Mutual Pining

For when you're looking for an emotional suckerpunch

It would be fair to say that every good romance has, to some extent, mutual pining. The whole core of romance is people (usually two, occasionally more) who cannot or will not be in love and yet, despite this, they fall anyways. However, I think some books milk the exquisite torture of mutual pining more than others (and some have one character pine way more than the other), and these three picks are stretching the trope to the absolute limits of readability. Which, of course, makes them all the more delicious and satisfying by the end.

Make Me by Tessa Bailey. Russ and Abby have spent the past few years watching Russ’s two best friends and Abby’s two best friends fall in love (how convenient!). Russ’s crush on Abby has been well-documented in the first two books of this series, but Abby’s been a little more of a mystery. She’s a rich girl [over]working at her family’s company, she’s a timid virgin with very little love experience, and he’s a construction worker who resigned himself to loving her from afar from the very beginning. 

Naturally, these two best friends get their safe (if tenuously platonic) dynamic shaken up and when they’re sorting through the pieces, realize that perhaps the thing they both thought was impossible is exactly what they need.

Tessa Bailey is consistently to be counted on in general, and might be one of the few authors I’ll read a friends to lovers book from without a second thought, because she makes it swoony and hot enough to be interesting (where most are relatively conflict-less). 

Rating: 4.25/5

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Dreaming Of You by Lisa Kleypas. Derek Craven! The patron saint of the Fated Mates podcast is the hero of this book; a rough gambling hell owner who rose from the streets into incredible wealth and power. His heroine is Sara Fielding, a gentlewoman author from the country who wants to spend some time in his den of sin to do research for a new book. Derek thinks she’s too innocent for his world, but Sara is determined to have her way by whatever means necessary.

The mutual pining of this book comes from these two dummies insisting from the beginning that this is just business and tenuously safe business at that, but secretly obsessing over each other from the other side of the room. Some of the most distinct and infuriatingly hot pining I’ve ever read. The stolen glasses! IYKYK

Rating: 4.25/5

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥

To Love and To Cherish by Lauren Layne. Speaking of infuriating! In the final book of the Wedding Belles series, we finally get to watch long-time friends Alexis and Logan get their shit together. They’ve been circling each other very obviously for all the books preceding their own, and Logan is sick of it. So early in the book, the allegedly mild-mannered British bookkeeper (and silent partner in Alexis’ wedding planning business) gives Alexis an ultimatum; give him a chance, or let him go for good. Logan’s got a plan to woo his perfect woman, but he needs her to admit they have a chance in hell.

Alexis, for her part, is stubbornly against mixing business or friendship with pleasure, despite the fact that she’s definitely noticed how hot and sweet Logan is all these years. And she needs a date to her sister’s wedding, after all, and she really doesn’t want him to go back to the UK (for friendship reasons, obvi, not for anything else), so.. Maybe. Maybe!

This book maybe lets Alexis be stubborn for slightly too long on the page, to the point where it’s actually ridiculous, but their chemistry and spark is hot enough that I largely give it a pass. Another friends to lovers book that feels genuinely full of stakes for everyone involved, so you know I must have liked it!

Rating: 4/5

How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

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Next week, I’ll be recommending more road trip romances! Read the first roundup of road trips here, posted from my own romantic road trip.

What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!

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