The One That Got Away: Blog Tour + Giveaway
Apr 4, 2015
I chatted with Bethany Chase on Twitter (and fell in love with her post about Gilbert Blythe) before I ever read her book. But when I saw the cover, my excitement went through the roof. Do you see the gorgeousness?! If you read my review earlier this week, you probably know that I quite enjoyed this debut! So, I'm even more excited to participate in the blog tour for The One That Got Away.
First, here's a little background on the author:
A native of Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley, Bethany Chase headed to Williams College for an English degree and somehow came out the other side an interior designer. When she’s not writing or designing, you can usually find her in a karaoke bar. She lives with her lovely husband and occasionally psychotic cat in Brooklyn, three flights up. This is her first novel.
I can't tell you how much I loved certain aspects of the storyline - Sarina's job, her relationship with her stepfather, the quirky Austin setting... It all combined to create an engaging read from a promising new author. If you didn't get a chance to read my thoughts on the book, here's a summary of what you'll find inside these pages!
Sarina Mahler thinks she has her life all nailed down: a growing architecture practice in Austin, Texas, and an any-day-now proposal from her loving boyfriend, Noah. She’s well on her way to having the family she’s hoped for since her mother’s death ten years ago. But with Noah on a temporary assignment abroad and retired Olympic swimmer — and former flame — Eamon Roy back in town asking her to renovate his new fixer-upper, Sarina’s life takes an unexpected turn.
Eamon proves to be Sarina’s dream client, someone who instinctively trusts every one of her choices — and Sarina is reminded of all the reasons she was first drawn to him back in the day. Suddenly her carefully planned future with Noah seems a little less than perfect. And when tragedy strikes, Sarina is left reeling. With her world completely upended, she is forced to question what she truly wants in life — and in love.
Full of both humor and heartbreak, The One That Got Away is the story of one woman’s discovery that, sometimes, life is what happens when you leave the blueprints behind.
Here are a few of my favorite things I learned about Bethany:
What got you interested in writing?
I’ve never not been! My love for words has been
one of the most consistent characteristics of my personality for my whole life, though it’s taken many different forms. (Poet, journal‐writer, email‐writer, blogger, novelist.)
Tell us about the first book you didn’t finish.
It was a historical romance I started writing when I was fifteen years old and heavily in the
thrall of the film version of The Last of the Mohicans, with Daniel Day Lewis. (Which means, specifically, I was in the thrall of Daniel Day Lewis.) So heavily enthralled was I that my novel consisted of a first-person account of a well-bred colonial English lady who for unclear reasons found herself trailing her muddy skirts through the Adirondack forest, accompanied by a ruggedly handsome and ambiguously Native American trapper wearing buckskin. Shockingly, I didn’t complete it.
Did you always want to be a writer?
Nope. In fact for most of my life I avoided the idea, because I assumed it would be too hard and
I’d never make enough money. I’ll let you guess which of those two assumptions has proven to be true.
What were your favorite books growing up?
The Anne of Green Gables and Emily of New Moon series were HUGE for me. I mean, they were
books about smart, dreamy, romantic, highly verbal girls who wrote, loved beauty in all its forms, hovered at the fringes of social popularity and also really liked being alone. Emily and Anne were and always will be my spirit sisters. Also, I think my many rereads of James Herriot’s marvelous All Creatures Great and Small books legitimately helped form my sense of humor. Between Herriot and all of the Monty Python I watched growing up, I think I wound up with a fairly British sense of humor for an American.
Who’s your favorite book couple?
Anne and Gilbert. Obviously. In all seriousness, in terms of their mutual love, caring and
respect for one another I think they are a model partnership for young girls to read about. Clearly it worked for me.
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