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Hi there! This week, we’re falling in love with Christmas. Then, we’re tossing out our smartphones and partying like it’s 1999. |
| The Introduction |
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Allison Winn Scotch’s ‘90s Throwback Rom-Com |
The Book In The Rewind, college sweethearts Frankie and Ezra haven’t spoken in the decade since their epic break-up senior year. Reluctantly reunited for a friend’s wedding, they’re shocked to wake up together—and apparently married—on New Year’s Eve, 1999.
The Author Allison Winn Scotch is the author of eight beloved novels about friendship and family. With The Rewind, she’s bringing her relatable characters and smart take on relationships to the world of rom-coms. We can’t wait, and neither can bestselling author Taylor Jenkins Reid, who called The Rewind “nostalgic and emotional.
Frankie and Ezra are very different. Tell us a little bit about them.
Allison Winn Scotch: Frankie is a live-by-the-seat-of-her-pants music manager, a former music prodigy. She is fiery and headstrong in the ways that she needs to be to be successful in the industry, which also means that she can be difficult in other areas of her life. She struggles to make herself vulnerable. Ezra is the opposite: he’s tender and anxious and in constant search of something grounding, which is why he falls in love too easily and sometimes with the wrong person. Together, Frankie and Ezra complement each other until they don’t. And once they don’t, it goes wrong very quickly.
Second-chance romance is having a moment! What appeals to you about old flames reuniting?
AWS: Um….EVERYTHING?!??!? No but really. (No, but really.) I am someone who gets swept up in nostalgia. There is definitely a bit of that in second-chance romances, that rose-colored glasses tint that’s cast over the past. While I’m not someone who spends time wondering about my own what-ifs, I do tend to romanticize the past for the youthfulness that goes along with those old relationships. I think the second chance romance trope taps into that feeling of renewed possibility, and recapturing something with someone from that different, sparkling moment in time.
Why did you set The Rewind in 1999?
AWS: For practical purposes, it would be awfully hard not to know what sort of trouble they had gotten into the night before if they had iPhones! I had to get smartphones out of the way. I also think there is something really special about that time in the ‘90s and there’s a reason for the resurgence of the ‘90s in pop culture right now. It was pre-social media and before our political divisions became so ugly. Whether or not it was a more perfect time period in actuality, I’m not sure. But it’s easy to look back on it and feel that way. Also, New Year’s Eve of 1999 felt really monumental—like anything could happen.
Tell us about three books that inspire you as a writer: |
| London Is The Best City in America | AWS: A brilliant debut and one that I loved so much that I sent her an email. She and I forged the closest of friendships from that introduction, a relationship that has helped shape my career. | | $17.00 Paid Link |
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| The Vanishing Half | AWS: Easily one of my favorite reads from the past few years, tender and haunting and beautiful. It made me want to elevate my writing to another level. | | $11.99 Paid Link |
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| Daisy Jones and the Six | AWS: I remember Taylor telling me about the book before I read it, and once I got my hands on it, I was genuinely gobsmacked by her creativity and risk-taking. | | $10.16 Paid Link |
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| The Highlight |
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“There was still time. I sat on the couch. And I watched my daughter, with two wooden spoons in her hands, absolutely wale away on anything that was around her. And my heart was pounding in my chest. It was over, I kept thinking. It was all over. And it was beginning. It was just beginning.” | |
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| Now Is Not the Time to Panic | In summer of 1996, two aimless teenagers make an anonymous art work that leads to widespread chaos. Decades later, a journalist reaches out to one of them, hoping to uncover what really happened during the Coalfield Panic. | | $22.99 Paid Link |
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| 20 Words: Guess The Novel |
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A competitive, charismatic teenager takes her younger sister’s place on a high-profile, high-stakes reality TV show with 11 other contestants. | |
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Answer in footer |
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| Genre List |
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Every Christmas Romance Coming Out This Year |
For movie fans, there’s the Hallmark channel. For readers, there’s the cornucopia of Christmas-themed romances that come out between September and December each year. With more than 60 new love stories out now or coming soon, there’s more than enough sweet or steamy holiday cheer to fill the 47 days between now and Christmas. At the top of our list is A Merry Little Meet Cute. Bee and Nolan each have their reasons for joining the cast of Christmas movie: She's an adult film star looking to break into mainstream movies and he's a bad boy musician who needs to rehab his image. Sparks fly during filming in this very spicy, very funny rom-com.
Here are three more holiday romances we can’t wait to curl up with this season: |
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| All I Want for Christmas | Two reality show contestants hoping to make it big in the country music scene agree to temporarily set aside their differences in this enemies-to-lovers fake dating romance. | | $14.99 Paid Link |
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| Whiteout | When an unexpected snowstorm blankets Atlanta, a group of teens band together for one epic apology—and several swoony moments—in this collection of connected short stories. | | $16.99 Paid Link |
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| You're a Mean One, Matthew Prince | After he impulsively buys an island (whoops), entitled New Yorker Matthew is shuttled off to his grandparents’ country cottage, where he immediately butts heads with their hard-working boarder, Hector. | | $22.99 Paid Link |
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| Bookmarks |
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Critical Love The New York Times says Kate Manning’s historical novel about a young woman involved in a turn-of-the-century labor movement is “immersive” and Publishers Weekly praises it as “one to savor.” |
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| Gilded Mountain | A young woman comes of age in a Colorado mining town, where her jobs at the mine owner’s home and at the local newspaper reveal both sides of the labor struggle at the mine. | | $23.84 Paid Link |
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Awarded The Shirley Jackson Awards celebrate the best in horror, dark fantasy, and psychological suspense. Stephen Graham Jones’ terrifying homage to horror movies won this year’s Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel. |
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| My Heart Is a Chainsaw | Outsider Jade is obsessed with slasher films, and when a fellow teen is murdered, she’s sure it’s the beginning of a horror-movie style massacre in her rapidly gentrifying small town. | | $12.14 Paid Link |
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| Page to Screen |
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| Guess the Novel Answer | To save her sister’s life, Katniss volunteers to take part in a televised battle to the death hosted by an oppressive regime in this bestselling dystopian series. | | $7.86 Paid Link |
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PS: Products you purchase through our links may earn Likeise a commission. |
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