Quick reads you can finish in 10-30 minutes
Found 980 short novels in Sweet Romance
I have a rule about exes: never make them comfortable watching you suffer. I kept that rule in theory and then discovered how much better it is to watch them get uncomfortable instead. "I can't believe he cheated on you," Audrey shouted into my ear over the bar's music as she poked my shoulder. "Neither can I," I hiccupped, trying to sound tougher than I felt. "Apparently I'm very easy to replace." "You are not replaceable," Audrey said. "You're Kaede Barrett. You're...
I found Foster D'Angelo when I could not even read a single letter. You would think the story would start with a palace, or with me born under a red curtain, or with banners and silk and some title stitched into my bones. "I raised the ninth prince" — people always expect that grand beginning. But I was a butcher's daughter. My name is Elise Oliveira. I grew up with knives and wet stalls and a house that smelled of blood and river mud. I learned how to gut a sheep before I learned how to...
I will tell everything in order, and I will not hide the small, painful things. My name is Kamiyah Mikhaylov. I grew up in the dim basement of Sterling Ziegler's house because my mother, Martha Lynch, worked there as a cleaner and my father, Vaughn Fisher, was their driver. I knew from the start that we lived in the shadow of money. I also knew, in the small bright corner of my chest, that I loved Sterling. "Can we be together?" I asked him once, sophomore year, with a stupid hope. "No...
I married a man for money. "I did it for the money," I told myself in the mirror the night before the wedding, as if repeating it would make the lie lighter. The gown fit too perfectly. The ring was heavy and warm on my finger. I tasted luxury and a thread of guilt, and then I tasted a pain so sudden none of it mattered anymore. I died on my wedding day. When I opened my eyes again, the air smelled different — cooking oil, wet concrete, cheap soap. My head throbbed with a kind of...
"I said I'm wearing a white sweater," I told the phone like I always did, because strangers deserve a little help when they're trying to find me. There was a pause on the other end. "I'm the Maserati," the young voice answered casually. I laughed, half to myself, half because I couldn't help it. "Right. Sure." The deep-blue Maserati stopped in the traffic like it belonged to the road. I took two steps back without thinking. The car looked like money looked if money could sit...
"I didn't mean to get involved." "I know." "I swear I didn't." "You always say that." I said the first line in the small campus grove because I didn't know what else to say. The sun stitched light through the leaves, and two boys were there with a canvas leaning against a tree. One of them was Arlo Cruz—Ines's brother—and the other was a quiet junior with thin glasses. "One person picks the scene, the other paints?" I asked, pointing at the easel. "Yeah," Arlo said with a...
I already knew Phoenix Archer had cheated on me. "I saw his comment," I said into my palm while I sat on the couch, the phone screen burning the pattern of the photo into my eyes. "Who?" Helena asked, peeking over the cup of tea she made for me. "Amelia Pfeiffer," I said. "She commented on his post about me peeling crayfish." Helena clicked her tongue. "What did she say?" "She wrote, 'Clip your nails, I can see the dirt.'" "Gross," Helena said. "I made him delete her," I...
"Splash!" I clawed at cold water and swallowed half a river. "Hold on!" a voice shouted. I kicked and my foot hit a rough hand. The hand grabbed my ankle. I slammed my heel into it, hard. "Let go!" I coughed. "Let go, you—" The hand let go. I shot up through the black water and gulped air like a dying thing. I spat river water. A man in dirty clothes dragged me onto the bank and didn't say a word. He bent, ripped the leech off my calf with the flat of his shoe, and then walked...
"Happy birthday. November twenty-third. I mean it." Nolan said it like a statement of law, not a plea. He folded the paper back in his hand and sat very still across from me at our small kitchen table. "I heard you," I said, and my voice sounded far away to my own ears. He nodded once and did not smile. I folded my dress into a suitcase, then folded the suitcase into a silence. We finished our last night together in a quiet that had nothing to do with peace. I found his old pilot...
I stood at the bus stop at five in the afternoon, my black backpack heavy on one shoulder. "This is my first day of high school," I told the empty air and the sky like an old postcard. "Don't be dramatic," I told myself immediately. "Just go in, sit down, survive." I had done well in middle school until physics arrived like a wall. Every time we opened that book, the letters lined up into hills I could not climb. Still, the entrance exam worked out, and here I was at Yunhua High, the...
