by Vi Keeland
First published 2025
On a flight back to New York, with a wedding she dreads looming ahead, the protagonist does something impulsive: she downloads a dating app just to take the edge off. She matches with Jagger Langston, tall and confident and impossible to ignore, and the chemistry between them hits fast and hard. The date goes sideways when they realize she misread the app entirely and signed up for something aimed at a very different clientele. They laugh, they part ways, and she figures the story is over. It is not. Monday morning she walks into her new internship and finds Jagger standing there as her boss. Now she is showing up to work every day for a man she already kissed goodbye, a man who runs his life on a strict set of rules. She can see exactly where the line is. She also wants to watch him cross it. The Exception is a workplace romance about the gap between the person you plan to be and the one you actually become when the wrong situation arrives at exactly the right time.
Genres: romance, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, contemporary-romance
Vibes: fast-paced, humorous, romantic-tension, steamy, witty
Tropes: boss-employee-romance, enemies-to-lovers, forced-proximity, second-chance-romance
Setting: New York
359 pages · Paperback · C. Scott Publishing Corp.