Title: Fauxmance Author: Cookie O’Gorman Genre: Young Adult Contemporary Romance
Fauxmance (fow-mans): Term for a romantic relationship that is fake. Real feelings, like love, are strictly prohibited. See also: Why would anyone enter a fake relationship?
Eighteen-year-old Magnolia believes in true love.
Or she did.
When her boyfriend dumps her the day before her sister’s wedding, Maggie is devastated—but her broken heart is only part of the problem. Maggie is the maid of honor, and her sister insists: Every member of the bridal party must have an escort. No exceptions.
Thank goodness for Hayden Davenport.
Sarcastic, cocky, a surprisingly good listener and self-professed player, when Maggie gets stuck in an elevator with the handsome stranger, she thinks she’s found the perfect wedding date. Unfortunately, Hayden hates weddings. Like really hates them.
But one soul-shattering kiss changes everything.
Maggie needs a fake boyfriend. Hayden wants to prove he’s changed his playboy ways. Faking it should be easy. The hard part?
Remembering it’s all pretend and not falling in love for real.
This book features two opposites with sizzling chemistry, a sweet, hopeless romantic and a cynical bad boy who’ll steal your heart. Elevators, fake romance, and weddings, oh my! Get ready to swoon, laugh, and say ‘I do’ to this heartfelt YA romance.
I shot him a hopeful look. “Do you have anything to do tomorrow night? Want to be my escort?”
Hayden shook his head slowly. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I loathe weddings, remember?”
“Have any friends who might want to go?” I tried again.
“Nah, the guys in my band are more about rock concerts than stuffy ceremonies.”
My ears perked at that. “You’re in a band?”
He nodded.
“Are all the guys as hot as you?” I asked then blushed like crazy. Why had I said that?
“They’re okay,” he said, his eyes bright. “But they can’t compete with all this.”
Oh, I bet they couldn’t.
“You don’t think any of them would want to take me? Ouch,” I said.
“It’s not about you, Maggie. It’s the second-hand embarrassment from having to wear a tux, hanging out with parents, and being man candy for the night.”
“Don’t guys like being man candy?”
“Some do.”
“But not you or your friends.”
Hayden shrugged. “I don’t mind it. But like I said, I’d rather jump off a cliff then spend time at a lame wedding.”
This is crazy, I thought. I’m stuck in an elevator with a musician who’s friends with a bunch of other male musicians. And none of them will go on one no-strings-attached date where they’ll get free food.
I threw up my hands.
“Okay, it’s official,” I said. “Karma hates me.”
“She must not hate you too much,” Hayden said. “You are stuck in here with me. And I’m a total catch.”
Cookie O’Gorman writes YA & NA romance to give readers a taste of happily-ever-after. Small towns, quirky characters, and the awkward yet beautiful moments in life make up her books. Cookie also has a soft spot for nerds and ninjas. Her novels ADORKABLE, NINJA GIRL, The Unbelievable, Inconceivable, Unforeseeable Truth About Ethan Wilder, The Good Girl’s Guide to Being Bad, The Kissing Challenge (YA novella), WALLFLOWER, and CUPCAKE are out now! She is also the author of NA sports romances, The Best Mistake and The Perfect Play. Her newest release FAUXMANCE is coming on April 28, 2022!
In 1963, Neil Vincent, a middle-aged World War II veteran and “Christian atheist” is working at Westfield Court as a chauffeur. He spends most of his spare time reading. Mary Claire DeWinter is a young, blind, Catholic college student and reluctant heiress. To secure her inheritance, she has to marry within a year, and her aunt is pressuring her to marry a rich man who teased and bullied her when she was a child. Neil and Mary Claire shouldn’t even be friends, but the gulf between them is bridged by a shared love of books. Can they cross the bridge to more?
On the drive to Brierly Station, he didn’t speculate about who Miss DeWinter might be. It wasn’t his job to know who she was, only to meet her train and take her safely back to Westfield Court. She wouldn’t be the last of the friends and relatives who would gather as the old man’s life came to its long-awaited and peaceful end.
When the train rumbled in, he got out of the car. He stood patiently on the platform as the passengers disembarked, holding up a small slate on which he had chalked DEWINTER in large capitals. There weren’t many passengers, but they were briefly delayed while the conductor helped a blind woman navigate the steps. Neil’s gaze fell expectantly on a woman in her thirties, with an awful hat, but she was immediately met by a portly man and a teenage boy. No other likely prospects appeared, and he waited for someone to respond to the sign. No one did.
Finally, only two passengers were left on the platform—a small, homely man and the blind woman. Blind girl, really. She couldn’t be more than twenty. She had a jointed white cane, and her large sunglasses didn’t cover the edges of the scars on her face. She would not have been beautiful even without the scars—too thin, for starters, of average height but with small bones. On the other hand, her face might once have been pretty, and her hair was clean and shining, raven black, and well brushed. She was too pale, and the scars around her eyes were red and ugly. She looked a little lost.
Feeling foolish, he lowered the slate. “Miss DeWinter?” he asked as he approached her.
“Yes,” she said, turning toward his voice with a smile.
“I’m Vincent,” he said. “The St. James chauffeur.”
