Business or Pleasure - Softcover

Solomon, Rachel Lynn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593548531 ISBN 13: 9780593548530

Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group, 2023

Inhaltsangabe

ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES' BEST ROMANCES OF THE YEAR!

"Intimate and unflinching."—New York Times

A USA TODAY BESTSELLER!

An Indie Next Pick
A LibraryReads Hall of Fame Pick
One of Amazon's Best Romances of July

Named a Most Anticipated Summer Read by Buzzfeed, Glamour, Town & Country, BookRiot, and more!

A ghostwriter and a struggling actor help each other on the page and in the bedroom in this steamy romantic comedy from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ex Talk.
 
Chandler Cohen has never felt more like the ghost in "ghostwriter" until she attends a signing for a book she wrote—and the author doesn’t even recognize her. The evening turns more promising when she meets a charming man at the bar and immediately connects with him. But when all their sexual tension culminates in a spectacularly awkward hookup, she decides this is one night better off forgotten.
 
Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done. Her next project is ghostwriting a memoir for Finn Walsh, a C-list actor best known for playing a lovable nerd on a cult classic werewolf show who now makes a living appearing at fan conventions across the country. Chandler knows him better from their one-night stand of hilarious mishaps.
 
Chandler’s determined to keep their partnership as professional as possible, but when she admits to Finn their night together wasn’t as mind-blowing as he thought it was, he’s distraught. He intrigues her enough that they strike a deal: when they’re not working on his book, Chandler will school Finn in the art of satisfaction. As they grow closer both in and out of the bedroom, they must figure out which is more important, business or pleasure—or if there's a way for them to have both.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Rachel Lynn Solomon is the New York Times bestselling author of The Ex Talk, Weather Girl, and other romantic comedies for teens and adults. Originally from Seattle, she's currently navigating expat life in Amsterdam, where she can often be found exploring the city, collecting stationery, and working up the courage to knit her first sweater.

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"This book was a real labor of love,” says the woman seated behind a table of hardcovers sporting her makeup-­free face, scrunched mid-­yelp as she attempts to drink from a garden hose. “I can’t believe it’s something I can finally hold in my hands! And the cover’s not too bad, either.”

The audience laughs right on cue. In the back row, I can practically feel Noemie cringe beside me. “I’ve made bowls of cereal that were more a labor of love than the effort she put into that book,” she whispers.

She’s not wrong—­I experienced it firsthand. Still, I give my cousin a nudge. “Be respectful.”

“I am. To the cereal.”

I press my lips together to keep from reacting and focus on the stage, where Maddy DeMarco commands the room with a warm, practiced confidence bordering on emotional manipulation. The bookstore is filled with just a fraction of her 1.6 million Instagram followers: mostly women, mostly white, mostly dressed in sustainable linen they bought using her discount code MADSAVINGS10. At first I thought it was a cult, and to be completely honest, I’m still not sure. Her brand of saccharine positivity doesn’t quite do it for me anymore—­whenever I need self-­love, it’s more likely to take shape as something handheld and battery-­operated. Which Maddy has devoted tragic few (read: zero) social media posts to.

She’s built her career on empty affirmations and obvious advice. Case in point—­the book is called Go Drink Some Water: A Guide to Self-­Care, Self-­Discovery, and Staying Thirsty.

“People often ask how I turned one viral post into a lifestyle brand,” Maddy says, crossing one linen-­clad leg over the other. Her natural waves are shined to perfection with an expensive oil I’m ashamed to admit I tried before chopping my ash-­blond hair into a pixie last year. “And the answer is simple: I don’t sleep.” This gets a few more laughs. A muted groan from Noemie. “No, I want to be real with you guys. I was one of those people who never had their shit together—­wait, can I say that? Are there kids here?” She makes a show of squinting out at the audience before barreling onward. “I would get so stressed that I literally forgot to drink water! It wasn’t until I got so dehydrated that I ended up in the hospital that I realized I’d stopped doing things just for myself. I’m talking basic, keeping-­yourself-­functioning kind of things. Like drinking water. And I knew something needed to change.”

