Spotlight & Giveaway: Engineering a Love Story by Kathleen Reidy

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Kathleen Reidy to HJ!

Hi Kathleen and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Engineering a Love Story!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Engineering a Love Story is a romance set in Y2K. It follows Chelsea Lefevre, a 29-year-old software engineer, who married safe and steady Ash right after college. A few years later, in the heat of the dot-com boom, she realizes safe and steady might not be enough. She ends her marriage after an embarrassing slip-up, determined to figure out life on her own. But almost immediately, she meets sexy and charismatic Seth Murphy. Seth should be off limits due to a professional conflict, but Chelsea can’t resist him. She allows one night, but that escalates into an intense affair that has her wondering if she’s found the love she’s never quite had the nerve to imagine, or if she’s failed to recognize the difference between good enough and too good to be true. Really, this is a novel about growing up after a decade of adulthood and figuring out how to go for the life you’re capable of living.

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

Chelsea and Seth’s relationship starts off as a fling, and there’s an intimate scene very early on that I wanted to be sexy and fun, but also for it to capture what this moment means to Chelsea:

I close my eyes and sink into the sensation of his hands, but then I open them again because I don’t want to miss this. I watch him, the dark curls on his chest, the lines of his chin, that warm glow of his eyes, which he has pinned on me. Impossibly, he’s more attractive with every moment, and I’m astounded I ever laid eyes on him for even a second and didn’t find him a gorgeous creature. I’m wild with the unfamiliar feeling of desiring something and simply taking it.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I originally tried to name this novel Irrational Exuberance, which is an economic term that was tossed around during the dot-com boom to describe the skyrocketing stock market. I liked it because of its relevance to the novel’s time period, but also because it can describe how risky it is to put your heart out there. Don’t we all have to be a little bit irrational to let ourselves fall in love—to be exuberant? My publisher (rightly) argued that a relatively obscure economic term isn’t a great fit for a romance novel. Engineering a Love Story is a much better title.
• Chelsea Lefevre is of French-Canadian descent. When naming her, I perused a list of common French-Canadian surnames and chose one. Much later I learned that Lefevre was my great-grandmother’s maiden name. I had no idea! It’s almost spooky.
• Chelsea’s playlist would be all the best angsty Y2K music. She definitely would’ve been listening to Fiona Apple, Macy Gray, Dido, Erykah Badu, Norah Jones. Make a mix of those artists and that’s her music.

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

Chelsea and Seth share a strong, immediate physical attraction. But they also realize pretty quickly that they truly enjoy each other’s company. The instability of Chelsea’s upbringing led her to seek out safety, while Seth approaches everything with a world-is-our-oyster mentality, and this makes Chelsea swoon. Seth is drawn to Chelsea’s smarts. She challenges and teases him. They have a great time together—in all the ways.

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

I chose to start Engineering a Love Story with a big moment for Chelsea. She’s returning home from a business trip and is finally ready to admit a great unhappiness. The specifics of this scene are fiction, but it does mirror a time in my own life. Writing it brought back some tough memories. Here’s a snippet:

By the time I pull my car up the sloping rise of our drive, I’m ready to confess. From behind my steering wheel, I see Ash is in the garage, already in his skintight kit and fiddling with a road bike he’s about to ride. He turns at the sound of my engine switching off, and I lift my fingers from the wheel in greeting.
This will be the catalyst, finally. The shove that pushes us into the conversation I’m now certain we need to have. I planned it all out on the plane, everything I want to say to him. I refused snacks and even ginger ale as I rehearsed this speech I’m about to deliver. There are the facts and then there is the fault, which is all mine.

Readers should read this book….

…if they’re looking for a romance grounded in the real world–albeit in the real world of 2000. It’s for anyone who enjoys Y2K vibes, a New England setting, and stories about people figuring out how love fits into their lives…

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

My second novel will be published by Sibylline Press in 2028. This will also be a love story, one set over the course of a large marriage—and during one pivotal long weekend, when that marriage is tested.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Three copies of Engineering a Love Story, in the US.  

