Ribbonwood

GCLS Goldie Award Winner for Best Contemporary Romance 2025

Lara Bennett is world-famous in Ribbonwood, population 907.

She's the woman you don't trust your husband with: a real-life femme fatale. If there's a scandal in town, she's at the center of it, ruining businesses, marriages, and egos everywhere she goes, with her sharp tongue and that body that makes you look twice. Besides… didn't she more or less kill a man?

Ollie Gabrielli left Ribbonwood right after high school, back when Lara was her arch-nemesis. The queen bee and the closeted soccer star: natural enemies. When she comes home for three months, it's to recover from burnout and spend time with her chaotic family, not to reconnect with old classmates. Only somehow, she can't seem to take her eyes off Lara. How did she only get hotter? And is she really everything they say she is?

Sometimes, there's a reason you should never try to go home.

Contains mature content. A complete list of content warnings can be found on the author's website.

©2024 Ruby Landers (P)2025 Podium Audio

Skillful Writing and a really great story

The author crafted a story with skillful structure, plot, subplots, and character development. It is very well written, entertaining, and engaging. The narration was very performed. I very much enjoyed this book and will look for more titles from this author.

The Chase

This was a great read. I love the chase the main characters had for each other.

Entertaining love story.

I enjoyed the premise of the story and exciting love affair. it kept me interested.

Amazing!!

I did not think I was going to love this as much as I did. I’ve literally listened to over 200 sapphic books and this one has made the top 10! Great depth, tackles some important topics and has amazing heat! Loved both of the main characters. I was genuinely blown away!

Fantastic story, and very well narrated

This was the first time I’d heard this narrator,and she did a fantastic job. I’m incredibly happy they chose an Australian narrator to do Ribbonwood because it’s all about a small Australian town, and the town plays a large part in the story. Ruby Landers became an automatic buy after the marvelous Grace Notes Trilogy, and Ribbonwood did not disappoint.

Ribbonwood is a small town with just over 900 people in Australia. The very beginning sets the scene for how the town gossips, and has obvious prejudice against a specific woman in the town even from childhood. It’s a rivals to lovers romance, and wow are Lara and Ollie rivals early on. Ollie has returned to Ribbonwood to help her dying grandmother, and because she’s burnout as a pediatric emergency room doctor. But as a hopeless gay it’s hard not to stare at old rival Lara when she sees her in town.

What I loved about this book as how it really twists how you think about someone, and how your assumptions about an individual really colors how you think about them, and in turn how you treat them. Ruby Landers writes such fantastic and complex characters (including the side characters) that you can’t help but fall in love with them. You will laugh, you will cry, and you will have all the feels.