Best Contemporary Romance Novels

Babycakes by Donna Kauffman

A dessert baker finds romance in a small Southern town just as sweet as her cupcakes.

Kit Bellamy was raised on pie. Mamie Sue’s Peanut Pies, to be exact—the family company her scheming brother-in-law sold out from under her. Now Kit needs a new recipe for her life, and Georgia’s Sugarberry Island seems to have all the ingredients. In that sleepy Southern town, Kit finds a new job running the mail-order cupcake business Babycakes…and meets the tall, dark, and adorable lawyer Morgan Westlake.

Having just moved to the island to raise his goddaughter, Morgan is as mouthwatering as any of Kit’s creations. There’s just one fly in the batter: Morgan hails from the very law firm that helped crush her dreams. Fortunately, Kit’s new friends can assure her that Morgan is no typical Westlake–and that even lawyers, not to mention single dads, need romance. If Kit can just be persuaded to follow her appetite—her sweetest dreams just might come true. The author on incorporating food in her writing:

“I think that writing about food encompasses all of our senses. Food is a lot like life and relationships and people in that it stimulates your sense of smell, your sense of taste, your touch. Everything about it is wound up into this one element and I think we all obviously enjoy food so there’s that universal element. I think it can be done both in a way that’s entertaining and interesting and fun, but it’s also very sensual and interesting, and I think it adds a certain element of tension going on between the couple too.”
Donna Kauffman