The Reading Lounge: Love Stories
17 of my favorite bittersweet, forbidden, lost love, true love prevails stories
Admittedly, I'm a picky love story mood reader. I tend to (mostly) enjoy reading a mix of complicated love stories, with either bittersweet elements, forbidden love, and/or something deeper that drives the characters together-or apart. I don’t tend to read light and fluffy love stories, or those involving tropes of enemies or friends to lovers. It doesn’t matter to me how open door the story is…sometimes it’s fun to read a steamy love story and I’m including a couple of my favorites. Looking over my favorites I think that, while there may not be stellar writing in a couple of them, they were still absolute binge reads for me and sometimes that’s all I care about when I’m reading about love. Pull me in, make me invested in the characters journey, and then compel me to keep reading- often late into the night! All of these books delivered on that for me.
In the interest of time- we all have so much to read and consume daily right?!- I’m just going to list the books and provide a sentence or two about why I loved it. These are all books I rated 5 ⭐️. The links will take you directly to Bookshop.org where you can read the full synopsis.
Favorite Love Stories
The Stationary Shop by Marjan Kamali - a bittersweet love story set over decades. One of my very favorites.
Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen - I’m all about star crossed lovers so really this was a perfect book for me and the circus setting and time period just helped to enhance the story. The suspense was often palpable and I would definitely put this book in the unputdownable, page turning category. There’s a little bit of everything in this story…drama, thrills, suspense, heartbreak, and mystery