Spotlight & Giveaway: Her Knight at the Museum by Bryn Donovan

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Bryn Donovan to HJ!

Hi Bryn and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Her Knight at the Museum!

Thank you so much! I love your site!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Her Knight at the Museum is a romcom about a medieval knight who was magically turned into a stone statue—and a present-day museum employee who brings him back to life! Unfortunately, she becomes the prime suspect in the case of the missing statue, but they fall in love and it’s very funny to see him adjust to the modern world.
 

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

“‘You are the queen of my heart, and all the days of my life I will do you service where you will command me.’“

“Who wouldn’t want her very own knight in shining armor?”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

The very loud beagle in the book is completely based on one of my dogs, so I dedicated the book to him as well as to my husband! In the book, my heroine Emily is an art conservator, and she named her dog Andy War-Howl.

Also, I’ve created a playlist for the book! You can find it on Spotify. Emily is in her 30s, but I included a few songs from her teenage emo years. Some of these are specific to certain chapters. “La Mule” is going to seem strange until you read Chapter Twelve!

“End of Beginning,” Djo
“Stone Cold Classic,” George Barnett
“Enchanted,” Taylor Swift
“Up All Night,” George Barnett
“Fix You,” Coldplay
“Song 2,” Blur
“First Day of My Life,” Bright Eyes
“Better Together,” Jack Johnson
“I Will Possess Your Heart,” Death Cab for Cutie
“Dirty Little Secret,” The All-American Rejects
“Two Weeks,” Grizzly Bear
“Every Little Thing I Say I Do,” Dayglow
“La Mule,” Malicorne
“Uptown Funk,” Mark Ronson/Bruno Mars
“Go Cubs Go,” Steve Goodman
“Lighter,” Galantis, David Guetta, 5 Seconds of Summer
“ABCDEFU,” Gayle
“Such Great Heights,” Postal Service
“Angels,” The xx
“being loved isn’t the same as being understood,” Vines
“Eyes Closed,” Imagine Dragons
“No Rest for the Wicked,” Lykke Li
“Lover,” Taylor Swift – Epilogue

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

After Griffin spends lonely centuries as a stone statue, Emily is able to hear his thoughts, and she breaks his curse and brings him back to life. Griffin is naturally smitten with her, and he appreciates her kindness as a person and her knowledge of his medieval era.

Emily’s still recovering from a miserable divorce, but Griffin, a literal knight in shining armor, is gallant and complimentary, with a golden retriever level of enthusiasm for life. He makes her believe in romance again!

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

Griffin and Emily have very different ways of talking about sex, so that sometimes made me laugh and blush. Griffin also has delightful insults for Emily’s cheating ex-husband, like “bedswerver” and “scabrous plague-sore.”

It also made me laugh to write about Griffin misunderstanding certain things! For instance, when Griffin and Emily are strolling along Chicago’s Riverwalk, this happens:

He’d drunk all the water in his bottle, and he squeezed it again. “Do we keep these?”

“What?” she asked. “Oh, no, we can just throw them away.”

“Very good.” He threw it—and it smacked a man right in the face.

Readers should read this book….

If they want a feel-good escape that makes them swoon…and makes them laugh!

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

There’s going to be a sequel to Her Knight at the Museum, starring Emily’s friend Rose!
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One copy of HER KNIGHT AT THE MUSEUM for a U. S. only winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: (Please choose one! Thank you!)
-When Griffin tries coffee, he thinks it’s too bitter, but he likes tea when he tries it…and he enjoys a pint of ale now and then. What do you like to drink when you read?

-Emily enjoys showing Griffin around her city. If you were giving someone from the medieval era a tour of your town, where would you take them?

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 
 

Excerpt from Her Knight at the Museum:

HER KNIGHT AT THE MUSEUM by Bryn Donovan
Berkley Romance Trade Original | November 12, 2024
Excerpt

Emily unwound the cloth from the head of the stone sculpture and found herself face-to-face with the knight.

