Spotlight & Giveaway: Anywhere You Go by Bridget Morrissey

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Bridget Morrissey to HJ!

Hi Bridget and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Anywhere You Go!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

A Broadway press agent and small town waitress swap homes to escape their personal problems, each finding love in the process.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

“I don’t know what comes next, but I know I want to keep feeling this way, like I’ve been cracked open, and all this bright, frantic need is pouring into me, filling all the dark places where I’ve kept my desires hidden away, forcing them to the surface.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• The idea to do a house swap story came from one of my best friends, who is a Broadway press agent. When I decided to do that premise, I gave one of the main characters that same job–Broadway press agent!
• This story also has a direct connection to one of my other books. Tatum, one of the main characters in this, is half-siblings with Ben, the male main character in A Thousand Miles!

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

There are two romances in this story. Eleanor and Carson have more of an immediate physical attraction and connection. Eleanor is attracted to Carson’s confidence and their attentiveness. With Tatum and June, it’s much more of a slowburn. Tatum is attracted to the calm she feels around June, and the way June never fails to fascinate her.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I really enjoyed the scene where Carson is teaching longtime New Yorker Eleanor how to drive. They have some fun banter at first, but then things get unexpectedly deep. Not only does this moment show us how patient and attentive Carson is, we also finally get a glimpse at their vulnerabilities, and we see how Eleanor makes them feel safe enough to open up. I feel like I blushed, cried, and laughed all through out!

SNIPPET:
“Driving is fucking inane,” I say, gripping the steering wheel so tight the tendons that stretch over my knuckles are visible. We’re in the parking lot of a middle school. The very middle school Carson, Tatum, and their youngest sister, Laney, all attended, according to Carson.
“Don’t tell me you use big words like inane,” they say. “It’s too sexy for me to handle while my blood pressure is this high.”
“You’re making fun of my vocabulary now? What’s next? My inability to execute a three-point turn?”
“Oh, sweetheart, I don’t think we’re getting to three-point turns today. You swear you got your license honestly? You didn’t pay off the person running the exam?”
“I failed it twice beforehand, but no, on the third time, I passed without incident.” We hop a tiny parking curb. “Sorry. I didn’t see that.”
“You didn’t see the curb that surrounds the only tree in this otherwise wide-open parking lot?”
“Do you want to drive?” I ask, throwing the car into park. When I look at their face, they’re smiling, head cocked to the side, beholding me as if I’m worthy of wonder. “Stop making that face. You make me want to be nicer.”
They fix their face into something serious. “Is this better? Because I love it when you’re feisty. Your ears start to turn purple.”
My hands reach for my ears, which are indeed warm.
“Don’t cover it up,” they continue. “I like seeing my effect on you.”
We are still beside the tree, sideways in front of the curb I hopped. The tree provides the perfect amount of shade, blocking the high-noon warmth from getting in through Carson’s sunroof.
“I don’t think I’m making any driving progress,” I say.
“You’re not,” they tell me, deadpan as ever.
I shove them. “Fuck you.”
“Sounds good to me,” they say. “But I think public indecency is a bigger crime than walking. Though I’m willing to risk it.”
“I’m not fucking you in your middle school parking lot.”
“If I had a nickel for every time I heard that . . .”
“You’d have one nickel,” I say.
“Exactly.”
We laugh.

Readers should read this book….

If they want two romances for the price of one! If they love queer love stories, found family, small town romance, big city romance, friends to lovers, strangers to lovers. It’s all happening here!

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

On September 9, 2025, I will be releasing my first YA in six years, a cozy sapphic romance called Everything She Does Is Magic, about a teen witch and mortal who team up to plan their Halloween-obsessed town’s fall festivities. In March of 2026, I have This Will Be Interesting, my cozy fantasy collaboration with authors Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka. Then in summer of 2026, I have my next adult book, a speculative sapphic romance called In What World, about two women who hated each other in high school reuniting as adults to investigate the disappearance of their beloved former teacher and ending up traveling through a series of increasingly bizarre alternate universes together.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One finished copy of ANYWHERE YOU GO

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you could swap houses with another person for a week, who would it be?

 
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Excerpt from Anywhere You Go:

