Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 980 short novels in Sweet Romance
I never thought borrowing a tablet at midnight would change the course of my whole summer. "Elora, you can use mine," Malcolm said before my phone fell apart. "Leave it on the table when you're done." "Thank you," I whispered, clutching the slim device like it might fly away. I had to text someone—someone I had only known behind a screen. We had been chatting in that creative group all semester, and the idea of finally meeting made my stomach flip. I tapped "record" and spoke into his...
I never wanted drama. I wanted followers and a decent foundation routine. Instead, I got a whole viral mess and a very jealous movie star. "You really think you can handle a duo with me?" Remy asked through the game mic, his voice low and amused. "I'll try not to die in front of twenty thousand people," I told him, fingers slipping on the mouse. "No promises." "I'm KAM in-game, but you can call me—" He laughed, and the chat erupted. "—call me Remy." "I already have a nickname for...
I am Clementine Vega. I have a face some people called harmless when I was a child, a smile that persuaded kings to blink and fools to confess. I have used that face like a weapon and like a shield, but I never used it on Galen Zimmerman to get what I wanted. Not at first. Not on purpose. "Miss Vega, please come back with me," Crew Song said, his voice flat and brittle as the mountain air. "Noooo," I crooned, tilting my head like a fox in late autumn. "I—don't—want—to." "Clementine,"...
I was sewing when the gossip arrived. The needle slid through, and I pricked my finger—small, bright pain—and a drop of blood landed on the embroidered pair of ducks I was finishing. "Those are ducks?" Izabella laughed from the doorway. "You call those ducks, Margarete? They'll call them anything if it makes you worry." "They're mandarin ducks," I said, and I meant it. I turned, pinning the hem with a small, wounded dignity. "Get out. I'll break off with her for two days." Izabella...
I never planned to fall for the nicest face in our building. "My feet are wearing new clothes today," I told my parents as I barreled out the room with my slippers on the wrong feet. "Your left is on the right," my mother laughed from the sofa. "Come show them." I froze halfway down the hall. On the sofa between my parents sat a person who shouldn't be there—Avery Hahn, the kind of campus legend who makes corridors thin and blurs the rest of the world. "Avery?" I managed. "What are...
I never thought a single exam season could change the map of my small life so completely. "It’s random seating today," the invigilator announced. "Draw your seats." I pulled my ticket like the rest of the class and ended up in the middle of the room, surrounded by strangers, except for one empty chair on my left. "Maybe it's the universe," I muttered. Someone laughed softly beside me. "You're looking the wrong way," he said. I looked up and bumped straight into eyes that had a...
Midnight rain stitched the city into silver threads. I stepped out of the night and into the bar where the light smelled like perfume and regret. My phone buzzed. Stella had sent me a message. “Galilea, thank you again. Just a heads-up.” A photo attached. I looked at the photo. A woman with a loud smile sat on Nico’s lap, their eyes bright with an easy hunger. I texted back one word: “Why?” Stella answered with a laughing emoji and two words: “Entertainment value.” I didn’t wait for...
I never thought a bowl of soup could decide how long I live. "I told you not to come back," I said to the helmet of steam rising from the table. The steam answered only with the smell of chili and bone. My name is Griffin Farley. People used to call me easygoing. I used to think life answered to calendars and job offers, not to old legends or to the way a cook ladled oil into a pot. "Griffin," she said as if the word could thin the air, "don't be dramatic." She—Gia Perrin—sat across...
I remember the snow the first time he knelt, the cold whitening everything like a mute witness. I remember the cheap silver shoe on his thin hand, the way I lifted my foot and felt the brittle bone under the skin. I remember his eyes — a black, cold thing that did not belong to a boy; it belonged to a thing that would never forget. "Stand up," I said then, stupid with fifteen-year-old certainty. "You don't have to be ashamed here." He did not move at once. His jaw was set. His voice came...
I first saw him as a white blur under a string of red lanterns, six years old and wild with curiosity. "Look, Mom," I said, tugging her sleeve. "Can I go see that cat?" "You can't," she said. "That's the village madwoman's cat." "It isn't mad," I whispered. "It looked at me like it was waiting." That night, the lantern light painted the old well orange. An old woman sat there as she always had, a cat in her lap, a flag-like qipao on her thin shoulders. Everyone in our town called...