A spark of awareness, as though she’d met the intimate gaze of a stranger, made her catch her breath. There was something about his unguarded expression-the half-parted lips, the searching look in his eyes-that was more human than any statue she’d ever seen before.

“Hello, handsome,” she murmured. “Welcome to Chicago.”

Tingles between her legs surprised her. How long had it been since she’d felt that? Not since she’d found out Tom, her now ex-husband, had been cheating on her. No, even longer than that, if she was honest.

As a museum conservator, she didn’t usually have that kind of reaction to old objects. It would’ve been really distracting as she worked to restore them to their former glory. But the face of this statue, even with some white streaks of sulfation, was already pretty glorious. His hair flowed loose to his shoulders; typical for a nobleman in the early 1400s. The mustache and short beard wouldn’t have been strictly fashionable at court in his time, but they suited him.

She’d already removed the layers of protective wrapping, and she’d told her coworkers in Objects Conservation that she’d let them know as soon as she revealed the actual sculpture. He was their newest acquisition, and even for a huge museum like the Art Institute, he was an exciting one. She had a strange urge to close the door to the photography room and keep him to herself for a while.

But of course, she wasn’t going to renege on her promise. She had a six-month contract at the museum, but when Jason had hired her, he’d told her it could turn into a permanent position, which she desperately wanted. It wasn’t as though there were tons of opportunities for art conservators.

She stepped off the stool and took a moment to use the hem of her shirt to clean a smudge off her glasses. With a project like him, she wanted her vision to be crystal clear. Then she went to the door. In the main office area, Terrence Russell, a tall Black man with glasses who’d worked there for fifteen years, sat hunched over his computer, the coffee she’d brought him in hand.

Because of Terrence’s seniority, Emily had interviewed with him, too, and she’d liked him immediately. He was married to a law professor at the University of Chicago, and he had a small studio in Hyde Park where he made sculptures out of wire.

Emily had jumped at the chance to do the morning caffeine run; little things like that were important when you were trying to fit in. Laurie MacGriogair wasn’t at her desk, and Emily tried not to be relieved by that fact.

“Terrence, do you want to come see the knight sculpture?”

“Absolutely,” he said, getting to his feet.

“Um, I want to, too,” Laurie said. Emily looked over to where the fortysomething redhead stood at the supply closet. She sounded annoyed that she hadn’t been invited.

“Sorry, didn’t see you there.”

Terrence and Laurie made their way to the black, windowless room where conservators took the first official photographs of a new acquisition. Emily got on the stool again to pull back more of the unbleached cotton wrappings, revealing the top half of the breastplate of the armor.

“He’s so big!” she exclaimed to her coworkers. What would the knight think of her saying that-if he’d actually been a knight? He’d love it. She was sure of it.

Laurie shrugged. “It’s nothing compared to the Buddha I worked on last year.”

“He’s big for late medieval England,” Emily clarified, although Laurie probably knew that was what she meant.

Jason Yun, their boss, wandered in. He was wearing one of his frequent tailored suits, and his hair, more black than silver, was tousled as usual. He didn’t say hello or good morning, which made Emily nervous, but as he scrutinized the sculpture, she thought she saw pleasure in his keen dark eyes.

“It’s good to finally see it again,” he said.

Jason was the Curator of Applied Arts and Design, so ordinarily, he would’ve been Emily’s boss’s boss. But the Director of Conservation was on maternity leave, so for the time being, the conservators reported to Jason. Unlike most curators, Jason actually had conservation experience: he’d been a part-time assistant while getting his PhD.

Laurie squinted at the face of the sculpture. “I would’ve guessed he was a fake.”

“He’s definitely real,” Emily blurted out.

Laurie opened her mouth to speak, but not before Jason said, “Emily spotted a fake at the Getty Villa.”

Terrence turned to her. “Seriously? What was it?”

“An ivory statuette of the Virgin Mary,” Emily said, feeling both proud and shy. She’d told Jason about this in her interview, and a former coworker she’d used as a reference had confirmed it. She suspected it was one of the reasons she’d gotten this job.