“What do you like so much about perfumes?” I ask, hand on my cheek. It’s fun to watch her like this, hearing her speak with such liveliness about the details of her life that always remained a little hazy during our diner chats.
“I like to smell good,” she says.
“You always do,” I remind her again.
She fights a grin as she continues. “Scent ties so strongly to memory. Like how Eleanor’s apartment smelled. We’re never going to forget that. If we’re ever, I don’t know, thrown into a dumpster, we will instantly remember walking into Eleanor’s apartment tonight, and exactly how we felt when that happened. Which isn’t something we want to remember, but we will. Because you don’t forget the way things smell. I love that through my perfumes, I can play a role in someone else’s life without actively having to participate. That’s an ideal scenario for me.”
“That’s how I feel about ghostwriting,” I tell her. “Or I used to, before I broke you and your girlfriend up.” She laughs, and it fills me with relief. Maybe I didn’t completely ruin her impression of me with my strange little side gig. “I’m good with words, and I know how to use them to help other people. As for myself? I think the less I say, the better off I am. I tend to talk myself into corners.”
“I don’t know, you’re doing pretty all right.” She steals a long glance.
“By the way, the ghostwriting isn’t really one of my jobs,” I tell her, needing, for some reason, to make that clear. “I don’t get paid for it.”
“So you spend all this time writing other people’s messages . . . for free?”
“Yeah,” I say with a weak smile. “I love to write, but I’m afraid of what people would think if I actually did it. You know? This way, I get all of the reward with none of the risk. It’s perfect.”
“You are actually doing it, though. It doesn’t make it any less of a job just because you’ve decided not to profit from it.”
This challenge is strangely thrilling, like she’s pressing on parts of me that everyone else instinctually knows to leave alone, and instead of feeling defensive about it, I feel invigorated by her boldness. Either she doesn’t yet know me enough to see the caution tape I’ve placed over these things, or she does, and she knows that it’s just that—a flimsy barrier, meant to scare people away from everything I consider difficult.
“Why aren’t you good at being alone?” I ask, attempting to challenge her right back.
June crosses both her arms and legs in the same moment, as closed off as one person can be. The flow had been effortless between us. Even playful. But the walls we’d shed go right back up, maybe even higher than before.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” I say.
“It’s okay,” she tells me, still stiff.
It doesn’t seem to be okay, but I don’t have enough time to come up with a way to solve it before she’s talking again.
“I wish I had a real answer,” she says. “Sometimes I panic when there are too many people around me. I can’t block out my awareness of their presence. It’s like seven hundred different radio stations all playing at once, and I drown in the noise. It helps when I’m out with someone who knows me. Who can do things for me, I guess. I don’t know. That’s how Vanessa used to explain it when we’d fight. She’d say I rely too much on other people to get me out of spots I can’t get out of myself, basically.”
“That’s fucked,” I tell her. “Everybody needs help.”
“Yeah, well, I’m just, I guess I’m always dating someone. Always doing something with someone else. Even this. I let you come with me on this trip, and like we just said, we don’t even really know each other. But I was too afraid to come somewhere as daunting as New York all by myself. It’s exactly what Vanessa said about me. I’ll use anyone if I’m desperate enough. I want Vanessa to know I can be independent. It bothers me that she’s right. And I want to prove it to myself too. That I can be alone.”
“If she felt okay sending off my completely insensitive text message to break up with you, Vanessa’s not the kind of person who really cared about you in the right way anyway,” I say.
“I’d tell you I can’t believe she did that, but honestly, I can,” June says. “She told me once she’d let someone else brush her teeth for her if it meant she didn’t have to walk to the bathroom one more time than necessary. It wouldn’t have mattered what you said. She just wanted someone else to do the thinking for her.”
“And she’s the one who says you rely on other people too much?”
June cocks her head as she takes a sip of her drink. “It would blow her mind to know I made it here after all. I bet she thinks I’m in my bed crying. But no, I’m in New York City. And I didn’t even get overwhelmed at the airport like I thought I might.”
“She doesn’t have to know I’m here,” I offer.
“What do you mean?”
“We could make her think you’re alone,” I say. “She still follows you online I assume?”
“Of course. She wouldn’t waste the time clicking unfollow. Maybe you could do it for her.”
We share a smile. “Let’s create the illusion of a solo trip.”
“How do we do that?”
“Oh, June,” I say, returning to a familiar shade of Waitress Tatum—the one who reminds her to put on a coat when it’s cold. Who brings an extra lemon slice for the last dregs of her tea, knowing she wants every last sip to be tart.
Everything she’d dislodged earlier, telling me my writing is a real job, pushing the buttons about her asking me out, gets stitched right back up again, neat and contained.
“The internet is designed for this kind of con,” I continue. “If we take pictures of you alone everywhere we go, they can look like selfies you’ve set up yourself. Caption them all about your newfound independence. Shit like ‘Nothing tastes as good as having a slice of New York pizza all to myself.’ I’ll orchestrate the whole thing from the sidelines, never to be seen. I’m very good at that. It’s basically one long variation of my other . . . job.” I give her a little look here, a concession. “We write your own breakup response through the internet. We will make her think that not only do you not need her or miss her; she’s completely misread you. You can be alone just fine.”
“But I’ll still be doing everything she said I always do,” June says. “I’ll be using you to help me.”
“We can’t change that part, now, can we? I’m not about to fly home after one day. I’m here with you in New York regardless, and I might as well be useful in the process, seeing as I’m the one who got us into this mess in the first place. What’s important is Vanessa doesn’t know I’m here. We have to take our wins where we can, don’t we?”
“Okay,” June agrees. “It’s a little unhinged, but I can get behind it. I’m always up for some chaotic good. What can I do to pay you back, though? If you’re going to do all of this for me, there has to be something I can help you with too. And don’t say increasing your screen time.”
“I’ll have to think about it,” I say. She has, rather unfortunately, read me like a book with the screen time joke. That’s exactly what I would’ve said if she didn’t call me on it first.
“You better.” She touches my arm, and my whole body heats at the gesture. “I’m serious.”
Looking at her, it’s clear that she is, in fact, very serious. She’s giving me the same focused intensity I recognize from her days in the back corner at Rita’s, working on her laptop. She expects me to have an answer for her.
“I’m gonna get us another drink.” She slides off her stool to head over to the bar.
Watching her lean over the counter, smiling lazily at the bartender as she orders, I give myself permission to imagine, for only a moment, what it was like to be Vanessa—the person June used to come home to at the end of each night.
She must have been excited. Proud, even. Watching June from a distance must have given her constant butterflies. How could she ever say all those cruel things about her?
A familiar sourness starts to churn up in my gut.
In the end, she still broke up with June. She still hurt her.
I can spot the problems in someone else’s relationship without even needing to squint. June and Vanessa probably didn’t last because they were never very deep with each other in a real way. No truly meaningful relationship could ever be ended by a stranger ghostwriting a breakup text. If Vanessa’s view of June was that shallowly cruel, she’d never really seen her in the first place.
That’s not my problem. I know June likes Rita’s because it’s small and quiet. More than once she’s left when we’ve gotten a little busier than usual, and it doesn’t surprise me to have her contextualize that as anxiety. As for the being-alone thing, she started dating Vanessa not long after she asked me out, so that’s not new information either. If I think it through even further, she probably likes to look put together so she feels put together, doing whatever she can not to give space to all the things that make her overwhelmed. Smells comfort her because she can transport herself to a happier memory through a single spritz of perfume.
I have always seen her, and I’ve never once been put off by what she views as her weaknesses.
What I still don’t understand, after twenty-nine whole years on earth, is why that isn’t enough. Because my dad knows my mom. She knows him back. They’ve always been patient with each other’s struggles, sensitive to their individual wants and dreams. But no amount of couples counseling or date nights have eliminated the simmering bitterness between them—Mom resentful that Dad cheated, Dad resentful that Mom hasn’t let it go. Everything they’ve done on paper looks like a perfect recipe for repairing a broken relationship. And still.
It must be possible. I’ve filled my bookshelves with countless stories that tell me it is. Back in Trove Hills, I’d convinced myself I didn’t need to experience it for myself to believe it exists. Some people never find romance—some people don’t even want it—and that’s okay.
Being here, watching June at the bar, I know I do want it. Into my bones I know. I need it, really. I need to know I’m more than my history, more than the oldest daughter carrying the family on her shoulders, more than the one who can’t handle conflict. Who can’t do hard things.
I need to know I can break their cycle. Break my own cycle too.
So while June is learning how to be independent, this trip has to be something very different for me. This is the safest place to experiment, because I’m so far from home that whatever I do here won’t reach Trove Hills. I will dedicate this time to the hardest thing I’ve ever done—learning how to open myself up to real romance.
With anyone but June.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