I wrote three chapters of her book on that hospital visit, poring over her Instagram to make sure I was capturing her voice. Every fourth comment swooned over how relatable she was—­and this is someone who sells wall hangings that say live laugh girlboss.

All through the writing process, I tried to keep Maddy relatable: when she insisted on communicating with me only through her team, when that team sent me photos of notes she’d scrawled on compostable napkins, when she said the writing needed to feel a little earthier. I wanted to like her so badly, wanted to believe her posts were inspiring people to live their best and most carbon-­neutral lives. Because the thing is, back before the book, I did like her. There was something both aspirational and authentic about her that had compelled me to hit “follow” a few years ago, long before the wall hangings and the constant #ads that clutter her feed these days.

Ghostwriting isn’t a glamorous job, and even if nothing about this finished product screams Chandler Cohen, I’ve been strangely giddy over the idea of finally meeting Maddy—­because some part of me is still a little starstruck. The book came out a few days ago, and I’ve made myself wait to get a copy until her Seattle tour stop, convinced her signature on the title page will cement this as a collaboration. I didn’t even open the box of hardcovers that showed up on my doorstep last week.

In my wildest dreams, I’ve wondered if maybe Maddy will ask me to sign a copy for her, too. An inside joke between the two of us. And somehow, that would make up for all the eleventh-­hour rewrites and irreversible, anxiety-­induced damage to my cuticles.

Chapter 6: Harness Your Inner Optimist. Maybe the book really did make an impact.

Maddy lifts one arm in the air. “Can I get a show of hands—­who here has ever posted a photo of themselves smiling when they were so far from happy, hitting the submit button almost felt like a lie?” Nearly every hand goes up. “There’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve done it plenty of times. But it’s not the photos of my smiling face that have enabled me to connect with so many of you—­it’s the photos of my crow’s-feet. My frowns. Even my tears.” She slips her phone from her pants pocket, scrolls through her own feed. “The next time you post something, think about how much it’s representing your authentic self. And then don’t just hit submit. Take a new photo. Write a new caption. Let your inner beauty do the talking.”

“Then she’s going to love my event recap,” Noemie says.

A woman in front of us turns around, shoving a finger to her lips. Noemie goes silent and blinks wide, innocent eyes at her.

“You’re going to get us kicked out,” I say. “And then what am I going to say to my publisher?”

“You can tell them I’m living my truth and speaking my heart. Isn’t that what chapter twelve was about?” Unfortunately, yes.

After another half hour of Maddy’s sweeping proclamations about our on-­ and offline lives, infused with no fewer than four references to brands that sponsor her, she gets a signal from her assistant and claps her hands once. “I’m afraid that was all the time we have! I can’t wait to sign these beauties for you, but before I do . . . I want you all to do something for me.” A sly grin spreads across her face. “If you reach under your chairs, you’ll find your very own bottle of water.”

There’s a flurry of eager, electric energy as those who didn’t notice the water bottles when they came in discover them for the first time.

“Now I want you to open that baby up”—­Maddy uncaps her water bottle, raising it high in a toast to the audience. I tap my recycled plastic against Noemie’s with an exaggerated lift of my eyebrows—­“and take a big, delicious sip.”

“Doesn’t it bother you,” Noemie asks in the signing line, running a hand along the book’s glossy cover, “not seeing your name on it?”

It did. At the beginning. But now there’s a sense of detachment that accompanies a book release. As a celebrity ghostwriter, I’m not hired to be anyone’s coauthor—­I’m supposed to write from their point of view. To become them. My first author, a Bachelor contestant who infamously dumped the guy on national TV after he proposed, was an utter delight, and she still emails asking how I’m doing. But I quickly learned that wasn’t the norm. Because then there was Maddy, and the book I just finished for a TikTok-­famous personal trainer with his own line of protein shakes that really stretches the definition of literature.

Maybe there’s some satisfaction in clutching these several hundred pages I churned out at record speed, a tangible conclusion to all those late nights and canceled plans. And yet...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Penguin Publishing Group
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2023
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593548531
• ISBN 13: 9780593548530
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 384
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland