4 love-ly books to read for Valentine’s day

Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition

By Laura Pratt

(Random House Canada, 304 pages, $24.95 )

Toronto journalist and writer Pratt candidly takes us through the throes of heartbreak. Blindsided by the end of her relationship with her partner of six years — he breaks up with her in the middle of a train station — she chronicles her increasingly desperate attempts to get him to realize he’s making a mistake: chasing him through Union Station, sending rambling emails, endless calls and voicemails. Her language is raw and emotional, her journey entirely relatable. She tempers this emotion with a journalistic approach to dealing with heartbreak, including data, quotes, studies and cultural references about love, loss, grief and moving on. I’m sure many of us can see ourselves in Pratt when we too were at the lowest of our low following a split.

8 Rules of Love: How to Find it, Keep it, And Let It Go

By Jay Shetty

(Simon & Schuster Canada, $34.99)

An actionable guide by the former monk turned No. 1 NYT bestselling author and host of the world’s No. 1 mental health and wellness podcast, “On Purpose.” This book is a toolkit of sorts offering eight rules to follow in order to get, receive and give love, beginning with the love for you have for yourself, which is the root of it all. The tips include writing a laugh note to yourself, which may seem silly but has empowering effects. Perhaps the most interesting take away is the way he highlights that, universally, we aspire to romantic love and spend much of our lives focusing on that, yet in doing so we lose focus of and miss the value of the many other relationships that drive our lives, including as family and friends.

Highly Suspicious and Unfairly Cute

By Talia Hibbert

Random House Children’s Books, 336 pages, $18.99

This is the debut YA novel from Talia Hibbert, the bestselling author of adult romance novels including “Get a Life, Chloe Brown,” “The Princess Trap,” and “A Girl Like Her.” Her adult books centre around complex characters from diverse groups, and she carries that into this book for younger readers. In a classic rom-com trope, Celine (who was abandoned by her father,) and Brad (who suffers from anxiety and OCD,) both 18, were once best friends but are now enemies — until a survival course they both take forces them to work as a team, and you can connect the dots on where their relationship goes from there. The dialogue and banter between the two drives the plot.

Secretly Yours

By Tessa Bailey

HarperCollins, 384 pages, $21.99

Craving a touch of heat? BookTok favourite, Tessa Bailey, comes in with an unexpectedly spicy read (think but a few notches down from “Fifty Shades of Gray”). Straight-laced, successful Julian is on sabbatical and returns to his family’s vineyard, where he finds himself distracted by clumsy, campy and colourful Hallie, who is working on the estate’s gardens. Unbeknownst to him, they almost kissed when they were 14 years old, and she’s been pining for him over the past 15 years. A predictable plot makes this the reading equivalent of watching a Hallmark movie. A pleasure there’s nothing to feel guilty about.