I found the pregnancy test in the kitchen trash at midnight. "Two lines," I said, and my voice sounded small in our quiet apartment. Hugo was at the sink, elbows wet from dishwater. He turned slowly, like someone waking from sleep. "Is it yours?" he asked. "No," I said. "Whose—" He walked toward me the way he always crossed a room: quietly, without fuss. He smiled with a confusion that made my stomach flip. "It's ours," he said. I laughed because my first instinct was...
"I wrote it twice." "You wrote a love letter and dropped it twice?" Eri Mueller's laugh was a little too loud for the quiet corridor. "Once," I said. "I dropped it once. You don't have to point out my clumsiness to half the floor." "Sorry." Eri smiled, then turned serious. "Who did you write it to, Lailah?" "I—" My mouth went dry. "Dylan Flynn." Eri blinked. "Dylan Flynn?" "Yes." I hugged the envelope to my chest like it was the only brave thing I owned. "You mean Dylan...
I was taking a shower when TaoTao started clawing at the bathroom glass. "Shh—TaoTao, stop it," I said through the steam, wrapping my towel tighter. The scratching grew louder. The kind that makes your skin prickle. When I opened the door, there he was—sitting on the rug like a king, TaoTao on his lap, both of them squinting at me. "You're home early," I said. My voice came out flat and three octaves higher than usual. He didn't answer right away. Farrell Mustafa blinked at me like...
"Sister, are you avoiding me?" he closed in, step by step. I pressed my lower back against the pearwood rail of the corridor, breath caught like a bird. Below us the engagement party hummed with music and polite laughter; anyone who looked up could see us through the mezzanine balustrade. "You did that on purpose," I snapped. Galileo Horn smiled, not a warm smile. "Don't look at me like that, Ava. Don't you hate me?" "Or," he lifted one brow and let the corner of his mouth tilt in a...
I never expected to wake up in a neighbor's bedroom, pressed against someone who used to be the center of my life. I never expected to feel his throat roll under my lips and hear my name breathed like a prayer in the dark. "Juliet," he said, voice like velvet and hurt, "please, don't leave me." I answered before thinking. "Okay." The word floated between us and then became a splinter. Knox's eyes opened. The hazy, forgiving look vanished and was replaced by something sharp, colder than...
I woke up in a silk dress and almost did not recognize my own hands. "Camila?" Francis said, and then he laughed. "You laughed," I told him. "Right when you saw me." He put his hand over his mouth like a boy caught with a trick. "You look like Sabine," he admitted. "I almost called you by her name." "I am not Sabine," I said. "I am me." He blinked. "Right. Of course." "Why did you laugh?" I asked. He shrugged, still smiling. "Because you looked fragile. Because you wore...
I got two envelopes on my twenty-fourth birthday. One had glittery paper and a neat embossed name. The other smelled of disinfectant when I opened it in the bathroom and found the two words that made everything tilt. "They sent me his wedding invitation," I told the sink like it could help, and then, softer, "and my diagnosis." "You're joking," the voice on the phone said. "It's not a joke," I said. "One says 'congratulations' for a life that's beginning. The other says 'we're sorry'...
I woke to the smell of hotel soap and a stranger's breathing against my collarbone. "Morning," a husky voice said, and the word sounded like a small confession. I blinked at the ceiling, slow and careful, as if the room itself might be a trick. My mind crawled through the fog until it found a shape: Ismael curled against my chest, lashes heavy, his face softer than the last time I had let myself look at him properly. "You're still here," I said. My voice came out flat, as if I were...
I woke up at three in the morning to the buzz of a message. "Don't look at the moon tonight." I stared at my phone until my eyes watered because the sender's name made my heart clench. Lucas Mori. "Are you drunk?" I typed back, fingers trembling with a weird half-anger, half-curiosity. "It's been three years. Why are you texting me at three a.m.?" No reply. I rolled over and told myself to go back to sleep. I couldn't. The message sat in my head like a pebble in a shoe. I...
"I can't believe your username is 'InvincibleDragonWarrior.'" "I can't believe yours is 'PoopFairySama,'" I shot back. He was taller than me by a head and a half, sunlight off the showroom glass making him look like he belonged to a poster. He wasn't a child—no pudgy, freckled elementary-schooler. He had short hair that fell over one temple, narrow eyes, and a mouth that didn't mind saying difficult things. "You—are 'PoopFairySama'?" he repeated, very calm. "I—yes," I blurted,...