To enter Giveaway, please share this post on your Socials and Leave a comment below to this Q: After ending a ho-hum marriage, Chelsea feels she’s missed out on parts of life. She risks her career, possibly her independence, and definitely her heart to be with Seth, grasping at what she thinks is a chance to finally feel something real. Would you take the same risks?

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Excerpt from Engineering a Love Story:

Back in the car, I contemplate whether or not any of that matters. Maybe he’s some kind of a player, but so what? I’ve never had a one-night stand in my life, at least not intentionally. I’d had a boyfriend back in high school, Kevin, but we dated for two years. And there were two incidents with guys who came after Kevin, but they don’t count either—I’d known them both since I was a child. And I’d thought (both times!) they would be boyfriends after I slept with them. I misjudged (twice!) and earned only a nasty hazing: flat as a board and easy to screw. In the end, I heard even Kevin said this about me. There’d been a few incomplete and uninspired encounters in college. And then I met Ash.

Now, I wonder if there’s some way I can have this. Do this? After all those years I tried so hard to be good, this could be a treat, finally, just for the sake of it. I don’t have to care what this guy does and doesn’t do, or how frequently, not when he works at Aurelian and lives a continent away. I could simply get this out of my system and then settle down, avoid future inappropriate Walter-like distractions, and do the hard work of untangling my life from Ash’s. I know it’s not exactly the straight-and-narrow I’m intending, but no one would know.

“Fisherman’s Wharf?” Seth says. “Next stop?”

And I agree, feeling foolish. Contemplating the feasibility of a one-night stand that isn’t on offer. There isn’t any practical way to keep him with me. Seth no doubt is convinced he’s completed the tasks Manish assigned him: dinner, a ride, this tour. I need to get a grip. It won’t do if in my addled, emotional state, I make some kind of desperate move that Seth later tells Manish about. They might laugh about it. About me. And I’d think of it whenever I speak with Manish, which I have to do any time Aurelian releases a product or announces news. I turn my head to the window. No, that won’t do at all.

Yet when we arrive back on the crowded, narrow streets near my hotel, Seth doesn’t pull haphazardly to the curb as Manish had earlier. He circles the neighborhood until he finds a spot to park and gets out of the car at the same time I do. We stand together on the sidewalk.

“We could get a drink?” He bends his head toward the wharf two blocks to our south. Looking into his face, I attempt to gauge his intentions, but as Seth smiles down at me, I can read nothing in the warmth of his eyes.

I agree with a tingling along my thighs.

“But wait, take this.” Seth peels the suit coat from his arms.

I try to protest, but the wind coming at us from the wharf seems colder than downtown Boston in February. He rests the jacket on my shoulders and I stop arguing, pulling the coat more closely around me, his musky scent enveloping me and sending a streak of heat past my knees.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

It’s the year 2000—dot-coms, Bush v. Gore, and sky-high San Francisco rents. But while the country swoons with irrational exuberance, Chelsea Lefevre’s life is collapsing faster than a tech bubble.

She’d had everything she was supposed to want: a house on Boston’s North Shore, exquisite wedding china, a Waspy mother-in-law. A steady, safe marriage. But after a mortifying slip-up, Chelsea finds herself heading into the 21st century alone. Her lifeboat? A new job advising tech execs, taken to escape the misogyny she endured as a software engineer—only to discover she has a surprising knack for spotting the next hot thing.

In this heady new world, Chelsea meets Seth Murphy, a magnetic sales executive at one of the country’s hottest startups. Professional boundaries make Seth off-limits, but Chelsea is tired of steady and safe. What starts as a casual fling soon spirals into a secret and intense affair, jeopardizing Chelsea’s career, newfound independence—and heart.

But as the bubble bursts, Chelsea will have to decode the difference between good enough and too good to be true, and reckon with how much a smart woman can risk when she’s the only female in the room.
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Meet the Author:

Kathleen Reidy is a writer and public librarian based in the Boston area. She holds a master’s degree in library science and spent more than a decade in the tech industry. Her short fiction has been published by Puddingstone Press and WayWords. She lives with her husband, daughters, and fluffy best friend. Engineering a Love Story is her first novel.
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