“How did you know it was a fake?” Terrence asked.

“Um, it had a flat background, so it originally would’ve been attached to some kind of plaque, but on the back, there weren’t any signs of points of attachment.”

But as she’d told Jason, she’d recognized it as a fake on sight, and she couldn’t even say exactly why. She just hadn’t gotten that feeling of history from it-an invisible but undeniable sense, like a vibration.

She definitely got some kind of vibration from this knight.

Jason circled the statue, looking at it from all angles, his hands clasped behind his back. “The documentation goes back to the 1460s, though we have no idea who the artist was.”

Artist? Devil, more like!

Emily froze and whipped around to gaze at the sculpture’s face. Her heartbeat kicked into a higher gear. She was half sure he’d said that.

But of course he hadn’t. He was a big hunk of carved limestone. A remarkable big hunk of carved limestone, but still.

She gave an uneasy laugh and said, “He almost looks real.” Laurie took a sip of coffee, then grimaced down at the cup.

“For the period, it’s an unusually realistic style,” Jason acknowledged.

“It’s so iconic,” Terrence said, amused. “Classic knight in shining armor.”

Emily went back to unwrapping him, her fingers grazing his bare neck.

“Did you wash your hands?” Laurie asked.

“Of course. Just a minute ago.” Many people thought that art conservators always wore gloves whenever they touched a valuable object. Often they did, both to protect a fragile work from the oils and dirt on their hands and, in some cases, to protect themselves from toxic materials like arsenic and lead. But for this piece, a thorough hand-washing was sufficient.

It was too bad that Laurie didn’t trust her to do it. How had Emily gotten off on such a bad foot with this woman? It bothered her, and not just professionally. Her mother was always telling her, Not everybody is going to like you, and that’s okay. But it wasn’t. When someone didn’t like Emily, she tended to obsess about it.

She’ll come around, she thought with grim determination.

Pulling more of the cloths aside, she revealed the rest of his torso. She straightened again to study it.

“Even the armor is so detailed,” she said, tracing the air just above his breastplate. “I would guess he’s from 1420, 1430. The ornamentation reminds me of Edmund Mortimer’s armor.” It was going to be a perfect example for the presentation she was putting together for the museum’s next symposium-a daylong event where scholars and experts in art history gave presentations. She was calling hers Dating Medieval Sculpture.

She turned to Jason. “Was this guy famous, too? Or from some rich family?”

He shrugged. “We don’t know anything about the subject.”

Laurie stepped up the stool to take a closer look at the sculpture’s face-and Emily’s possessiveness flared. She wanted to say, Get away from him. He’s mine.

Laurie turned to look down at her. “Do you know how to treat sulfation?”

“Oh, yeah,” Emily said. “I’ve dealt with it lots of times.”

Okay, maybe not lots of times, but she’d worked on a limestone Syrian effigy and an adorable statuette of a chubby sleeping Cupid in creamy marble. The Getty Villa, a palatial estate on the Malibu coast, had been her dream job . . . and she’d left it so that Tom could pursue his dream.

For a long time, Emily had believed that she’d ruined her own life, and being only a temporary employee at this museum was unsettling. But if she could prove herself and get a permanent job here, close to her parents, she’d have fewer regrets. At the very least, she was grateful for the fresh start.

Laura said, “I’m just asking because you had to ask Terrence for help on that terra-cotta.”

“I knew what to do.” She didn’t quite manage to keep the irritation out of her voice that time. “I just couldn’t remember where the adhesive was.”

Emily looked back at the sculpture as if silently asking him, Can you believe what I have to deal with? Maybe she was hoping he’d stick up for her, since neither Terrence nor Jason ever did.

Jason said, “Start with the photos, the condition assessment report, and the treatment proposal, and tell me how much you can get done in time for the show.”

They were already in the middle of setting up an exhibition of late medieval weapons, armor, and war-related art from every continent-a process that took months. These would be among the last pieces to be installed.

“It’s going to be great next to the armor,” Terrence said.

