I’m Erika Aylward, a romance author writing slow-burn love stories set in bookshops, small towns, and the quiet hours where everything finally feels.
Meet Erika
I write romance for readers who love emotional tension, quiet longing, and characters who fall in love slowly — sometimes reluctantly — often in the spaces between words.
My stories are rooted in atmosphere: bookshops after closing time, coastal towns that remember you, Parisian apartments full of quiet hope, and the ache of wanting something that feels just out of reach.
If you love slow-burn romance, found family, and love stories that unfold gently but hit hard — you’ll feel at home here.
Explore My Stories
My books live in places where emotion lingers — where connection builds slowly, and love arrives when it’s least expected.
Coastal & Small-Town Romance
Stories set by the sea and in close-knit towns, where history matters, everyone knows your name, and love has to work its way through old wounds and familiar streets.
Bookish & City Love Stories
Quiet, intimate romances unfolding in bookshops, apartments, and city corners — built on conversation, shared silence, and the ache of wanting something more.
If you’re drawn to slow-burn tension, found family, and love stories that take their time — stories that unfold gently but hit hard — you’ll find them here.
After-Hours Romance
Emotionally charged love stories set in the quieter parts of the day — late nights, early mornings, and the moments when everything feels closer, softer, and more honest.
Featured Products
After Hours, Book One
Some stories stay with you.
Even in the dark.
After her mother’s death, Cora returns to the small-town bookshop she once planned to escape from—determined to keep her head down, sell the shop and leave before the grief swallowing the place can swallow her too.
Then the lights start going out.
Every blackout brings Ellis Hargreaves back through the door.
The town electrician is quiet, broad-shouldered and entirely too observant for Cora’s liking. He fixes fuse boxes at midnight, brings coffee she never asks for and looks at her as though he can see every exhausted, lonely part she is trying not to unravel.
And in the dark, it becomes dangerously easy to let him.
But grief has a way of making ghosts out of people, and Cora knows better than to mistake comfort for something lasting—especially with a man who makes staying feel dangerously possible.
Set in a rain-soaked bookshop filled with old stories, soft lamplight and the kind of silence that says too much, After the Lights Went Out is an emotionally intimate small-town romance about grief, healing and falling in love when you least know how to survive it.
Perfect for readers who love:
• Small-town romance
• Bookshop settings
• Emotional slow burns
• Quiet, dependable heroes
• Grief and healing
• Hopeful endings
This paperback will be signed by Erika Aylward.
After Hours, Book Two
One night.
Until the world wakes up.
Mara never planned on getting snowed in with Jonah.
Especially not in a tiny inn room with one bed, a storm closing the roads and years of history sitting quietly between them.
Because Jonah isn’t a stranger.
He is her brother’s best friend. The boy who used to sit at their kitchen table. The man she was never supposed to look at differently.
But somewhere between midnight conversations, shared silences and the soft blue hours before dawn, the distance between them begins to shift.
What starts as a single night stranded by a storm becomes something far more dangerous: honesty. The kind that only exists when the rest of the world is asleep.
Mara knows this ends in the morning. It has to.
But for one night—just until morning—she lets herself want something she cannot keep.
Just Until Morning is a quiet, emotionally intimate romance about longing, timing and the people who find us when the world goes still.
Perfect for readers who love:
• Snowed-in romance
• Brother’s best friend
• One bed
• Forced proximity
• Emotional slow burns
• Midnight conversations
• Gentle heat
• Hopeful endings
This paperback will be signed by Erika Aylward.
Lose yourself after hours with the first two books in Erika Aylward’s emotionally intimate romance series—together in one signed paperback bundle.
This bundle includes:
After the Lights Went Out
After her mother’s death, Cora returns to the small-town bookshop she once planned to escape. But when repeated blackouts bring quiet, observant electrician Ellis through the door, grief begins to loosen its hold—and staying starts to feel dangerously possible.
Just Until Morning
Snowed in at a tiny inn with one bed, Mara must spend the night with Jonah—her brother’s best friend and the man she was never meant to want. As midnight turns to morning, old feelings surface, and one unexpected night changes everything.
Perfect for readers who love:
• Emotional, character-led romance
• Slow-burning chemistry
• Forced proximity
• One bed
• Brother’s best friend
• Grief, healing and fresh starts
• Quietly hopeful endings
Both paperbacks will be signed by Erika Aylward and carefully packaged together.
Bundle price: £18.99—saving £4.99 compared with purchasing both signed paperbacks separately.
A Seasons of Fenleigh Novella.
A blind date. The wrong man. And one small village that already knows everything.
Returning to Fenleigh was supposed to give Sophie Harris the fresh start she desperately needed. Instead, she has moved into her late mother’s cottage, discovered that the entire village knows far too much about the end of her thirteen-year relationship, and somehow agreed to let June—the local postmistress and Fenleigh’s most enthusiastic matchmaker—arrange a blind date for her.
Sophie’s plan is simple: have one drink, make polite conversation and leave before anyone can begin planning a second date on her behalf.
Then she walks into the pub, spots a man sitting alone and introduces herself.
There is just one problem: Daniel is not the man she is supposed to be meeting.
By the time Sophie’s real blind date arrives, one small misunderstanding has turned into the best evening she has had in years. Now she must decide whether the man she was never supposed to meet might be exactly the person she needs.
Warm, funny and full of village charm, The Wrong Blind Date is a romantic novella about coming home, starting again and finding the right person at entirely the wrong table.
Perfect for readers who enjoy:
• Small-village romance
• Accidental meetings
• Fresh starts
• Matchmaking villagers
• Warm, gentle romance
This paperback will be signed by Erika Aylward.