Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Universally Challenged | 2012 | Anna Bell | N/A |
| 2 | The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart | 2016 | Anna Bell | Buy |
| 3 | The Good Girlfriend’s Guide to Getting Even | 2017 | Anna Bell | Buy |
| 4 | It Started With A Tweet | 2017 | Anna Bell | Buy |
| 5 | If We’re Not Married by Thirty | 2018 | Anna Bell | Buy |
| 6 | We Just Clicked | 2020 | Anna Bell | Buy |
| 7 | The Man I Didn’t Marry | 2021 | Anna Bell | Buy |
| 8 | Note to Self | 2022 | Anna Bell | Buy |
| 9 | Once Upon a Leap Year | 2024 | Anna Bell | Buy |
Anna Bell’s standalone novels cover a lot of ground across twelve years of publishing. Earlier titles like Universally Challenged (2012) and The Bucket List to Mend a Broken Heart (2016) established her as a reliable writer of funny, honest women’s fiction. Later books like We Just Clicked (2020) and The Man I Didn’t Marry (2021) show a writer who kept refining her formula without abandoning what worked.
The premises tend to hook on a specific modern situation: a woman doing a digital detox in a rural holiday cottage (It Started With A Tweet), or someone reconsidering her entire romantic history when she receives a letter from her past self (Note to Self). Bell chooses scenarios that could easily become gimmicky but grounds them in recognizable emotional experiences, which keeps the books readable well beyond the initial hook.
Once Upon a Leap Year, published in 2024, is her most recent standalone and continues the same tradition. Each book is entirely self-contained, so readers can move through the list in any order or pick based on which premise appeals most. The earlier standalone Universally Challenged has limited availability compared to the rest of the list.