A small-town waitress and a big-city Broadway press agent swap homes to escape the messiness of their personal lives, only to find new purpose—and new love.

Tatum Ward and Eleanor Chapman lead totally opposite lives. Tatum’s never left her Midwestern hometown. She resides in a quaint guest cottage on her parents’ property while working part-time as a waitress, where she spends most shifts ignoring her feelings for a beautiful regular named June. Eleanor dedicates every waking hour to her high-profile press career, sacrificing personal relationships for professional success, save for the occasional hookup to fight off her loneliness. When both women’s lives unexpectedly blow up at the exact same time, they each need an escape, and fast.

In Tatum’s hometown, Eleanor expects a quiet hideaway where she can recharge. Instead she gets wrapped up in the family drama that Tatum left town to avoid, pulled in by Tatum’s charismatic older sibling, Carson, who charms Eleanor at every turn. Tatum ends up in Eleanor’s New York high-rise apartment with June. One week together in the big city might make it impossible for Tatum to avoid not just her true feelings for June, but her real dreams for her life.

Amid a friendship with a reclusive Hollywood actress and a complicated family reunion, Tatum and Eleanor each discover much more than they bargained for away from home. Their house swap won’t last forever, but it might be just long enough for both women to surrender their defenses and finally fight for the life—and love—they deserve.
 
 

Meet the Author:

Bridget Morrissey lives in Los Angeles, California, but hails from Oak Forest, Illinois. When she’s not writing, she can be found cradling one of her cats like a baby, or headlining concerts in her living room.