Spotlight & Giveaway: Happy and You Know It by Laura Hankin

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Laura Hankin to HJ!

Hi Laura and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

HAPPY & YOU KNOW IT is about a musician who gets kicked out of her band right before they shoot to stardom. Broke, desperate, and depressed, she takes a job singing to a playgroup of wealthy women and their babies, expecting to hate it. To her surprise, she finds herself smitten with these picture-perfect stay-at-home moms, while they’re drawn to her and the freedom she represents. But as these very different women become intertwined, secrets come out, threatening to ruin them all.
 

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

It’s so hard to pick a favorite, but I had fun writing the musings of one playgroup mother who is having trouble with breastfeeding, about another mom who is a master of it:

“Vicki would never stop breastfeeding, and her son would grow up with a hearty Oedipus complex. Amara pictured little Jonah in the schoolyard, telling the assorted boys, “If you love Mountain Dew, you’ve gotta try my mother’s milk!” At his wedding, he’d clink Vicki’s boob against his bride’s champagne glass before taking a suckle.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

I actually worked as a playgroup musician myself for many years, so I had plenty of time to observe the mothers and wonder what their lives were like. While most of the book is completely made up, a couple of incidents are directly ripped from those real life experiences (although you’d probably have to buy me a few drinks before I told you which ones). And once I got the book deal, my editor asked me to insert another chapter of the women all bonding. So I decided to set that at a wellness retreat, which of course meant that I had to go on one myself for research purposes!

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

Oh yes, I wrote a few steamy scenes that had me blushing hard. To share a part of one of those scenes before things get too explicit:

“It wasn’t that she forgot she was a mother. (Was such a thing even possible?) But as he backed her into the shelf, pressing her up against book spines, his hands in her hair and on her neck, she forgot the necessary skills of motherhood: the self-sacrifice, the pushing away of one’s own needs. She was all need now. “

Readers should read this book….

If they’re looking to be swept away from reality for a bit and into a fun, escapist page-turner with heart and depth. I strive to write the equivalent of comfort food that turns out to be more nutritious than you expected. You devour it, but then you don’t feel bad afterwards!

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

I’m currently in revisions for my next book, A SPECIAL PLACE FOR WOMEN, about an undercover reporter who infiltrates a top-secret women-only social club for the New York millennial elite (think The Wing meets The Illuminati). And I finally wrote a draft of the screenplay that I’ve been thinking about for years, so now I’m tinkering with that!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: NetGalley pre-approved download link of HAPPY AND YOU KNOW IT.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: If they’ve read the book: Which character did you relate to the most, and why?
If they haven’t yet: What’s the weirdest job you’ve ever had?

 
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Excerpt from Happy and You Know It:

Prologue
New Yorkers are good at turning a blind eye. They ignore the subway ranters, the men who walk with pythons twined around their shoulders, anyone who suggests meeting for dinner
in Times Square.
But on one sweltering August afternoon, when the whole city
was trapped in a bubble of heat, a woman came running down Madison Avenue in a full‐length fur coat, demanding to be no‐ ticed. As she sprinted by, encased in a suffocating cocoon of mink, the sweaty customers at the sidewalk café on East Ninety‐Fourth Street couldn’t help but stare.
Maybe it was, in part, because of her smell—the staleness of the inky black pelt she wore, plus something else, something sickly sweet and stomach turning. Vomit. Dried bits of it crusted the
woman’s mouth. Little chunks clung to her hair. She didn’t look like someone who should have smelled that way. She looked rich. Maybe it was the sleek stroller she pushed in front of her. It
glided along the sidewalk, the baby equivalent of a Porsche, but without a baby inside.
Or maybe it was the pack of women chasing her.
Afterward, when the media was just starting to whip itself into a frenzy about the so‐called Poison Playgroup of Park Avenue, one witness would tell reporters that he had known the women were dangerous all along. He had sensed it from the moment he saw them—even before they tipped back their heads and started to scream.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

A dark, witty page-turner set around a group of wealthy mothers and the young musician who takes a job singing to their babies and finds herself pulled into their glamorous lives and dangerous secrets….

After her former band shot to superstardom without her, Claire reluctantly agrees to a gig as a playgroup musician for overprivileged infants on New York’s Park Avenue. Claire is surprised to discover that she is smitten with her new employers, a welcoming clique of wellness addicts with impossibly shiny hair, who whirl from juice cleanse to overpriced miracle vitamins to spin class with limitless energy.

There is perfect hostess Whitney who is on the brink of social-media stardom and just needs to find a way to keep her perfect life from falling apart. Caustically funny, recent stay-at-home mom Amara who is struggling to embrace her new identity. And old money, veteran mom Gwen who never misses an opportunity to dole out parenting advice. But as Claire grows closer to the cool women who pay her bills, she uncovers secrets and betrayals that no amount of activated charcoal can fix.

Filled with humor and shocking twists, Happy and You Know It is a brilliant take on motherhood–exposing it as yet another way for society to pass judgment on women–while also exploring the baffling magnetism of curated social-media lives that are designed to make us feel unworthy. But, ultimately, this dazzling novel celebrates the unlikely bonds that form, and the power that can be unlocked, when a group of very different women is thrown together when each is at her most vulnerable.
Book Links: Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Laura Hankin has written for McSweeney’s and HuffPost, among other publications. The viral videos that she creates and stars in with her comedy duo, Feminarchy, have been featured in Now This, The New York Times, and Funny or Die. She grew up in Washington, D.C., attended Princeton University, and now lives in New York City, where she has performed off-Broadway, acted onscreen, and sung to far too many babies.
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