Archives de catégorie : Contemporary Romance

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN de Dwayne Alexander Smith & Pamela Samuels Young

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN, the long-awaited second book from Dwayne Alexander Smith, is a dual POV rom-com suspense.

SOUNDS LIKE A PLAN
by Dwayne Alexander Smith & Pamela Samuels Young
Atria, July 2024
(via The Friedrich Agency)

Jackson Jones and Mackenzie Cunningham are both private investigators operating out of Los Angeles. While Jackson specializes in high-end clientele whose swagger matches his own, Mackenzie is scrappy, defensive, and easily underestimated. Despite many years in the same industry, they first meet when they are both hired to find the same missing woman. Unaware that they’ve entered a competition, they keep bumping heads until it’s clear that something suspicious is afoot. Equally attracted to and frustrated by one another, they soon realize that the client who hired them might actually be setting them up! Just as they shift from rivals to partners, Jackson and Mackenzie find themselves fighting for their lives, a string of bodies piling up around them. With no one to trust but each other, they race to solve the case before they can be forced to pay the price for their involvement.

Dwayne Alexander Smith is the author of Forty Acres, which was previously in development as a Feature Film at Netflix, with Luke Cage’s Cheo Hodari Coker attached to write, and Jay-Z attached to produce. Dwayne is also under contract with Audible to write an eight-episode original radio play for Kevin Hart and Charlamagne Tha God’s imprint. When Dwayne received an NAACP Image Award in 2014 for his debut novel, he happened to meet a fellow author named Pamela Samuels Young, whose novel Anybody’s Daughter won an award that same year.

Pamela Samuels Young has been widely published in both commercial suspense and erotica, and many of her characters have legal backgrounds that mirror Pamela’s own. Netflix is also developing Pamela’s work, having optioned the first two books in her Vernette Henderson series, which follows a Black female attorney from Compton, working in a corporate firm. Felicia D. Henderson is attached as Executive Producer (Empire, Everybody Hates Chris, Sister Sister).

ARYA KHANNA’S BOLLYWOOD MOMENT d’Arushi Avachat

Structured like a Bollywood film (entertaining intermission included!) Arya Khanna’s Bollywood Moment will make you swoon, laugh, cry, think, nod your head in agreement, and quite possibly: make you get up and dance.

ARYA KHANNA’S BOLLYWOOD MOMENT
by Arushi Avachat
Wednesday Books, January 2024

Shaadi preparations are in full swing, which means lehenga shopping, taste testing, dance rehearsals, and best of all, Arya’s sister, Alina, is home. The Khannas are together again, finally, and Arya wants to enjoy it. So, she stifles her lingering resentment towards Alina, plays mediator during her sister’s fights with their mother, and welcomes her sister’s fiancé with open arms. (Okay, maybe enjoy it is the wrong word.)

Meanwhile, at school, Arya’s senior year dreams are unraveling. In between class and her part-time gig as a bookshop assistant, Arya struggles to navigate the aftermath of a bad breakup between her two best friends and a tense student council partnership with her rival, the obnoxiously attractive Dean Merriweather.

Arya is determined to keep the peace at home and at school, but this shaadi season teaches Arya new realities: Alina won’t always be in the bedroom down the hall, Mamma’s sadness isn’t mendable, friendships must evolve, and life doesn’t always work out like the Bollywood movies Arya loves so dearly. But sometimes, the person you least expect will give you a glimpse of your dream sequence just when you need it most.

Arushi Avachat is a writer from the Bay Area, California. She currently studies English and Political Science at UCLA, where she can be found sipping caramel lattes and pretending to be productive at Kerckhoff Coffee House. She is a contributor to the Young Adult anthology Study Break (Feiwel & Friends, March 2023). Arushi loves dark chocolate, Bollywood dramas, and Jane Austen novels.

MARE OF NIGHT d’Emma Noyes

First of a YA fantasy romance trilogy by bestselling author of Guy’s Girl Emma Noyes, for fans of ‘The Vampire Diaries’ and Norse mythology.

