Free Grumpy Sunshine & Slow Burn Novels — read online
He glowers; she glows. Grumpy-sunshine romance pairs an ice-cold heart with someone constitutionally incapable of leaving it alone — and then lets the thaw take its sweet time. These are our best slow burns: stolen glances across the office, kindness that lands like an attack, and the single devastating chapter where the grump finally smiles and means it.
Free to the last chapter
-
My Stepfather and His Friends
Tessa hears her stepfather and his three oldest friends talking about her through the thin den wall. She walks in, takes their whiskey and tells them to say it to her face.
dramatic · contemporary · forbidden love
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
At a Charity Auction, My Husband Sold My Best Friend the Seven Days He Promised Me
Bethany's husband promised her seven days to move and open her new shop. At a charity gala her best friend buys those exact seven days, and he walks onstage with a packed bag while two pink lines sit in her purse.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Merciless Contract: The Syndicate's Unwanted Wife
On her eighteenth birthday Gemma Albertini is traded to the Sandrelli syndicate's heir, who whispers that she is a rat he will throw back into the gutter in three years. He has no idea she was sent to the altar to die by his hand.
contemporary · female lead · dark romance
32 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Five of Us at Christmas, But They Only Got Four Cookies
Her husband ordered custom Christmas cookies for the five of us, and Joanna finds four names in the box and a note that calls her the help. She walks out and dials a number she has carried for five years.
contemporary · secret parentage · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
On Halloween, My Husband Chose Her Family Over Ours
At her own Halloween party, seven months pregnant in a red superhero suit, she watches her husband walk in with her friend on his arm and announce his real family. She throws him out in front of every guest.
contemporary · female lead · romance
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
They Called Me Barren. They Picked the Wrong Wife
On Christmas Eve her mother-in-law toasts her husband's ex-girlfriend's baby at Maggie's own table. For five years the Rowans called Maggie barren and she kept her husband's secret. Tonight she stops.
dramatic · contemporary · forbidden love
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
I Secretly Read Every Love Letter He Wrote Me, Then He Stopped Writing Them
For three years Miles Ferris slid a letter into Clara Mercer's campus mailbox, and for three years she read every one in secret and let the whole college believe she hated him. Then he wrote her one last line, and she has sixteen days before he leaves the country.
contemporary · misunderstanding · female lead
32 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Sent the Helicopter for Her Dog
My grandmother died in my arms on a burning road, and my husband's rescue helicopter was four minutes away. He had sent it for his first love's dog.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Kept Me Secret Seven Years, Then Proposed to Her
For seven years the boy next door loved me in secret and never said it out loud. Then he stood up at a garden party and proposed to my best friend.
contemporary · secret parentage · female lead
32 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
They Fought Over Who Had to Keep Me
On her eighteenth birthday, Lacey's divorced parents argue over which of them is stuck with her while nobody sings. She walks out to her late grandmother's building, where the landlord has been waiting to keep her for real.
contemporary · female lead · age gap
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
The Unsent Appeal
Rose comes home from a work trip with gifts and finds the key won't turn: her family moved without telling her. The man who opens the door is the one she pleaded guilty to hitting, and the crime was never hers.
contemporary · female lead · redemption arc
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Selfish Sister: A Second Chance at Retribution?
Maeve was murdered by the sister she raised. Reborn on the day they chose their powers, she lets Britt take the Amplify System, takes Shrink for herself, and vanishes into a hidden miniature farm before five years of apocalyptic rain.
dramatic · contemporary · survival
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Cancelled Our Future for Her Anxiety
A week before their flight to London, Corinne overhears her boyfriend of three years explain how he cancelled his ticket to follow his childhood friend to Arizona, and how he put Corinne's number on his booking so she would follow him there. She books nothing and walks away.
contemporary · female lead · romance
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Husband Told His Ex in French I'd Never Find Out
For eight years her husband's rich friends have mocked Aimée's Cajun French at her own dinner table, sure the girl from the bayou can't follow it. She understands every word, including the one he says about Nantucket, and she is eight weeks pregnant.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Played Husband for Her Dare, So I Left Carrying His Baby
Libby Sutter was five weeks pregnant after four years of failed treatment when she heard her husband agree to marry his oldest friend Delia for a dare. She walked out, and she kept the baby secret.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Guess Who Didn't Show Up to My Wedding
Three days before her wedding, Willa finds the real family group chat, where her fiancé, her brothers and her adopted sister are laughing about the venue they changed without telling her. She takes one suitcase and calls the vineyard that was never booked.
