The Love Interest by Kayley Loring is a fave for 2021, and it’s live!
Amazon | Paperback
Audio will be released April 26th and be narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Mackenzie Cartwright, featuring Connor Crais and Shane East!
Blurb
Dear Fiona,
I hope this letter finds you well—and by well, I mean significantly less infuriated than you were yesterday. I’ve wanted to continue our conversation from the night we met, but there are so many things I can’t say or do, now that I’m your professor.
As an anonymous letter writer, I can give you some idea of what I have planned for us, once the year is over. As an author, I can share my work in progress with you. Not for you to critique but to show you how much you mean to me.
When you’re done reading this page, destroy it—and then write me back. Don’t sign the letter. Don’t put a return address on the envelope. Mail it from a random mailbox.
Yours in problem solving,
Me
P.S. I still think you’re wasting your talent on that historical romance novel.
P.P.S. I really wanted to push you up against the door and kiss your beautiful, angry face. I will. One day.
***
Dear Emmett,
Your handwriting is almost as terrible as your mood swings, and it would have been my instinct to destroy that letter even if you hadn’t ordered me to.
If you show me your work in progress, I will critique it.
I am currently still too infuriated to write about all the other feelings I have for you.
Expect another letter soon.
Your problem and your solution,
Me
P.S. I still think an overpaid, overrated, overly handsome bestselling author of thrillers has no business teaching creative writing at a prestigious New York university.
P.P.S. To my great horror, I really wanted you to push me up against that door and kiss my angry face too. I understand now that your appalling way of treating me in class has been overcompensation, but I don’t forgive you for it. I’ll kiss you again anyway. One day.
Review
5 uniquely romantic and beautiful stars!
OMG, what a book! A unique, funny, and beautifully romantic story that is so cleverly written, I laughed and swooned the whole way through and I freaking loved it!
Emmett Ford is the bestselling author of thriller books that have also been made into a movie series. He should be riding high on his success, but he is lonely and living a life of solitude since the death of his fiancé a decade ago. He is also completely stuck when it comes to writing his next book – he has no inspiration, and he desperately needs it.
Fiona is a new arrival in NYC. She has traveled from California to attend a creative writing course in the big city, and is writing her debut novel – a historical romance. She is living large and loud, sucking every bit of life she can get from her new and exciting adventure.
Emmett and Fiona run into each other at a diner in the middle of the night. They are both pretty much smitten at first sight, and they spend the evening wandering the city, exploring, talking and sharing experiences, including one helluva hot first kiss. It’s the kind of meeting that romance readers dream about – full of chemistry, flirting, epic banter, a sense of ‘realness’, and a whole lot of laughs as these two strangers connect in a way that neither of them were anticipating.
But their burgeoning romance comes to a screeching halt when it turns out that Emmett is the teacher of one of Fiona’s writing courses at university. Their beautiful love story is stopped even before it had a chance to start, and they are both crushed, but their feelings for each other are still very much alive, and so we get this deliciously forbidden flirtation that is so much fun, and continues to sizzle with chemistry.
“I would really love if it you wouldn’t be so rude to me in class.”
“I don’t think I’m rude to you. I’m just not as nice to you as you’d like me to be.”
“I don’t understand why you can’t be nice to me – it’s not my fault I’m in your class. I tried to get out of it.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“Then what else can I do, Emmett?”
“Don’t call me Emmett.”
“Veronica calls you Emmett.”
“Veronica doesn’t need a spanking.”
They come to realise that they are unable to cut contact completely, so they take up writing letters to each other, sharing their pasts, their present, and their filthy fantasies for the future, in the only way they can, while being as cold to each other as possible in real life (with a few very-welcome slip ups here and there). At the same time, they are both writing their novels, and we get to read chapters from both of their books, watching their characters and their stories be influenced by their feelings for each other and their changing relationship. It all really cleverly ties together to give a fantastically well-rounded view of everything that is going on with them, and OMG, the feels!
“I can’t make you wait for me.”
“But you want me to? You want me to wait for you?”
“I have no right to ask you to.”
“If you asked me to, I would. If you told me that you wanted me…” Her voice is trembling, and it’s killing me. “If you want me to be yours, I will wait for you.”
Everything builds beautifully, and there is this epic sense of anticipation as we wait for something to happen with these two. And when it does… OMG, it’s beautiful! So right, and so real and so well-deserved. I was desperate for these two to find a way to be together, and it was everything I was hoping for.
“I want you, Fiona. I want you, and I’m not asking you to wait for me. I’m yours. Now.”
I love these characters so much. They are both loveable and relatable, strong yet sometimes awkward, and as much as I loved their dynamic and flirty banter, their inner monologues were just as entertaining, and I laughed so many times at the thoughts running through their heads.
I’m becoming a woman for him, I think. The sexiest, most intoxicating version of myself. This must be some kind of reproductive evolution. My body wants to make babies with him, so it’s making me do all the porny things I’ve never been inspired to do for anyone else.
I am pretty sure my blood content is about ninety percent sex hormones right now.
It’s so freaking funny, but at the centre of it all is a beautifully heartfelt romance that had me in a world of swoon as these two opposites come together, completing each other in a way they didn’t even realised they needed, and fighting for the future that they so desperately want, and I loved every moment of it.
Kayley Loring is one of the most exciting new-to-me authors that I have discovered in the last year, if you haven’t read her books yet, you really need to get onto it, because she is such a wonderful storyteller.
I adored this one – 5 stars!
An Advanced Review Copy was generously provided by the author in exchange for an honest review.
About the Author
Before writing steamy romantic comedy novels, Kayley Loring got a BFA in creative writing from a Canadian university and had a fifteen-year career as a screenwriter in Los Angeles (under a different name). She mostly wrote PG-13 family comedies that studios would pay her lots of money for and then never make into movies. In 2017 she decided to move to the Pacific Northwest and write about all the fun stuff that she wasn’t allowed to write about in those PG-13 scripts. Now she’s breathing cleaner air and writing dirtier words. It’s an adjustment she’s happily getting used to.
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