Lucy Score

Writes small-town contemporary romance at volume, and Knockemout is the series that broke through. Things We Never Got Over pairs a bad-tempered barber with the twin sister of a woman who has vanished, and the sequels stay in the same town with the same overlapping cast.

Score self-published for years before the books went wide, and she also writes the Riley Thorn mysteries, which are broader and funnier. The appeal is consistency: readers know the shape they are getting and get it.