contemporary · female lead · jilted-at-altar
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Gave His Female Best Friend My 5th Anniversary Trip, Then Bet I Wouldn't Leave
Leah's husband hands his female best friend her seat on their fifth-anniversary trip, then bets his friends five hundred dollars that she will still drive them to the airport. She is six weeks pregnant, and she has already booked her sister's spare room.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Husband Framed Me for His Mistress's Crash
Laurel Kershaw wakes up in handcuffs behind the wheel of her husband's car, with a dead man in the road and his mistress long gone. The District Attorney thinks a grieving wife on sleeping pills will take the fall. He forgot she used to be the best defense lawyer in the county.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
While He Built Her Home
Valerie Blakely has a positive pregnancy test in her purse when her best friend wins the seven days her husband promised to her store move. Then she learns who paid for the bid.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
After 20 Years, My Husband Kissed Her 10 Minutes Before Our Daughter Graduated
Ten minutes before their daughter graduates, Sonya finds her husband kissing the best friend whose rent she has paid for fourteen months. She gives her daughter the ceremony, and then she takes everything back.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Don Husband Wants Two Wives
My husband the Don announced his second wedding over the Sunday lamb, in front of twenty capos. I put the dish down, walked out, and found his bride on my doorstep at midnight.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Husband Called Me His Mistress on Livestream
A streaming crew storms Leigh's Chicago apartment and a stranger wearing her husband's ring slaps her on camera. When he walks in and says he has never seen her, she lets him, because everything he owns belongs to her family.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
They Took His Inheritance, He Claimed Three Alpha Mates
Transmigrated into a doomed omega's body, Max has one chance to stop his stepmother and stepsister from stealing his fortune: turn the three alphas they sent to ruin him into his devoted mates. When the men learn Max was the one who saved them as children, their pursuit of Linda becomes a fierce fight to protect him instead.
romantic comedy · inheritance war · palace intrigue
40 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Let Them Think She Was His
A stranger walks onto a Wyoming ranch with a two-year-old who has her husband's gray eyes, and Abby Renner's husband doesn't say a word. He has been letting the whole county think the girl is his, and he has a reason he won't give.
contemporary · female lead · secret baby
32 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Next Time Away
At thirty-five weeks pregnant she lay alone at her high-risk scan while her husband posed for a Christmas photo at her fireplace with his brother's widow. The only man who came when she called was the one the town calls a killer.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Gave Me $18, So I Left Him with Nothing
Every first Sunday, my husband slid a gold scratch-off card across his mother's table and let his whole family watch me read my allowance. This month it said $18.40, and my four-year-old was sitting beside me.
contemporary · single parent · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
One Year to Live: I Traded My Toxic Family for Global Fame
Tegan died in a warehouse while her brothers carried her adopted sister out first. Reborn one year before that night, she keeps her survival-show spot, walks out of the family house, and lets a live broadcast make her famous.
dramatic · contemporary · survival
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
The 24th Time My Husband Chose Another Girl, We Left
Her husband missed twenty-three of their daughter's milestones, then walked onto the court on Senior Night wearing another girl's dad badge. This time, she and her daughter walked out.
contemporary · single parent · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Five of Us at Christmas, But They Only Ordered Four Cookies
The Christmas cookie box for five housemates arrives with four cookies, four names and a bakery note that says the fifth is moving out. She never said it, and someone she trusts did.
contemporary · female lead · found family
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
A Marriage Left Behind
Maura has paid for her husband's family Christmas for seven years. This year he asks her to stay home from it. She stops paying, and finds out whose pocket the money has really been going into.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Body Checked by My Straight Captain
Everyone on the Lakemont State hockey team knows their captain is straight. Then he falls asleep against the team's fastest, loneliest winger on the overnight bus, and he is wide awake.
contemporary · forbidden love · male lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Put Your Cock Inside and Stir to Relieve My Pain, My Gynecologist!
A virgin nurse with a cramp that only a toy can ease is caught red-handed by the gynecologist she has loved since she was nineteen, and he is her brother's best friend. He answers her confession with six words: take off your panties.
medical · dramatic · contemporary
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
You Are Not Rejecting Me
When her twin rejects her mate, Nia says she'll do the same with hers, the Alpha's younger brother. He walks in on the packed bags and says she's not rejecting him.
contemporary · female lead · small-town
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Took the Heirs' Emblems, Then Became Their King
A slack-off from another world wakes as the doomed Phoenix heir and must win three rival clan heirs' emblems before his scheming cousin steals everything. His new system copies their bloodline magic through the night, and the more he saves them, the harder they fight to be his consort.
