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HAPPILY EVER AFTER by Elizabeth Maxwell

HAPPILY EVER AFTER

by Elizabeth Maxwell

Pub Date: March 4th, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-4767-3266-4

What if a novelist’s characters object to their storylines? Worse, what if they hijack the plot?

While other mothers in her posh neighborhood fill their days with Bikram yoga classes, Sadie Fuller secretly writes steamy romance novels. Divorced yet still friends with her gay ex-husband, she’s raising their 11-year-old daughter, Allison, with the help of Greta, their German housekeeper. As far as her own love life, well, at 46, Sadie knows she’s past her prime, so she places an ad on Craigslist for a Friday-morning, no-strings-attached lover, and Jason responds. He’s a kind attorney, eager for a sexual relationship since his wife stole his confidence by cheating on him with the tile contractor. It’s a stable life, if a little lacking in excitement. Yet one morning, Sadie discovers an extra 1,500 words have mysteriously appeared in the novel she’s writing. She’s sure she didn’t write those words. She’s sure there was no witch named Clarissa in the story last night. And she’s sure she doesn’t know the impossibly gorgeous man who seems to be suffering from amnesia in the baby-products aisle at Target. The gorgeous man is, indeed, Aidan Hathaway, the hero of Sadie’s novel, and Sadie’s life turns upside down as she tries to explain him to nosy neighbors and jealous Jason, not to mention bewildered Greta. Allison is smitten and couldn’t care less where Aidan came from. As a romance novel hero, Aidan relies on steamy glances and suggestive comments, neither of which helps Sadie crack the mystery of why he’s here, much less how to send him back into the safe pages of her book. Debut novelist Maxwell and Sadie herself deftly bend the rules of genre fiction, letting the boundaries between reality and fiction shimmy and shimmer.

Clever, engaging and sparkling with wit.