Genre: Romantic Comedy
Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend, an all-new quirky and witty laugh out loud romance from New York Times bestselling author Penny Reid, is now live!
Winnifred Gobaldi and Byron Visser are not best friends.
Yes, they’ve known each other for years, but they’re not even friendly. Winnie considers them more like casual, distant acquaintances who find each other barely tolerable, especially when he's being condescending (which is all the time).
The truth is, they have nothing in common. She’s a public school science teacher with stars in her eyes, and he’s a pretentious, joyless double PhD turned world-famous bestselling fiction author. She loves sharing her passion for promulgating women in STEM careers and building community via social media, and he eschews all socialization, virtual or otherwise. She’s looking for a side hustle to help pay down a mountain of student debt, and his financial portfolio is the stuff of fiduciary wet dreams. So why are they faking a #bestfriend relationship for millions of online spectators?
When a simple case of tit-for-tat trends between nonfriends leads to a wholly unexpected kind of pretend, nothing is simple. Sometimes, it takes a public audience to reveal the truth of private feelings, and rarely—very rarely—you should believe what you see online.
Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend is a full-length, complete standalone, adult contemporary romantic comedy.
“This
is the video from yesterday.” My stomach did a weird thing at the sight of him,
and the sight of me crawling on all fours toward him, and what came after. I
blinked away from the replay, before the part where I’d forgotten we were being
filmed. “Why would I be mad at you about this? I knew you were filming.”
“Look
harder.”
My
forehead wrinkled, giving my attention back to her phone. I didn’t know what
she wanted me to see, but now the video was repeating and—
“OH
MY GOD!” I grabbed the phone. “This—this is—”
“Shh!
Yes.” Now Amelia looked around, presumably to make certain none of the
Seattleites surrounding us felt a disturbance in the politeness force. “Yes. I
recorded it live. I’m so, so, so sorry.”
I
leaned forward. “So that means it’s been—”
“Posted
since last night. That’s right.” She covered her face again, groaning. “I’m so
sorry.”
My
eyes caught on the number of views, and I stood from the table, my chair
scraping noisily on the linoleum. “ONE MILLION VIEWS?”
“Sorry!”
she whispered loudly to someone at a nearby table. “We’ll just—we’re leaving.”
Amelia grabbed my laptop and notebook and tilted her head toward the exit.
“Time to go, and it was one point three the last time I checked. Now get your
bag.”
Numbly,
I lowered her phone and grabbed for my backpack and coat, fumbling with the
strap. My fingers didn’t seem to work. She walked around the table and placed a
hand on my back, helping to usher me out of the quiet area and waiting until we
were standing in the hall to say, “I’m so sorry. It was an accident.”
“I
can’t . . .” I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move, I
couldn’t speak. One point three million
views. What must Byron think? “Oh crap,” I whispered, my gaze swinging
around the interior of the library, unable to settle. “What about Byron? Does
he know? How is he going to feel about this?”
“I
don’t know if he knows. I’ve been trying to call him all morning. He won’t pick
up his phone, and I’m frankly a little scared to leave a voice mail. Since he’s
not on social media, he might not know.” Stuffing my laptop and notebook into
my backpack, Amelia put the strap on my shoulder and took her cell phone from
where I still gripped it.
I
immediately covered my face like I could hide from this. My cheeks were hot. As
much time as I’d spent this morning coming to terms with Jeff’s decisions last
night, I’d spent ZERO seconds thinking about my ridiculous reaction to Byron’s
performance. I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it. What was the point?
He’d been pretending, acting, playing a part, and—as per usual—I’d left the
interaction feeling like a fool.
“We
have to delete it,” I rasped, my mouth dry, my brain on fire. “Before he sees
it and finds out, we have to delete it.”
“No!
No. Don’t do that.” She pressed the phone to her chest.
“What?
Why not?”
“Think
for a second.” She pushed me toward the elevator. “If you delete it, it might
become a whole thing. He’s a famous guy who millions of people are starving to
know more about. He has no social media and suddenly he’s on TikTok with you?
And this isn’t like your lab video from Friday, this is you two together, acting like you’re close
friends crushing on each other. We need to call him—together—and tell him. But
first we need him to answer his damn phone.” Amelia nodded at her own assertion
while stabbing the elevator call button with her index finger.
“Call
him? You want to call him together?” Oh
God. I didn’t want to call him. I never wanted to talk to him again. “You
don’t think he’ll want us to take it down ASAP? Like you said, millions of
people want to know about him. Don’t you think he’ll view this as an invasion
of privacy?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?”
I flinched back. “I think you mean, most
certainly yes.”
“No.”
She pulled me by the arm into the elevator and pressed all the right buttons.
“We should call him, leave a voice mail together where we tell him exactly what
happened, and ask what he wants to do about it. If you take it down, it might
create more difficulty for him than if you left it up and let it run its
course.”
I
covered my face again, leaning against the wall for support. “I can’t believe
this is happening.”
“Hey,
on the bright side, you have over ten thousand new followers. That’s . . .
something.”
I groaned. I would’ve given up every single one of my new followers if it would’ve somehow undone the posting of that video. What a nightmare.
To celebrate the release of Ten Trends to Seduce Your Bestfriend, Penny has an incredible GIVEAWAY!
.jpg)
Penny Reid is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling author of the Winston Brothers and Knitting in the City series. She used to spend her days writing federal grant proposals as a biomedical researcher, but now she writes kissing books. Penny is an obsessive knitter and manages the #OwnVoices-focused mentorship incubator / publishing imprint, Smartypants Romance. She lives in Seattle Washington with her husband, three kids, and dog named Hazel.
Website | Facebook | Amazon | Twitter | Mailing List |
Post a Comment
0 Comments