misunderstanding · redemption arc · royal palace
32 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Stepsister Moved Into the Guest Room at Thirty
Robin Moreau, 31, is a night-shift ER nurse who has kept her mother's new stepdaughter at arm's length for two years. When Flora Hallam, 27, loses her apartment to a fire and moves into Robin's guest room, the first night ends in a hallway with a towel and nowhere to look.
femme x femme · contemporary · forbidden love
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Family Sold Me for Their Favourite Daughter
Seven years after her family sold her to traffickers, Willa walks out of a raid and finds the family she mourned waiting behind the police tape. They want her grateful, quiet and gone again.
dramatic · terminal-illness · contemporary
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
In The Storm, My Husband Locked Me Out And Chose Her
Gwendolyn reaches the airport curb four minutes late, eight months pregnant, in a nor'easter. Her husband locks the car door and drives off with the ex whose seat she lost. She stops waiting for him to choose her and walks away.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Four People, Four Tickets, They Treated Me Like a Shadow, So I Left Them Behind
Freya booked four seats to Rome for her husband's family and was told there was no seat for her. At the ticket counter, in front of a filming sister-in-law, she cancels all four.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
No More Husband, No More Son
Leona walks out of prison to a husband with roses, a son who will not speak and a mistress with her grandmother's brooch. She says no to all of it on camera, and then learns who really put her inside.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Fated to My Vampire Lord
Struck from her pack at twenty-two for never shifting, Willa Bellegarde walks across the circle and strikes a one-year fake courtship with the vampire heir who just refused her sister.
contemporary · female lead · fake relationship
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
He Traded Our Baby to Save His First Love
Geneva wakes at 3 a.m. to find her baby gone and her husband's signature on the consent form, while he sits three floors up holding his first love's hand. The form is timed before she ever reached the hospital.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
After the Tenth Bond Break: I Became the Luna of the Shadowfang Alpha
Her Alpha mate broke their bond nine times in public for his childhood friend and mended it each time. At the tenth she says don't, walks out, and answers the call of the man she once hid in a barn.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
The Mistress in the Room
Fran watches her husband kiss his pregnant mistress on a twelve-foot screen at their daughter's engagement dinner. She stands up in front of 140 guests and ends it, and the one man who walks toward her afterward is the brother Douglas cut off.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Excluded and Uninvited
Three men in orange jumpsuits drag Caleb into an alley while his girlfriend and best friend freeze at the mouth of it, doing nothing. He walks out of their lives, and then they tell everyone he ran.
dramatic · contemporary · love triangle
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
My Sister's Tears Stole My First Life, Not My Second
The day we split my father's fortune, my sister cried her way into the better envelope, just like she did in my first life. This time I tore both in half and asked for the one sum my brother prayed I'd never heard of.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Three Days After I Took In My Pregnant Sister, I Caught Her Sleeping With My Husband
Brianna gives her pregnant sister a bed, and three days later finds her in it with Preston. She does not scream. She films it, changes the locks and waits for the day the family finds out whose baby it really is.
contemporary · female lead · revenge
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
They Trashed My Books, So I Rewrote My Life
At her own housewarming, Natalie's fiancé pays eighty guests to strip her house while his best friend calls it a test. She walks out with her mother's sweater and comes back for everything.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Quitting this Family after Being Abandoned for Laughs
Her family bets on how fast she will beg when her fiance leaves her in a dead zone for a prank. Tara accepts a job on another continent, keeps the recording, and gives them one last party.
dramatic · contemporary · secret parentage
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
No Matter, You Don't Have to Wait for Me
Six years in, Justine Halstead finds out her fiance's closest circle has a place for a cat and none for her. She cancels the wedding by email and waits to see who notices the bride is gone.
dramatic · contemporary · female lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
-
Seven Days to Lose Your Husband
Every anniversary, Adeline made her husband watch her best friend play the husband, because his jealousy proved he loved her. This year Elias hands back his ring and his key and tells her the friend can keep his place for good.
dramatic · contemporary · male lead
24 chapters published
Completed · Every chapter free
Grumpy Sunshine & Slow Burn Novels
-
I Locked My Professor's Office Door, and Left Belonging to Three Men
Hannah Eberhardt, a graduate student in Ann Arbor, turns the lock on her advisor's office door with two of his colleagues watching, and tells all three men she wants them.
contemporary · forbidden love · female lead
24 chapters published
More tropes: Enemies to Lovers · Billionaire · Contract Marriage · Fake Relationship · Second Chance · Fated Mates · Secret Baby · Possessive Love · Rebirth & Revenge · Hidden Identity · Forbidden Love