“Pleased to meet you, Mr. Vincent,” she said. “Thank you for meeting me.” Her voice was soft, her enunciation perfect.
The porter fetched her luggage—a single gray vinyl suitcase with a flower decal—from the depot and turned it over to Neil with a cheerful nod. Jane would be disappointed, especially if the girl’s other clothes were as plain as what she wore, a simple dark dress with long sleeves and an unfashionable, below-the-knees hemline. “Would you take my arm?” he asked, positioning himself so she could place her hand in the crook of his elbow, which she did with easy confidence.
“Do you have a Christian name?” she asked.
“Yes, miss. It’s Neil.”
“That’s a good name,” she said. “Mine is Mary Claire. How is my grandfather, do you know?”
Neil, who hadn’t known the old man had any grandchildren, said, “Hanging on, miss.”
He opened the car door and helped her into the back seat.
“You don’t have to call me ‘miss’ all the time,” she said. “Please call me Mary Claire. Or my friends at school call me Sunny.” “Yes, miss,” he said automatically and closed the door.
For more information, visit my website, sign up for my newsletter, and claim a free autographed copy of Stonebridge: https://www.lindagriffinauthor.com/
I was born and raised in San Diego, California and earned a BA in English from San Diego State University and an MLS from UCLA. I began my career as a reference and collection development librarian in the Art and Music Section of the San Diego Public Library and then transferred to the Literature and Languages Section, where I had the pleasure of managing the Central Library’s Fiction collection and initiating fiction order lists for the entire library system. Although I also enjoy reading biography, memoir, and history, fiction remains my first love. In addition to the three R’s—reading, writing, and research—I enjoy Scrabble, movies, and travel.
My earliest ambition was to be a “book maker” and I wrote my first story, “Judy and the Fairies,” with a plot stolen from a comic book, at the age of six. I broke into print in college with a story in the San Diego State University literary journal, The Phoenix, but most of my magazine publications came after I left the library to spend more time on my writing.
My stories have been published in numerous journals, including Eclectica, Thema Literary Journal, The Binnacle, The Nassau Review, Orbis, and Avalon Literary Review, and in the anthologies Short Story America, Vol. 2, The Captive and the Dead, and Australia Burns. Four stories, including one as yet unpublished, received honorable mention in the Short Story America Prize for Short Fiction contests.
Member of RWA, Authors Guild, and Sisters in Crime
A missed opportunity five years ago makes for an unexpected encounter now between two people meant for each other – but who square off in a very public battle of wills in the small town of Love You, Maine, where every day is Valentine’s Day. Can love conquer all in a town steeped in it?
Kell Luview refuses to be a sucker at love again. Five years ago, he left D.C. with his tail between his legs and his heart broken. Fiercely protective of his small town in rural Maine, he’s determined to save the family tree business and avoid his feelings at all costs, no matter how much he longs to solve the mystery of what happened in D.C.
L.A. native Rachel Hart hates being underestimated almost as much as she hates this small town. She has two goals on this trip: get out of the cheesy tourist trap of Love You, Maine with a completed business deal, and avoid running into Kell, her old friend from D.C. who never became an old flame because of a huge misunderstanding.
One that still aches.
When her rental car breaks down on a logging road and Kell comes to her rescue, it’s clear he’s a changed man – and not for the good. Grumpy and reserved, he pushes all her buttons, still stubbornly convinced she betrayed him all those years ago. He’s never forgiven her, and she’s never forgiven herself for carrying a torch for him.
An embarrassing incident gets the town gossip mill going when residents wrongly assume Kell and Rachel are the newest couple to find love in the most romantic place on Earth. But the townsfolk aren’t wrong for long…
As Rachel breaks through his defenses and charms the town, he faces his biggest fear: all those pesky feelings he’s been avoiding.
Because they’re all about Rachel now.
And maybe they always were.
Can Kell and Rachel fight their growing attraction in the one place in the world where you can’t avoid love?
“Kell,” she whispered against his mouth. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For this.” She motioned at the romantic dinner he’d created for the two of them, the wide table in this conference room an ample spread for a…
Ample spread.
“We haven’t even had dinner. Thank me after.”
She batted her eyelashes. “Is that an offer?”
“Rachel,” he said, moving his hand from her waist to cup her ass. “That’s more than an offer.”
He started to kiss her again, but she put her fingers on his lips. “If we don’t eat dinner first, we’ll never eat. And I have a meeting here in this very room, to try to pitch the deal again, in three days. Boundaries, Kell – boundaries. I refuse to have sex on this conference table.”
“The thought never, ever occurred to me,” he lied.
“Liar.”
“Caught.”
With a deep laugh he adored, she reached for the bottle of wine. “How about you uncork this and we start with a lovely glass.”
New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author Julia Kent writes romantic comedy with an edge. From billionaires to BBWs to new adult rock stars, Julia finds a sensual, goofy joy in every contemporary romance she writes. Unlike Shannon from Shopping for a Billionaire, she did not meet her husband after dropping her phone in a men’s room toilet (and he isn’t a billionaire). She lives in New England with her husband and three sons in a household where the toilet seat is never, ever, down.
