I Love Romance: HAPPY BOOK WEEK: FLUFFY BY JULIA KENT

FLUFFY
Author: Julia Kent
Release date: April 30, 2019
Genre: Romantic Comedy, Contemporary Romance
Cover Designer: Hang Le
Editor: Elisa Reed
Audiobook narrator: Erin Mallon

Goodreads: http://bit.ly/2TjDjqS

Bookbub: http://bit.ly/2ThoLrZ

FLUFFY BY JULIA KENT

Release Date: April 30, 2019

SYNOPSIS

An all-new STANDALONE from New York Times bestselling author Julia Kent.

It all started with the wrong Help Wanted ad. Of course it did.

I’m a professional fluffer. It’s NOT what you think. I stage homes for a living. Real estate agents love me, and my work stands on its own merits.

Sigh. Get your mind out of the gutter. Go ahead. Laugh. I’ll wait.

See? That’s the problem. My career has used the term “fluffer” for decades. I didn’t even know there was a more… lascivious definition of the term.

Until it was too late.

The ad for a “professional fluffer” on Craigslist seemed like divine intervention. My last unemployment check was in the bank. I was desperate. Rent was due. The ad said cash paid at the end of the day. The perfect job!

Staging homes means showing your best angle. The same principle applies in making a certain kind of movie. Turns out a “fluffer” doesn’t arrange decorative pillows on a couch.

They arrange other soft, round-ish objects.

The job isn’t hard. Er, I mean, it is — it’s about being hard. Or, well… helping other people to be hard.

Oh, man…

And that’s the other problem. A man. No, not one of the stars on the movie set. Will Lotham – my high school crush. The owner of the house where we’re filming. Illegally. In a vacation rental.

By the time the cops show up, what I thought was just a great house staging gig turned into a nightmare involving pictures of me with an undressed star, Will rescuing me from an arrest, and a humiliating lesson in my own naivete.

My job turned out to be so much harder than I expected. But you know what’s easier than I ever imagined?

Having all my dreams come true.

BUY LINKS

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REVIEW: FLUFFY BY JULIA KENT

Fluffy by Julia Kent

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Fluffy is everything you would expect from a Julia Kent novel. Mischievously funny. Irresistibly charming and hard to let go of in the end. I laughed my way to tears. Mal is a tad goofy, but all heart. When desperation lands her in an awkward situation is when the laugh out loud moments begin. What I love most about this author is that the imperfections are what make the story great. Ms. Kent finds gold in the awkward and that's what appeals to the human in us all.

View all my reviews

BUY LINKS

AmazonUS: mybook.to/fluffy
AmazonUK: smarturl.it/fluffyAMZuk
AmazonCA: smarturl.it/fluffyAMZca
AmazonAU: smarturl.it/fluffyAMZau
Nook/BN: http://bit.ly/2CGtnBE
Apple Books: https://apple.co/2RmE159

Kobo: http://bit.ly/2BjWvxL

Google Play: http://bit.ly/2COKLmQ

Audible: https://adbl.co/2KRgFGR

Print: mybook.to/fluffy

Keywords and Themes:

Reunion romance
Second chance romance
Romantic comedy
Office romance

EXCERPTS

“I can't tonight. I have a date,” I blurt out, remembering David. The dating app. The asshole who isn't an asshole.

Yet. I haven't met him, so that judgment remains withheld.

“A date?” Will asks, intrigued.

“Yes. A date. You know, that thing where you go out with someone who has no intention of really getting to know you and you spend the entire time eating bread that doesn’t taste as good as your date claims and trying to decide whether to initiate rescue-text sequences with your mom.”

“That’s your idea of a date?”

“That is my actual experience of every date I’ve had since college.”

“You’re dating the wrong guys.” He holds my gaze for just a little too long. I look away.

“I have to keep fishing in the pond if I ever want to catch a different one.”

“If that’s the way you talk to your dates, I am beginning to understand why they all turn out so badly.”

“Hey!”

“What?”

“Don’t accuse me of being a bad date. I’m a great date! I Google the guy in advance and read his LinkedIn profile. I make sure I don’t wear super-tall heels in case he lied about his height on his dating profile. I pretend to care about all his hobbies and don’t reveal that I’m secretly tallying all the micro-aggressions he’s sending my way during appetizers and wine. And if he makes it to dessert, well–” I falter.

“You never make it to dessert, do you?” Will asks, eyebrows up. He drops them quickly, wincing.

“I–well–it’s not that I don’t. He doesn’t!”

“He ditches you?”

“No! No! It’s just that he always has a thing.”

“A thing?”

“A work emergency. Or a dog with a twisted bowel. Or a grandma in the ER.”

“How many guys used the twisted-canine-intestine thing?”

“Three.” I sit down and sag against his teenage desk, elbows sliding forward, fingers deep in my hair. “I looked it up. There’s an entire subreddit devoted to inventive ways to get out of a bad date.”

“And yet here you are.” He leans against the edge of his desk. “Trying again.”

“I’m a masochist.”

His eyes gleam. “Maybe you should start your dates with that line. ‘Hi. I’m Mallory Monahan. I’m a masochist.’ You’d definitely make it to dessert.”

He’s watching me in a way that makes it clear he’s studying me. Figuring me out. This isn’t about his being right. It’s about Will trying to find the truth.

Dear God. He’s more dangerous than I thought.

My heart starts to pound hard, the drumbeat moving up under my collarbone as I wait him out. He’s patient, but he’s far less practiced. I have a treasure trove from four years of turning Will Lotham into my unofficial honors class, an independent-study project that no teacher supervised. If you could earn an A+ in Will, I’d have that shiny grade on my high school transcript.

But never, ever, did I imagine he’d study me right back.

“You're changing the subject.”

“How do you know that’s what I’m doing?”

“Because you have this thing you do when you get nervous. You did it in high school and you're doing it now.”

“What’s that?”

“You start cracking your knuckles. One by one.”

He halts mid-crack on his ring finger. His bare ring finger.

Will looks down. A slow smile pulls at his lips. “You’re right. I do.” Our eyes meet. “How did you know?”

“I sat behind you in nearly every honors class, Will. I’ve watched you answer countless questions from teachers. And every time you didn’t know the answer, you cracked your knuckles. One”–I crack my index finger–“by”–I crack my middle finger–“one.” My ring finger won’t snap.

He waits.

“You spent a lot of time paying attention to me, Mallory.”

“I sat behind you. It’s not like I could stare at your ass all day. I had to have something else to look at.”

“You stared at my ass?”

“It was two feet in front of me! Four classes a day!” I start to sweat. The memory of him in football uniform pants. Oh, sweet ice cream fairy, deliver me from evil.

“You okay? You look,” he says, stepping closer, “a little disturbed.”

“I’m fine.”

“Hot, even.” The rise and fall of his chest pauses after those words, as if he's holding his breath, too.

Author Bio:

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 kids in a household where Julia apparently is the only one who possesses the gene necessary to change empty toilet paper rolls.

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