacy Rose
Rated: 4.50 of 5 stars · 8 ratingsThere isn’t a person in the world who hasn’t committed a sin. Some sins are worse than others, but seven of them are deadly. But those seven worst of the worst? They’re what drive Saints Purgatory MC to keep fighting... -
Undeniable by C.A. Harms
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsSometimes in life you are forced to do things you may not agree with. Family meant everything to Jude Calvert. He would do whatever it took to keep them safe and provide for them no matter what it took to make that happen. Even if that meant putting his own safety at risk, he had no other choice. Callie Raine has always felt a heavy attraction toward Jude. He was fascinating... -
No Mistake by Lisa Suzanne
Rated: 4.40 of 5 stars · 10 ratingsAll I want is my happy ending with the boy next door.Every time we get close, something threatens to break us. Half-sisters, town gossips, and jealous exes throw punch after punch, but we hold on tight to each other as we attempt to navigate the chaos.With his life in the spotlight as a professional football player, I start to feel like it might always be like this...
Or - use our amazing romance book finder to get recommendations based on your favorite content tropes and themes. Mix and match at will.