MARE OF NIGHT
(Ragnarok Rising #1)
by Emma Noyes
Wednesday Books, late 2023 TBD
(via The Whalen Agency)

© Magdalena Iskra

Book 1: MARE OF NIGHT

Charlie Hudson just wants to get through junior year. Since the death of her twin sister two years before, she has drifted through life, robbed of the spark that once burned so brightly within her—until the day her first classmate goes missing. Drawn to the disappearances by forces she can’t explain, Charlie soon finds herself investigating the mysterious, alluring newcomer in town, Elias Everhart. She knows Elias is hiding something, but what she doesn’t know is that those secrets will lead her to a place she never imagined: a world hiding in plain sight, made of magic, gods, and monsters—and a first love fated to fall apart.

Book 2: LIES OF LOKI and Book 3: SINS OF ODIN to follow.

Emma Noyes told her mother she wanted to be an author when she was six. She grew up in a suburb outside Chicago and attended Harvard University, where she studied history & literature. She started her career at a beer company, but left because she wanted to write about mermaids and witches—eventually publishing her first YA fantasy series, The Sunken City. She now lives in Chicago with her Swedish boyfriend and miniature Pomeranian. Guy’s Girl, her adult debut, will publish in October 2023.

MEIN UNFASSBAR KOMPLIZIERTES LEBEN (MÄNNER NICHT MITGEZÄHLT) de Mimi Steinfeld

A hilarious comedy for all fans of Sophie Kinsella.

MEIN UNFASSBAR KOMPLIZIERTES LEBEN (MÄNNER NICHT MITGEZÄHLT)
[My Unbelievably Complicated Life (Not Counting the Men)]
by Mimi Steinfeld
Goldmann, March 2023

Cressi Catterberg is freshly in love with gorgeous Mika. She feels that he might be the one – if only she didn’t suffer from commitment-phobia. And if only she wasn’t convinced that her true love is actually Mr Lindholm, her therapist. Emotional upheaval is just one of her problems: there’s her family too – or rather, her two sisters and three aunts, who constantly stick their nose into her business. But most of her energy is taken up with the café she has inherited from her mother, for which she has big plans. Mr Lindholm and Cressi’s aunts know it’s time Cressi started believing in herself – and in Mika.

Mimi Steinfeld is the pseudonym of Beate Teresa Hanika, born in Regensburg in 1976. She has already written two enchanting comedies featuring Cressi Catterberg and her turbulent family and love life, but before then was already a famous author of popular YA books and literary novels.

JUST SOME STUPID LOVE STORY de Katelyn Doyle

This witty and endearing novel follows the will-they-won’t-they of a couple who are just out of reach of each other, perfect for fans of Emily Henry’s People We Meet on Vacation and Josh and Hazel’s Guide to Not Dating by Christina Lauren.

JUST SOME STUPID LOVE STORY
by Katelyn Doyle
(aka Scarlett Peckham)
Flatiron, 2024
(via Nancy Yost Literary)

Screenwriter Molly Marks is a love cynic, despite the fact that she writes rom-com screenplays for a living. She thought ghosting her high school boyfriend, Seth, was the end of her chance at love—until a 15-year reunion sets something in motion that some would call fate—but absolutely not Molly Marks.
Divorce attorney Seth Rubinstein believes in love, true love at that, despite his job. He’d never admit it, but he carried a torch for Molly long after their sudden and devastating breakup. Over the last decade, he’s sought his soulmate in one bad date and one rushed relationship after another.
When Seth and Molly are seated at the same reunion table, sparks fly, and a bet is made: whoever can more accurately predict the outcome of five relationships over the next five years must declare that the other is right about love. The two are then launched into a years-long series of entanglements, breakups, and friendship attempts showcased throughout the narrative in emails, texts, late-night calls, and accidental run-ins until they reach a breathtaking conclusion that will force them to confront one more relationship—theirs—and whether their story is one of timeless heartbreak or if they are truly meant to be.

Katelyn Doyle has already won the hearts of countless readers through the historical romances she’s penned as Scarlett Peckham. As Peckham, Doyle is a USA Today bestselling author. The Washington Post selected her debut, The Duke I Tempted, as one of the Best Romance Novels of 2018. Entertainment Weekly has called Peckham’s “storytelling breathtakingly human,” and her contemporary work is no different. She continues to showcase the witty, romantic, and feminist voice that has already earned acclaim everywhere, from Kirkus and NPR to The New York Times Book Review (twice).