To Love and to Loathe is out TODAY!
Hello, everyone!
It's a special ~publication day~ edition of the newsletter (plz clap for the fact that I remembered to send this, I am feeling very scattered at the moment), so let's get to it!
BOOK NEWS: To Love and to Loathe signed copies + events...and a new book announcement!
To Love and to Loathe, my frenemies-with-benefits, country house party, marriage-wager, "let-me-just-give-you-a-bit-of-feedback-in-the-bedroom" Regency rom-com is out TODAY! You can purchase it wherever books are sold, but if you'd like a signed and personalized copy, you can buy one from my local indie, Flyleaf Books! (Be sure to include in your order comments how you'd like it personalized [or if you just want it signed!].)
I'm so humbled by the response to this book -- it was an April LibraryReads pick, it received a starred review from Booklist, which called it "a comically clever love story", Shelf Awareness called it "a delightful enemies-to-lovers escape", and Publishers Weekly called it "irresistibly irreverent", just to name a few! I love this hero and heroine so much, and I hope you enjoy their story.
I'll be kicking off my virtual book tour tonight, in conversation with the lovely Emily Henry, author of Beach Read, at 6pm EST -- you do need to register to attend, and you can do that here! The rest of my virtual tour should be a lot of fun, too -- I can't wait to talk to a couple of my favorite authors! You can find links to register for all of those events on the events page on my website.
I'm also so excited to announce -- in case you missed it on Instagram and Twitter last week -- that I have another book in this universe coming out next year! It's called To Marry and to Meddle, and it's a marriage of convenience romance starring a couple of characters who will be familiar to readers of my first two books. I'm on deadline for it at the moment, and am having a lot of fun working on it! (Except for when I am having no fun at all working on it, and these two sentiments sometimes exist within five minutes of each other.)
READING RECOMMENDATIONS: A Victorian mystery, SoFla vibes, and kids' fantasy
FOR ADULTS: If you are like me, you just want 5 seconds of joy to brighten up your late-pandemic days. And, in search of said joy, I deliberately saved Deanna Raybourn's newest book in her Veronica Speedwell series, An Unexpected Peril, for this past weekend, when I knew I would be full of book release and deadline stress. And this was an EXCELLENT decision. This series is everything I want in a Victorian mystery, featuring an incredibly sassy lady detective, a brooding love interest, banter galore, and, of course, lots of compelling mysteries. If you haven't discovered this series yet, start at the beginning with A Curious Beginning -- and if you haven't read Veronica's latest adventure, I highly recommend!
FOR TEENS: Once Upon a Quinceanera by Monica Gomez-Hira is a YA romance/coming-of-age story that I inhaled last week, and there were a few different reasons I enjoyed it so much: a) the heroine isn't great at school, and it made me really reflect on how refreshing and rare it felt to read a YA heroine who wasn't super bookish; b) it's set in Miami, and made this native South Floridian all kinds of homesick; and c) the romance is super swoony!
FOR KIDS: Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston is a middle grade debut that came out a few months ago, and I read it a couple of weeks ago, and I am pleased to report that it's so! much! fun! It reminded me a lot of traditional fantasy favorites like Harry Potter and Percy Jackson, but the heroine of this book is a Black girl from a poor neighborhood, and it's so fun to read a fun fantasy adventure that also touches on issues of racism and privilege, in a 100% kid-appropriate way. It's the first in a planned series, and I'm really looking forward to the next one!
TRAVEL TIP: Shoulder season in Greece
I have lately been feeling nostalgic for Greece. Okay, let's be real: I am nostalgic for just about anywhere that is not my town (or, tbh, my living room) -- as my best friend said to me a couple of months ago, "I'd get on an international flight blind at this point" -- but my longing for Greece has been hitting me particularly hard at the moment, so allow me to take this opportunity to heartily recommend Greece in April.
Here's the thing: Greece in the summer is hot and crowded. You know where is not hot, but pleasantly warm, and not crowded, but pleasantly bustling? Greece in April. Go to the Acropolis without standing in line for your entire natural life! (Wear sunscreen, though; even in April, it's pretty toasty up there under the scorching sun.) If you go to the islands, I cannot speak for anywhere but Santorini, but I can confirm that by mid-April there are plenty of (though not all) restaurants open for the season, there's lots of accommodation, and things are more reasonably priced than they would be in the summer. Mainland Greece is, I think, a pretty good bargain; the islands are less so, but April prices are certainly better than June ones, and my photos are 100% better than they would have been if I'd been trying to dodge every tourist on planet earth to take them. (And this is the most important consideration, of course. #doitforthegram)
Also, one piece of possibly helpful advice is that a lot of people will tell you that if you're visiting Santorini, you need to rent an ATV to get around. No! This is not! true! You guys, what you need is a bus ticket. There are buses all over the island; in fact, my #1 recommended activity for your visit is to take the bus to Fira, and do the Fira-Oia hike, which takes 3-5 hours, depending on your speed. The views are incredible, and your legs will be tired, and then you can happily eat a lot of feta with dinner. (Full disclosure: I will happily eat a lot of feta with dinner regardless of how much I have walked. I love feta. I love cheese. Sorry, what was I talking about again?)
Also, the photo below was taken at dinner the first night I spent in Santorini on a trip six springs ago, and it was at this very dinner that, in conversation with my friend, I came up with the initial idea for To Have and to Hoax. So thanks, Greece, you changed my life! You're the best! Everyone please get vaccinated so we can travel again! I'm extremely sick of my couch!
Okay! Happy Tuesday, everyone -- and thank you all so much for reading, both my books and my rambling and only-slightly-coherent newsletters. I appreciate every single one of you.
Martha