Books like Ruby by V. C. Andrews

In Mexican culinary wonder, Tita’s forbidden love for Pedro is bound by a family rule that the youngest daughter must stay single to care for her mother. Her kitchen becomes a portal where food, emotion, and magic collide.

A powerful family saga of landowners in 19th-century Latin America with a mystical backdrop and themes of family dynamics and social tension, adapted into a gripping film adaptation featuring actors like Meryl Streep and Antonio Banderas.

In her wealthy Boston home, Heaven Leigh Casteel longs for a fresh start, yet hidden family secrets threaten to unravel her newfound hope and peace of mind.

**Driven from the Dumas mansion back to her beloved bayou, Ruby's only hope is that fate will let her begin anew....** Living again in a humble shack, Ruby is determined to make a secure and happy home for her precious infant daughter, Pearl. Paul Tate -- her first love, whom she was forced to abandon -- is at her side once more, now a man of dazzling wealth. When he whisks her into his grand house, it seems their future is assured. As mistress of Cypress Woods, Ruby can forget even the shocking reason she and Paul must wed in a secret ceremony and remain husband and wife in name alone. But the thick, expensive walls of Cypress Woods cannot shut out the terrible memories that have woven their fabric over her destiny, or the cold eyes of Paul's mother Gladys, reminding Ruby of the secret she must keep to give Pearl a loving father. Then her venomous twin sister, Gisselle, arrives to taunt her with news of Beau Andreas, the true father Pearl has never met, and the only man Ruby will ever long for with all her body and soul. Desperate to find the complete, fulfilling life she craves, Ruby builds a precarious new existence, a flimsy shanty of hope that the first flood washes away. Only when the storm exposes the very blackest evils of the past will she glimpse the rainbow's fragile promise, a morning of sunshine and laughter with a family of her own....