Love, Lies and Lemon Cake Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Love, Lies and Lemon Cake | 2014 | Buy |
| Love, Lies and Wedding Cake | 2018 | Buy |
Standalone Novels
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Fat Girls and Fairy Cakes | 2011 | Buy |
| Younger Thinner Blonder | 2013 | Buy |
| Love, Lies and Lemon Cake | 2014 | Buy |
| Snow Angels, Secrets and Christmas Cake | 2014 | Buy |
| Summer Flings and Dancing Dreams | 2015 | Buy |
| Bella’s Christmas Bake Off | 2015 | Buy |
| The Christmas Cake Cafe | 2016 | Buy |
| We’ll Always Have Paris | 2017 | Buy |
| Snowflakes, Iced Cakes and Second Chances | 2017 | Buy |
| Our Little Lies | 2018 | Buy |
| The Woman Next Door / All Her Secrets | 2019 | Buy |
| The Empty Nest | 2019 | Buy |
| The Sister-in-Law | 2020 | Buy |
| First Date | 2020 | Buy |
| The Forever Home | 2021 | Buy |
| The New Wife | 2021 | Buy |
| The Resort | 2022 | Buy |
| The Nursery | 2022 | Buy |
| The Wedding Day | 2023 | Buy |
| The Lodge | 2023 | Buy |
| You, Me, Her | 2024 | Buy |
| Wife, Mother, Liar | 2025 | Buy |
| His First Wife | 2025 | Buy |
| Wanting Daisy Dead | 2025 | Buy |
The Ice-Cream Café Reading Order
| Title | Published | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|
| Ella’s Ice-Cream Summer | 2017 | Buy |
| Curves, Kisses and Chocolate Ice-Cream | 2017 | Buy |
Sue Watson is a British author with a career that splits neatly into two phases. Her early books, starting with Fat Girls and Fairy Cakes (2011), were romantic comedies and women’s fiction with food, friendship, and second chances as recurring themes. The Ice-Cream Cafe duology and the Love, Lies and Lemon Cake series fit this mold, as do standalone titles like Snow Angels, Secrets and Christmas Cake and Bella’s Christmas Bake Off. These were warm, often funny books aimed at readers who wanted an easy, enjoyable read.
Then Watson changed direction. Starting around 2018 with Our Little Lies, she began writing domestic thrillers, and the shift was dramatic. Gone were the cake recipes and seaside settings; in their place came unreliable narrators, marital secrets, and twists designed to pull the rug out from under the reader. The Woman Next Door, The Sister-in-Law, First Date, and The New Wife all follow this template. Watson proved to be just as comfortable building suspense and paranoia as she had been writing comedy.
Her output has been remarkably steady across both phases, with twenty-eight books published between 2011 and 2025. The thriller side of her catalog has found a large audience among readers of authors like Lisa Jewell and Freida McFadden, while her earlier comedies remain in print for readers with different tastes.