Delilah Green Doesn’t Care works because Ashley Herring Blake stacked five separate things on top of each other and made them look effortless. A prickly, broke photographer goes home to a small Oregon town she swore she was done with. She has to shoot the wedding of the stepsister who never defended her. She falls for that stepsister’s best friend, a bookshop owner raising an eight-year-old. And all of it is funny — properly funny, in the dialogue, not in the situations.
So when you ask for books like it, you are usually asking for more than one thing at once, and no single book is going to hand you all five. What follows is eleven books sorted by which of those things they actually deliver, with the mismatches named rather than hidden. Two of them are the direct sequels, which is the honest answer to “what next” and should not be buried at number nine.
One finding worth flagging up front: the single-mother thread is the hardest one to match. Sapphic romance has plenty of small towns, plenty of photographers and no shortage of family estrangement, but leads who are actively parenting a child are genuinely scarce in trade publishing. In this whole list, only Mistakes Were Made puts a mother in the lead role, and How You Get the Girl gets there through guardianship rather than motherhood. If that is the axis you care about most, skip to numbers 10 and 11.
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All 11 Books at a Glance
| Book | Setting | Creative-career lead | Child on the page | Family complication | Heat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Delilah Green Doesn’t Care (the original) | Bright Falls, OR | Photographer | Ruby, age 8 | Stepfamily estrangement | Open door |
| Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail | Bright Falls, OR | Interior designer | Ruby, carried over | Controlling mother | Open door |
| Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date | Bright Falls + Portland | Romance novelist | No | Supportive, low conflict | Open door |
| In the Event of Love | Fern Falls, CA | Event planner | No | Family farm in trouble | Open door |
| Kiss Her Once for Me | Portland + a cabin | Graphic novelist | No | Fake fiance’s family | Open door |
| Late Bloomer | A flower farm, NC | No | No | Family who take, not give | Open door |
| Perfect Rhythm | Fair Oaks, MO | Musician | No | Parent’s illness, coming home | Low heat |
| The Fiancée Farce | Seattle | Bookshop owner | No | Stepfamily + inheritance | Open door, high |
| Written in the Stars | Seattle | Horoscope columnist | No | Meddling brother | Open door |
| Count Your Lucky Stars | Seattle | Wedding planner | No | Chosen family | Open door |
| How You Get the Girl | Nashville | No | Vanessa, teen | Guardianship, family built | Open door |
| Mistakes Were Made | A college campus | No | Adult daughter | Best friend’s mother | Open door, high |
1. Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail by Ashley Herring Blake
Astrid Parker, the brittle, beige-obsessed interior designer whose wedding fell apart in book one, lands the job that is supposed to save her career: renovating the Everwood Inn. The catch is Jordan Everwood, the owner’s granddaughter and the inn’s carpenter, who thinks Astrid’s design is an act of vandalism against her dead brother’s memory and starts quietly sabotaging it.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: It is the same town, the same friend group and the same authorial hand. Claire and Ruby are on the page. Delilah turns up. And the family complication that hovered at the edges of book one — Isabel Parker-Green, one of the great controlling mothers in the subgenre — moves to the centre and gets a reckoning that the first book only gestured at.
How it differs: The creative lead is a designer rather than a photographer, and the single-mother thread is borrowed rather than owned: Ruby belongs to Claire’s story, not this one. It is also the most grief-inflected book in the trilogy, since Jordan is a widow. If you came for the lightness, this one costs more.
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2. Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date by Ashley Herring Blake
Iris writes romance novels and does not believe in them. After a spectacularly awkward one-night stand with Stevie Scott — an anxious actress who was trying to get over an ex — the two of them end up fake-dating so Stevie can prove a point to her theatre company and Iris can research a book she has no idea how to write.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: This is the funniest book in the Bright Falls trilogy and the closest to the pure romantic-comedy axis. If what you loved about Delilah Green was the dialogue — the sharp, filthy, affectionate way these women talk to each other — this delivers the highest concentration of it, and it closes out the friend group you have been reading about for three books.
How it differs: No child, no photographer, and the small town shares screen time with Portland. The emotional weight sits on Stevie’s anxiety rather than on family estrangement, which makes it a lighter read on the family axis specifically.