I was born under a snow that would not stop. On the day the courtyard glazed white and every roof wore the same cold hush, Remy Curtis came to my gate and said he would break our betrothal. "I will not marry you," he told me simply, as if the words were a belt he tightened and left on the threshold. I stood on the portico with my hair half-looped, a simple birthday cap pinning flakes to its rim. He looked like a painting—tall, battle-weathered at the edges but clean in a way that made him...
I never expected an airport loudspeaker to rewrite my life. "Hudson Hughes, I'm pregnant. If you walk away, I'll make sure your son calls someone else 'dad,'" I blurted into the microphone, and then I stood there, heart pounding like a trapped bird, waiting. People around me froze. Some laughed, some whispered, a few reached for their phones. I had no plan. I had only one idea: force him to come back. "Juana?" Apollo Duffy's voice cracked next to me. "If you don't get on the plane—you...
I remember the first day I stepped out of the mountain cave. I was small, fourteen by human counting, and full of the kind of confidence that only a cat born to unusual blood can have. "I can do whatever I want," I told the wind as I padded down the path. "You're reckless," my mother had said before she left for the lowlands. "Don't get yourself killed. Wait for us." "Don't worry." I flicked my tail and took the road anyway. I had a map in my head of my parents' laughter, the smell...
I woke up in someone else's skin and found a man bleeding on a stone like a broken statue. "Who are you?" he rasped when I first opened my eyes. His voice was silk and steel, and it landed on me like a verdict. "I—" I swallowed dust and the taste of someone else's fear. "My name is Jessalyn." He spat, a thin ribbon of blood, and pushed my hand away. "Roll away from me." "I didn't do anything," I said, and I meant it. My head still hummed with the echo of another life—metal birds and...
I always thought I knew the shape of my life, like a map drawn in ink. "Dimitri," I said once when I was small and believeable, "stay with me." He smiled and ruffled my hair. "I will, Anna." He kept his promise for years. When my father was dying, he put me in Dimitri Price's care. "Take her," he said, and left like he had left everything else—quiet and decisive. I grew up with that kindness stitched into my days. He was eight years older than me. He was careful, polite, perfect...
I never expected a wedding to be a bank transfer and a signature. "I'll sign the papers," my father said, "and you'll marry into that family. Three million—it's enough to save the company." "I know." I tried to make my voice steady. "It's only business." "Remember," my mother whispered in the kitchen as I packed, "be the good wife. If you play your part, everything will be fine." I held my bag and thought of the months of bills, the empty company account numbers, the calls from...
I never thought a single morning could hold so many small explosions. "You're hurting me," he said, low and sudden. I jerked back, my backside hitting the edge of the conference table hard enough to make the room swim. "What are you doing, Fabian?" I snapped. "Let go." Fabian Abbott's fingers lingered at my forearm like an accusation. He blinked, and for a beat I saw the man I thought I had loved—the man who had been serious and distant and the reason I had learned to read silence like...
Half an hour ago, for the sake of face, I sent my ex a photo of my boss with five words: "My husband." I never thought the photo would be projected onto the meeting room screen. I never thought my chat with Enzo would open in front of fifty senior staff members. I never thought everyone would go silent and look at me like I was a new kind of animal on display. "I—" I tried to speak, but the room closed in. The CEO's face on the screen was handsome and cold. The real Lincoln Falk sat...
I woke up inside someone else's life because I fell asleep in the library and the book I had been curled against had been even stranger than usual. "I thought I was napping," I told the thin slat of light at the window. "Apparently I napped into a plot." Mae Ford pushed the gauze aside and peered at me. "Miss, if you are done with dreams, breakfast is ready," she said. "I am done," I lied, sitting up too quickly. "Where am I?" "You are where you belong, Miss Jana," Mae said, with...
I woke to clauses being read like a bad joke. "You admit you're the illegitimate daughter and hand over the title to Harper," someone said. "One year after marriage, you will 'donate' your heart to Harper without question," another voice recited. "You shall not appear publicly as the family's mistress, nor make the marriage a spectacle," a third voice added. I blinked at the ceiling and saw Laurent Donovan's eyes boring into me—cold, contemptuous, like he'd been carved out of...
