Anna Bell Books in Order

If you want a connected wedding romcom series: Don't Tell Penny → Don't Tell the Groom → Don't Tell the Boss → Don't Tell the Brides-to-Be
If you want Millie's story in chronological order: Millie and the American University → Millie and the American Wedding → Millie and the American Proposal
If you want emotional second-chance romance: The Man I Didn’t Marry → Note to Self
If you want modern comedy about online life and reinvention: It Started With A Tweet → We Just Clicked
If you want hopeful romance after heartbreak: The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart → If We're Not Married by Thirty → Once Upon a Leap Year

Anna Bell writes romantic comedies that begin with very ordinary human messes, money worries, bad timing, old crushes, social disasters, and turn them into warm, hopeful love stories. Her books are funny, but they are not just joke machines. They usually have a bit of ache in them too, which is why readers can move from something bright and chaotic like Don't Tell the Groom to something more tender like The Man I Didn’t Marry and still feel very much in Bell territory.

Before writing full time, Bell worked as a museum curator. She has said that the real push toward fiction came after an unsuccessful interview for The Apprentice, when she happened to pass a major publisher in London and told her husband, after a few drinks, that one day they would publish her novel. It sounds like the sort of scene one of her own heroines might stumble into, slightly impulsive, a little embarrassing, but oddly life changing.

Her husband did not let her forget it.

Bell started out by self-publishing, including early books under the pseudonym Annabel Scott. That period matters because it shaped two big parts of her career at once. It gave her the Millie books, beginning with Millie and the American Wedding, and it helped her build the confidence to keep going until traditional publication followed. After several years of writing and three self-published ebooks, she left museum work behind and became a full-time author.

Since then, she has built a list that moves easily between fast, premise-led romcoms and more emotional stories about second chances. Readers who like sharp comic setups often gravitate to We Just Clicked, with its fake-dating influencer plot, or The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart, which turns post-breakup misery into a challenge-filled reset. Others go straight for Once Upon a Leap Year or Note to Self, where the hooks are still playful but the emotional core runs deeper. Bell is especially good at writing characters who are trying to keep a brave face on while their lives are quietly, or not so quietly, coming apart.

That mix of mess and heart is her sweet spot.

A lot of Bell's fiction circles around the same things, even when the plots look very different on the surface. She likes women at crossroads, people who need to start over, and relationships shaped by timing as much as chemistry. Her settings often matter in a practical way too: London offices, remote villages, weddings, trips abroad, American campuses, and city breaks are not just backdrops, they are the places where her characters get tested. Social media, work, friendship, and family life all have real weight in these books. Even when the premise is high concept, the emotions tend to be familiar. Wanting to be chosen. Wondering if you picked the right life. Hoping it is not too late to change direction.

Away from the page, Bell's public bios are as grounded as her novels. She has written about meeting her husband on a mountain in Nepal, living for a time in the South of France, and later moving to Belfast to be closer to family. She has two children and an energetic Labrador, and she often mentions that dog walks are where she fixes plot holes and gets past writer's block. More recent biographical notes add coffee shops, traybakes, and bad golf to the picture. It all feels nicely unglamorous, which is probably part of the appeal. Her books are romantic, yes, but they never forget that real life is usually happening at the same time.