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3. In the Event of Love by Courtney Kae
Morgan Ross is a Los Angeles event planner whose career detonates in public. She retreats to Fern Falls, the mountain town she left at eighteen, and finds the family Christmas-tree farm in trouble and Rachel Reed — now a lumberjane, still the person Morgan hurt worst — running it.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: Structurally this is the closest twin to Delilah Green on the list. A woman with a metropolitan career comes home to the town she fled, has to work an event she does not want to work, and runs straight into the past she has been outrunning. The town itself is written as a character with opinions, which is the thing most small-town romances forget to do.
How it differs: It is a second-chance romance rather than a strangers-to-lovers one, so the tension comes from history instead of discovery. No single mother, no photographer, and the tone is warmer and more earnest — Kae is not going for Blake’s acid.
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4. Kiss Her Once for Me by Alison Cochrun
Ellie Oliver was a graphic novelist until she wasn’t. Broke and about to be evicted, she agrees to marry her coffee-shop boss Andrew in exchange for half his inheritance, and goes home with him for Christmas — where his sister Jack turns out to be the woman Ellie spent one perfect, unrepeatable night with the previous December.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: An artist heroine with a stalled career, a fake relationship, and a family cabin full of people whose expectations are the actual antagonist. The comedy is farce-shaped in the same way Delilah Green‘s wedding week is: everyone is lying, everyone is in the same house, and it cannot hold.
How it differs: Portland and a cabin, not a small town. Ellie draws rather than photographs. No child on the page, and the book leans harder into anxiety and creative-failure shame than into the found-family warmth Blake trades in.
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5. Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings
Opal Devlin wins the lottery and immediately spends it on a flower farm she has never seen. She arrives to find Pepper Boden already living there, furious, and legally entitled to be. Neither of them leaves.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: Rural setting, forced proximity, and a heroine whose family treats her as a resource rather than a person — Opal’s relatives circling the lottery money is the same wound Delilah Green picks at, just from a different angle. Opal’s messy, warm, self-deprecating narration is the closest voice-match to Delilah on the list.
How it differs: No photographer, no child, and the book is doing serious work on chronic illness and neurodivergence alongside the romance. It is funny, but it is not a farce — the grief in it is load-bearing.
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6. Perfect Rhythm by Jae
Leontyne Blake is a pop star who has not been home to Fair Oaks, Missouri in years. Her father’s stroke drags her back, and the nurse looking after him — Holly Drummond, who is asexual and entirely unimpressed by fame — becomes the reason she stops planning her exit.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: On the small-town-return-plus-family-crisis axis this is the strongest book here. The town has a memory, the parents have needs, and the successful daughter has to be a daughter again instead of a career. If the part of Delilah Green that got you was Delilah standing in her stepmother’s house feeling seventeen, this is the whole book.
How it differs: Low heat — the romance is built around an asexual lead and the intimacy is written accordingly. There is no photographer and no child, and the humour is gentle and observational rather than rom-com quippy. Come for the family, not the banter.
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7. The Fiancée Farce by Alexandria Bellefleur
Tansy Adams, who runs a struggling bookshop, invented a girlfriend to stop her stepfamily asking questions — and used a cover model’s photograph to do it. The model, Gemma van Dalen, is a publishing heiress, and she needs a wife to secure her inheritance. She proposes on the spot.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: Bellefleur is the nearest thing the genre has to Blake for rapid-fire banter and open-door heat, and the ingredients rhyme: a bookshop owner, a stepfamily with expectations, and a fake relationship that everybody else can see through. The inheritance clause does the same job Astrid’s wedding does — it forces two people into a room and starts a clock.
How it differs: Seattle, not a small town. No child. The class gap between the leads carries weight that Delilah Green does not have, and the heat level runs noticeably higher.
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8. Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
Darcy Lowell is an actuary who does not do feelings. Elle Jones writes horoscopes and does very little else on schedule. After a disastrous blind date arranged by Darcy’s brother, Darcy lies and says it went well — and then has to produce a girlfriend for the holidays.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: The temperature difference between these two is the Astrid-and-Delilah dynamic relocated into a couple: one woman who has organised her life to avoid being hurt, one who refuses to be managed. Sibling meddling drives the plot, and the holiday-family set pieces have the same trapped-in-a-house comedy.
How it differs: Seattle again, no child, no photographer, and the family pressure is affectionate rather than corrosive. Nobody in this book has to survive their mother.
