25 of the Month's Best New Romance Books

Elyssa Friedland's "wickedly funny" debut novel, Love and Miss Communication, is about a lawyer who throws herself into work after a devastating breakup, only to encounter problems with her career as well. Reeling from both, she tosses her computer into a reservoir and vows to remain offline until her 35th birthday — and she is shocked to discover what's she's been missing out while stuck to a screen.

Out May 12

If you're in need of the perfect vacation read, look no further than Mary Kay Andrews's Beach Town. The story follows a frustrated movie scout who discovers the perfect location for her next film, but the formidable (and extremely attractive) town mayor has other plans.

Out May 19

An ordinary housewife has dreamt of the same man every night her whole life — a man who isn't her husband — and then she meets him in person. Bridget Foley's Hugo & Rose is an imaginative novel about what happens when fantasy and reality collide.

Out May 5

Nancy Thayer's The Guest Cottage follows a woman's story after her husband leaves her and she rents a cottage by the beach — but finds that another man has also rented the same cottage.

Booklist says that "Thayer obviously knows her Nantucket, and the strong sense of place makes this the perfect escapist book for the summer."

Out May 12

A young woman moves to Paris and is handed everything she thinks she needs to be happy by a her wealthy lover, but in Paris, He Said, she learns that happiness doesn't always lie where we think it does.

Out May 5

Sofie Callahan left town and Conner Burker two and half years ago without giving any reason for her departure. In Emma Hart's Dirty Past, the heartbroken man has questions for the woman he once loved, and he is demanding answers.

Out May 4

With intensity and "a seamless balance of wit and heartbreak," author Heidi Pitlor explores and exposes the darker and more difficult sides of a marriage in The Daylight Marriage.

Out May 5

Gia has a problem: her boyfriend dumped her the night of her prom. Her solution? Ask the cute stranger in the parking lot to pretend to be her boyfriend for the night. Kasie West's The Fill-In Boyfriend is a romantic YA novel about a young girl's quest to find love and the things she learns about herself in the process.

Out May 5

What do you do when your cousin says bringing a date to their wedding is mandatory? Well, you turn to Craigslist and go on a countrywide adventure to find a date, of course. At least, that's what Mike and Dave Stangle chronicle in their hilarious book, Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates: And a Thousand Cocktails.

Out May 19

Passion, heart-wrenching affairs, and high-society lifestyles all collide in Charles Dubow's Girl in the Moonlight, a novel about a man in love with an enchanting woman since childhood and their whirlwind romance.

Out May 12

Dear Carolina is a Southern story about strong women, difficult decisions, and what friendship and family really means.

Out May 5

A woman fleeing her abusive husband seeks refuge and serenity far away from the city she was in and finds a job as a home health aide to a man who was in a terrible car accident. In Mary McNear's Moonlight on Butternut Lake, two people marred by tragedy unexpectedly (and rather reluctantly) find comfort in one another.

Out May 12

Jen Lancaster wants you to know something important: mistakes are one thing; regrets are something else entirely. In her memoir I Regret Nothing, she shares her hilarious ride after creating and attempting to complete an ambitious bucket list.

Out May 5

After a life of feeling like she didn't fit in with her own family, Sydney meets the Chatham family and finally feels accepted. In bestselling author Sarah Dessen's Saint Anything, one girl meets people who love her for who she is — including a quiet boy who truly sees her first the first time in her life.

Out May 5

Spouses Lisa Grunwald and Stephen Adler, encouraged both by their own experiences and by love stories from others, created The Marriage Book, an anthology of advice, inspiration, and cautionary tales for married couples.

Out May 12

Nina Findlay has spent her life torn between two Italian brothers. She marries one and stays close with the other, until everything changes and Nina loses them both, then sets off to start over in Greece. In Andrea Gillies's The Enlightenment of Nina Findlay, a woman running from her past discovers a new future in unexpected places.

Out May 7

In Abigail Tarttelin's YA fiction Flick, a boy can't wait to get out of his small town and forgettable life . . . until a breath of fresh air in the form of a girl named Rainbow blows in.

Out May 19

The Bachelor's very own Chris Harrison penned The Perfect Letter, a fictional novel that hopeless romantics and people who believe in happy endings will love.

Out May 19

Love, Fortunes, and Other Disasters by Kimberly Karalius is an adventurous magical realism novel about a young girl whose fortune tells her she will never find love and her quest to prove fate wrong.

Out May 12

When one woman finds herself in the middle of an intense love triangle, she is haunted by her own decisions and her increasing feelings that something is not quite right. Set against the backdrop of a New York City on high alert for a serial killer murdering young, single women, Sophie Jaff's gothic romance novel Love Is Red will have you on the edge of your seat.

Out May 12

Francesca Zappia's highly anticipated novel Made You Up is not your average young adult fiction. The thought-provoking story is told by a schizophrenic (and therefore unreliable) narrator who must fight to discern what is real and what isn't. Are her friends, the boy she is falling in love with, and her new life real, or is it all in her imagination?

Out May 19

When a woman's husband dies tragically and she inherits his family home, she travels south to where he grew up. In Karen White's The Sound of Glass, buried secrets of domestic violence and complicated family relationships are unearthed.

Out May 12

The Predictions by Bianca Zander is a "magical novel of fate, love, mistakes, and finding your place in the world."

Out May 5

A murderous boy king takes a new bride each night, then kills them, but one woman plans to fight back. She enchants and beguiles him in order to survive, but in the process begins to realize that he is not the monster she thought he was. Renée Ahdieh's The Wrath and the Dawn is what Publishers Weekly calls "a potent page-turner of intrigue and romance."

Out May 12

Peter Nichols's The Rocks is a novel with two love stories that move backward in time, both set in the beautiful Mediterranean and built around a seaside resort and its endearing expatriate community.

Out May 26