The museum had purchased a suit of armor from the same region-Essex, England-and the same era. Laurie had unwrapped it a few days ago. It was almost completely intact, only missing one of the circular plates at the shoulder, which was why it had commanded such a jaw-dropping price.

Emily had dutifully oohed and aahed over the armor, but she’d secretly found it ominous. Some kind of symbol was etched on the side of the helmet, obscured with a layer of grit and grime, and the eye slits suggested a malevolent glare. It was the opposite of her new limestone friend: an anonymous sculptor’s dream of a chivalrous knight, radiating nobility and humanity.

“I don’t have time to do much to the armor,” Laurie said. “I just finished the shotel.” Emily had to admit to herself that Laurie had done a fantastic job on the slim sword from Ethiopia, with its elegant, cruel curve designed to reach around a shield and stab an enemy in the lungs or the heart. They’d opted to sharpen the blade for visual effect.

“Just get the helmet as cleaned up as you can while preserving the patina,” Jason said. “They want to install it soon with a sword from the collection in its hand. If you don’t have time for any work on it before the ball, that’s fine.”

The museum was holding its annual Masterpiece Ball gala, a black-tie event in the Modern Wing’s Griffin Court that would raise millions of dollars. The entertainment would include a sneak peek tour of the new medieval exhibition, led by Jason himself, before the show was open to the public.

“Hey, Jason, any way you could get your favorite employees some tickets to that ball?” Terrence asked, teasing.

Jason smiled. “Sorry, guys. I’m lucky I’m getting to go.”

He said he’d leave Emily to it. Terrence and Laurie followed him out the door, but at the threshold, Laurie turned back.

“Hey, Em, thanks for doing the coffee run. Next time don’t get me French roast, though.”

“Oh.” Emily blinked. “You said black coffee.”

“Right. But for French roast, they basically burn the coffee beans.” She laughed. “No offense, but it’s really bitter.”

Emily joked, “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Laurie didn’t smile, because of course she didn’t. Emily added, “I’ll get you the breakfast blend.”

“Yeah, instead of the Starbucks, try Café Libre. That’s where Terrence and I both go when we do the coffee run.”

“Great. I’ll check it out.” Where the hell was Café Libre?

After Laurie left, Emily allowed her frozen smile to melt. Every new job, she knew, had a way of making even the most competent person feel like a dumbass, but Laurie seemed to be on a mission to reinforce that feeling, reaching around Emily’s defenses to jab her whenever she could.

Oh well. At least Emily had an exciting project ahead of her.

Excerpted from Her Knight at the Museum by Bryn Donovan Copyright © 2024 by Bryn Donovan. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

A centuries-long curse is no match for rom-com shenanigans when a medieval knight is brought to life in modern-day Chicago.

Forgotten by time and abandoned by hope, Sir Griffin de Beauford’s existence stretches out before him. Cursed by a ruthless enchanter to see, hear, and think, but never to move or speak, Griffin suffers the long, lonely centuries trapped in stone…until an unexpected kiss from a fair maiden breathes new life into his soul—and his body.

Emily Porter, a recently divorced conservator at the Art Institute of Chicago, is charged with the restoration of a statue of a medieval English knight. Breaking curses was not part of the job description. And yet, here he is, the man of her dreams come to life, resplendent in shining armor as he joyously barrels into priceless antiquities…and goes on to dismantle her defenses, wreak havoc on her senses, and tempt her to believe once more in happy-ever-afters.

But the modern age tries Griffin’s patience and pride, and Emily is a prime suspect in the investigation of the missing sculpture. In a complicated world, can they find their way to a fairytale ending?
Book Links: Amazon |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Bryn Donovan is the author of several romance novels, including Sunrise Cabin, a Publishers Weekly bestseller. She’s also written nonfiction books and the story treatments for two Hallmark Channel movies. Her work has appeared in McSweeney’s, Writer’s Digest, and many literary journals. A former executive editor in publishing, she earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. She’s a voracious reader, a rescue dog lover, and a hopeless romantic who lives in the Chicago area and blogs about writing and positivity.