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9. Count Your Lucky Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur
Margot Cooper plans weddings and avoids commitment. Olivia Grant, her best friend until one night in college ended that, arrives back in Seattle with a collapsed marriage behind her and nowhere to live. Margot has a spare room.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: A wedding-industry backdrop, a shared history nobody has processed, and a heroine whose fear of being left has calcified into a personality. If the ache in Delilah Green was about the version of yourself a family decided on when you were a teenager, Margot and Olivia are working the same wound.
How it differs: Roommates-to-lovers in a city, not a small-town return. No child, no photographer, and it is the most interior of the Bellefleur three — less farce, more slow ache.
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10. How You Get the Girl by Anita Kelly
Julie Parker coaches a high school girls’ basketball team in Nashville and has almost no romantic experience to speak of. Elle Cochrane had a college career, a WNBA career that ended badly, and now has custody of her foster cousin Vanessa — who turns up on Julie’s team, with Elle as her guardian.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: This is the closest the list gets to the parenting axis outside Mistakes Were Made. Elle is raising a teenager, the child is a real character with her own arc rather than a plot device, and the courtship happens around her the way Delilah and Claire’s happens around Ruby. Kelly writes tenderness the way Blake writes banter.
How it differs: Nashville, not a small town, and Elle is a guardian rather than a mother — the family complication is about the family being built, not the family being escaped. No creative-career lead, and the comedy is warmer and quieter.
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11. Mistakes Were Made by Meryl Wilsner
Cassie hooks up with an older woman at a bar the night before parents’ weekend. The next morning the woman walks onto campus as Erin — the mother of Cassie’s best friend and roommate. They agree it will not happen again. It happens again.
Why a Delilah Green reader wants it: Along with Delilah Green itself, this is one of the only trade-published sapphic romances with a single mother as an actual lead rather than a background detail. Erin’s daughter is the obstacle, the stakes and the reason the book has a third act at all, which is the same structural trick Blake pulls with Astrid.
How it differs: A college campus, not a small town, and the age gap plus the best-friend’s-mother premise make this the most transgressive book on the list. The heat is much higher and the comedy is sharper and more anxious. There is no photographer, and nobody comes home to anywhere.
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If You Only Read One
For the town and the friend group: Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail. It is the literal continuation, Claire and Ruby are still there, and the mother-daughter reckoning is the best writing in the trilogy.
For the comedy: Iris Kelly Doesn’t Date. Funniest of the three, and the one that reads most like a rom-com film.
For the coming-home ache: Perfect Rhythm. Different heat level, same emotional architecture — a successful woman reduced to being someone’s daughter again.
For the single-mother thread: Mistakes Were Made, with the warning that it is a very different kind of book: older woman, best friend’s mother, much higher heat, and a lot more discomfort.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to read the Bright Falls books in order?
You do not have to, but it helps. Each romance resolves on its own, and Blake re-establishes the friend group every time. What you lose by jumping in at book two or three is the accumulated payoff — Astrid’s arc across the trilogy only lands if you watched her fall apart in book one, and Iris’s book leans on three books of running jokes.
Is there another sapphic romance with a photographer heroine?
Not many, and none of them are close matches to Delilah. The nearest equivalents on this list are creative-career leads in adjacent fields: Ellie the graphic novelist in Kiss Her Once for Me, and Leontyne the musician in Perfect Rhythm. If the camera specifically is what you want, the honest answer is that the shelf is thin and worth watching rather than searching.
Which of these are the closest on small-town setting?
Astrid Parker Doesn’t Fail (the same town), In the Event of Love and Perfect Rhythm. All three treat the town as a place with a memory and an opinion about the woman who left, which is the specific thing Bright Falls does well.
Are these all open-door?
All except Perfect Rhythm, which is written around an asexual lead and keeps the intimacy low-heat by design. The Fiancée Farce and Mistakes Were Made run hotter than Delilah Green; the rest sit at roughly the same level.
What if none of these is quite right?
Tell us the book, not the trope. Our Books Like directory takes a title and routes you to the closest read-alike list we have — and if we do not have a post for that book yet, it points you at the trope pages that get nearest and records what you searched for, so it gets built next.
Looking for read-alikes for a different book? Browse the full Books Like directory — search any sapphic title and we will point you at the closest match we have.