I was nine years old the first time a book made me forget I existed.

It was a Sweet Valley High novel. Elizabeth and Jessica Wakefield, their perfect California lives, their drama that felt enormous and real and completely consuming and so far removed from my life on a farm in a small rural community in Australia. I read it under the covers with a torch. I missed dinner. I didn’t care.

That feeling – of disappearing so completely into a story that the world outside simply stops – is the whole reason I became an avid romance reader and, later in life, an author. And it’s the feeling I spend a lot of time chasing.

Years later, Tillie Cole’s A Thousand Boy Kisses did it to me again. I read the book in a single sitting, ugly crying on my couch at 11 pm, completely wrecked in the best possible way. My husband walked in, looked at me and quietly backed out of the room.

That is the magic we are after. Not just reading. Falling.

But here’s the thing I’ve learnt – both as a reader and as someone who writes the kind of books that are meant to be devoured in one sitting: the experience matters as much as the story.

If you’ve ever picked up a book you were genuinely excited about and found yourself re-reading the same paragraph three times, it’s not always the book. Sometimes it’s everything around it. The noise. The mental load. The feeling that you should be doing something else.

This is your guide to fixing that. Not with complicated rituals or expensive candles (though candles help). With intention. With permission. And with a few simple ideas that will help you slow down, switch off and fall head over heels into a romance story you genuinely don’t want to leave.

1. Build a Space That Tells Your Brain It’s Time to Rest

Your environment is sending your nervous system constant signals. Harsh overhead lights say: you’re still working. A pile of laundry in your peripheral vision says: you have things to do. A bright phone screen says: the world needs you right now.

None of that is conducive to disappearing into a love story.

You don’t need a dedicated reading room (though imagine). You just need to shift the signals. Swap overhead lights for a lamp or a candle. Add a blanket – not because you’re cold, but because warmth is physically calming. Clear the surface next to you of anything that looks like a task.

Make the space feel like it belongs to you and only you for the next hour. That act alone is more powerful than you might think.

✦ Soft lamp or fairy lights instead of overhead lighting

✦ A blanket – texture matters; make it one you love

✦ Your drink of choice is within reach before you sit down

✦ One small thing that makes it feel special – a candle, a favourite mug, a scented spray on your pillow

2. Match the Book to Where You Actually Are Right Now

This is the step most readers skip, and it’s the one that makes the biggest difference.

Romance is not a monolith. There are books for when you want to laugh. Books for when you need to cry. Books for when you want tension so thick you can barely breathe, and books for when you just want to be held gently by a story that feels like coming home.

The mismatch between your emotional state and the book in your hands is one of the most common reasons readers lose momentum mid-chapter. It’s not the book. It’s the timing.

Ask yourself: what do I actually need to feel tonight?

If you’re craving comfort and safety, reach for a small-town romance – a tight-knit community, familiar faces, a love story that feels like coming home. (The Hearts of Point Perry series was built for exactly these nights.)

If you want heat and tension, find an enemies-to-lovers story where the chemistry is excruciating and the slow burn is worth every page.

If you need a full emotional release – the kind that leaves you wrecked and repaired at the same time — a second-chance love story (like Second Chance Love in Point Perry) will break your heart wide open in the best possible way. (Tillie Cole does this better than almost anyone.)

Read the book that meets you where you are, not the one you feel like you should be reading.

3. Create a Sensory Signal That Reading Time Has Begun

This sounds more complicated than it is.

What I mean is: give yourself a ritual. Something small and repeatable that your brain starts to associate with switching off. Over time, the ritual itself becomes the cue – before you’ve even opened the first page or turned your Kindle on, your body knows what’s coming.

Mine is simple. I make a specific drink (latte, strong (or decaf in the afternoon), with oat milk), light a candle and put my phone face down on the kitchen bench. That’s it. Three things. But after years of doing it, the smell of that candle alone starts to slow my breathing.

Yours might be different. A particular playlist. A specific chair (I love my egg swing). The act of putting on your reading glasses. It doesn’t matter what it is – it matters that it’s consistent.

✦ A scented candle you only light when you read

✦ Soft background sound – rain, ocean waves, quiet classical, soft country ballads

✦ A specific warm drink that becomes your reading drink

✦ Putting your phone in another room entirely (not just face down – in another room)

4. Give Yourself Actual Permission to Be Unreachable

This is the part no one talks about, and it might be the most important section in this entire guide.

The mental load of everyday life doesn’t vanish just because you picked up a book. It hovers. It whispers. It makes you check your phone eleven times in twenty minutes. It makes you feel like reading is something you’re getting away with rather than something you’re entitled to.

But you are entitled to it.

Reading is not indulgent. It is restorative. There is a difference.

Study after study has shown that reading fiction – particularly emotionally engaging fiction – reduces cortisol levels, increases empathy and genuinely helps regulate your nervous system. You’re not escaping your life when you read. You are recovering the capacity to live it.

So, put the phone on silent. Not vibrate. Silent. Close the laptop. Tell whoever needs to know that you’re unavailable for the next hour. And then actually be unavailable.

Even thirty minutes of truly uninterrupted reading can feel like a complete reset. Give yourself the full experience.

5. Romanticise It – Seriously, All the Way

You don’t need a special occasion to make something feel meaningful. That is a lie we’ve been told to make us feel like everyday pleasure has to be earned.

Wear the soft pyjamas. Light the candle on a Tuesday. Make the hot chocolate with the good cocoa. Read with a highlighter and mark the lines that make your chest ache. Keep a little reading journal and write down one sentence from every book that wrecked you.

Reading romance is about feeling – so give yourself permission to feel it completely. Slow down. Don’t race to find out what happens. Sit inside the tension; lean into it. Let yourself fall.

The books you remember years later are never the ones you read fastest.

6. Know Where to Find Your Next Story

If you love the feeling of small-town settings, second chances, and stories that feel like exhaling after holding your breath for too long – the Hearts of Point Perry series was written for exactly these kinds of nights.

Quiet ones. Cosy ones. The kind where you want to feel something real and true and worth holding onto long after you’ve turned the final page.

Point Perry is a small coastal town with big secrets, complicated histories, and love stories that find their way home. It’s where broken hearts go to heal. Each book can be read as a standalone, but if you read them in order, you’ll find a community that starts to feel like yours too.

Explore Hearts of Point Perry Here

One Last Thing Before You Go

Sometimes the best escape is not going anywhere new at all. It’s lighting a candle, pulling on your softest socks, opening a book and giving yourself permission to disappear into a story that reminds you what it feels like to hope, to heal, and to fall in love all over again.

You have been taking care of everyone else all week. This hour is yours.

You deserve that kind of magic.

If you’d like romance recommendations, reading guides, behind-the-scenes moments from Point Perry, and the occasional letter that feels like it was written just for you – come and join my reader community. I’d love to have you.

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