Spotlight & Giveaway: Fun at Parties by Jamie Harrow

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Jamie Harrow to HJ!

Hi Jamie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Fun at Parties!

Hi, readers! I’m delighted to be back here.
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

In Fun at Parties, a celebrity spin instructor embarks on a cross-country road trip when she’s forced to take time off work after having a meltdown in the middle of a live class. Her plan is to visit national parks, hike, and gain some peace and clarity so she can do better at her job. But the trip goes off the rails when her old crush (who rejected her two years ago!) asks for a ride part of the way. He’s trying to track down one of their mutual friends…and her Wild-esque journey turns into The Hangover.

They chase their friend to a Las Vegas nightclub, a baby shower/rager in Denver, a music festival in Kansas, and a Nashville bachelorette party. And to her dismay, in the midst of all the chaos, she realizes she still has feelings for him. So much for peace and clarity!
 

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

I love the first time our male protagonist, Nate, flirts with our female protagonist, Quinn, overtly enough that she actually realizes he’s flirting:

“I wasn’t sure if you even saw what I was wearing.” I’m fishing, and I hate myself for it, but I can’t stop.

“Trust me, I saw.” This time he does look, and the booze must be getting to him too, because the unhurried way his eyes dip makes me feel like one of those drinks they light on fire. “You look like your own evil twin.”

“Is that bad?”

He sips his whiskey and Coke and wipes the corner of his mouth with his thumb. “No.” His darkening pupils threaten to swallow me up. “It’s not bad.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• On their way from Lake Tahoe to Las Vegas, Quinn and Nate drive past a clown-themed motel next to an old cemetery (Nate finds it incredibly creepy, and Quinn makes a lot of clown jokes). The motel is real, and it’s in Tonopah, Nevada.
• Quinn and her best friend Bailey love theme parties. The last stop on Quinn’s road trip is Bailey’s thirtieth birthday bash, and there are flashbacks in the book to the first theme party they ever threw together, where Quinn met Nate for the first time. The theme of that party was “third grade birthday.” This was inspired by a party my friends and I threw in college, which involved a piñata and spiked Capri Suns.
• I did a lot of research about fitness “cults” and MLMs because Quinn is a celebrity spin instructor who grew up with a mother who was heavily involved in a scammy MLM. I was fascinated by some of the parallels I found. One interesting book on this subject is Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism by Amanda Montell.

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

Quinn and Nate have always understood each other better than anyone else does. Quinn hides her pain behind a bubbly facade, and Nate is guarded and pretends like he doesn’t care about anything. But from the first weekend they met ten years ago, they saw each other’s true selves. This is really powerful as they come together after two years of estrangement and still find themselves unable to fool each other.

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

One of my favorite scenes is when Quinn and Nate are stuck in the rain at a country music festival. They’re miserable but they’re being silly with each other, and it was so much fun to write. It was also important–in those moments of misery, they let their walls down and grew closer. Here, they’re walking through a muddy field to their car:

“You go ahead,” I say a quarter mile in. “I’m going to lie down and let the mud take me. When future generations discover my body, I’ll be so well-preserved they’ll put me in a museum.”

Nate reaches out a hand. “Let me take your bag.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. It would be a waste of the granola bars for you to keep it when you succumb to the elements.”

Around the halfway point, he makes a futile attempt to wring out his T-shirt. “I would agree to spend the afterlife at a Vegas pool party in exchange for the power to teleport away from here right now.”

“But would you swim at the pool party?”

“I’m already swimming,” he says. “Is this not swimming?”

Readers should read this book….

if they love road trips and estranged-friends-to-lovers stories, if they miss a friend who lives far away, or if they want to attend a bunch of wild parties from the comfort of their own couch.
 

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

I’m just starting something new! It’s so new that I can’t say anything about it, but I hope to be able to share more soon.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of Jamie Harrow’s FUN AT PARTIES

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If you could take a road trip anywhere, where would you go?

 
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Excerpt from Fun at Parties:

“I have a challenge for you,” he says.

“Steal a doll from the lobby? Even I’m not bold enough for that one.”

“Let’s see if you can complain until the tank is full.”

I freeze, midlap around the bank of gas pumps. “What do you want me to complain about?”

“Whatever comes to mind. Go full stream-of-consciousness.” With the nozzle in the gas tank, he leans against the car. “You better start.”

I throw up my hands. “I don’t have anything to complain about! Probably ninety-nine-point-nine percent of the people on this planet have more to complain about than me.”

“Not a complaint, but you do sound a little huffy, so I’ll count it. Keep going.”

“You’re being annoying.”

He fights a smile. “That definitely counts.”

“Caleb and I broke up,” I blurt out, and Nate’s expression levels out into seriousness. “There was, um, a video. Did you see it?”

“I heard about it,” he admits.

My skin feels transparent, and I have to hug myself to keep going. “It hurt, and it was embarrassing, and everything felt like too much. I didn’t handle it well, so Tracy told me to take a vacation. That’s why I’m doing this trip. Well, not this trip, specifically, because what I imagined was driving cross-country alone and looking at mountains until my head clears. Not that I don’t want to help you find Logan—” He raises his eyebrows, a reminder that I’m veering into noncomplaint territory. “I just hope we find him quickly in whatever hellhole club he visits tonight, so I can get back on track. I need to get back on track, because I need to keep my job, and I need to be myself again.”

The gas pump clicks. Weirdly, I feel lighter.

Nate removes the nozzle, and by the time I realize I’m standing between him and the pump, he’s already touching his fingertips to my hip, nudging me to the side so he can hang it up. When he’s done, he doesn’t remove his hand. He just tilts his head and scans my face, and my breath stutters. “You seem like yourself to me,” he says. “Falling in love at first sight with a clown. Whipping me in the face with your ponytail every time you think you see a lizard. Looking out for your friends. Are you sure the problem’s you, and not something else?”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

In this swoony estranged-friends-to-lovers romance, a celebrity spin instructor and her longtime crush take a spontaneous cross-country road trip that turns into an unexpected but epic party hop, and end up en route to love.

When online cycling instructor Quinn Ray has a mid-class meltdown after a bad breakup—dramatically off-brand for someone whose vibe is sunshine and rainbows—her boss orders her to take a few weeks off work. And that’s fine. In fact, a quiet road trip through America’s most tranquil scenery is exactly what she needs.

But then Nate Reed, who’s barely spoken to Quinn since their friendship imploded two years ago, asks to hitch a ride so he can reunite with their chaotically lovable pal Logan to discuss something important. Unfortunately, Logan seems to be dodging them on purpose. Meanwhile, the internet rallies so strongly behind Quinn post-breakup that her boss orders her to seize the opportunity to rebrand herself as everyone’s favorite emblem of fun, empowered singledom.

So Quinn and Nate put aside the awkwardness between them and follow Logan 450 miles to a Las Vegas nightclub. And then chase him to a rooftop rager . . . baby shower? . . . in Denver. A rain-soaked country-western music festival in Kansas. A rowdy Nashville bachelorette party. As Quinn’s peaceful road trip becomes a tour of America’s biggest party spots with the guy she didn’t know she still wanted, she realizes Nate might just be the silver lining she never thought to look for.
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Meet the Author:

Jamie Harrow was born and raised at the Jersey Shore. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Villanova University and lives in New Jersey with her family. Her debut novel, One on One, was published by Dutton in 2024. Fun at Parties is her second novel.
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