Pleasant Gap Romance Books in Order

Pleasant Gap Romance is a contemporary series that shows another side of Pepper D Basham's work: tender, family-centered love stories with a strong pull between Appalachia and Britain. These books are softer and more intimate than her mystery adventures, but they still carry plenty of emotional weight.

The series begins with Just the Way You Are. Eisley Barrett, a single mother from the Blue Ridge, travels to England to investigate a family mystery and ends up crossing paths with Wes Harrison, an actor with a painful past. That setup gives the series one of its defining pleasures. Basham likes putting Appalachian directness next to British reserve and letting the sparks, misunderstandings, and affection grow from there.

That contrast is one of her happiest storytelling spaces.

The second book, When You Look at Me, stays in the same emotional neighborhood while deepening the family feel. Julia Jenkins inherits a Victorian mansion full of secrets, music, and a World War II thread she cannot solve alone. Henry Wright, an English composer, becomes part of that search. The romance grows alongside grief, recovery, and the discovery that the past is still speaking into the present.

Across both books, Basham uses letters, old mysteries, family stories, and inherited places to carry the plot. The result is romance with a reflective streak. These novels are not about flashy twists. They are about people learning how to trust after heartbreak, how to accept love when life has gone off script, and how home can stretch across more than one country.

Pleasant Gap itself matters because it gives the series warmth. Family members show up. Matchmaking happens. Faith is present without swallowing the characters. There is a lived-in sense that people belong to one another here, for better and for worse. That emotional safety net makes the harder subjects hit with more force.

If you like contemporary romance that balances sweetness with hurt, and if you enjoy old secrets, cross-cultural chemistry, and a little English flavor in your Blue Ridge fiction, this series is worth your time. The books can be read separately, but together they build a fuller picture of the families and emotional history behind them.