Spotlight & Giveaway: Name Your Price by Holly James

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Holly James to HJ!

Hi Holly and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Name Your Price!

Thank you for stopping by to learn about my new book!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Name Your Price is a second-chance, exes-to-lovers rom-com about a pair of broke exes in L.A., Olivia, an entertainment writer, and Chuck, an aspiring actor, with a feisty on-again-off-again relationship. On the day of their big blow-out public breakup, someone films the whole thing and puts it online. When the video goes viral, and because of Olivia’s status as the daughter of Hollywood royalty and Chuck’s celebrity, the gameshow Name Your Price invites them on the show to try to live locked in a house together for one month for a chance to win a million dollars. Out of desperation because of their financial situations, they agree. When the show throws all sorts of rules at them once they’re locked inside (No touching! No internet! Only one bed!), and thanks to their still sizzling chemistry, things get spicy and dicey as they try their best to tolerate each other and keep their hands off each other. Along the way, they learn there are things far more valuable than money.
 

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

“Sometimes she hated him for how much she wanted him. For what he’d done to her by showing her what was possible. For the fire he’d lit in her blood that made her ache.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Confession: I have never watched a reality TV dating show. I know. It’s my shameful secret as the author of this book here in the era of Married at First Sight and Love is Blind. For what it’s worth, my friend circles are certifiably obsessed with those shows and I get the play-by-play in group chats, so I have at least absorbed the gist second-hand. But the truth remains that I haven’t watched much reality TV since the glory days of early-aughts competition shows like American Idol, Top Chef, America’s Next Top Model, and Project Runway (Make it work!). All this is to say, I never—ever—would have thought I’d write a book about a reality TV show. Yet here we are.
• Also, the house on the cover of the book is a real house in Pacific Palisades, CA! When the art team at Dutton asked for cover inspiration, I sent a bunch of pics from Zillow of houses in the area where the book takes place. I never expected that they’d replicate one identically on the cover! I wonder if the people who live there will ever know…

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

This is actually on the page in the book! During one of the sit-down interviews for the show, Olivia and Chuck are asked about their first impressions of each other. Olivia was attracted to Chuck’s self-confidence and charm but mostly the tender vulnerability hiding beneath it. And his arms. Chuck was instantly drawn to Olivia’s passion for her work and her mind. Because this is a second-chance exes-to-lovers story, we meet our characters when they already know everything about each other (to the point they can’t stand it!) and get to see them fall for each other all over again.

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

This is the spiciest of all my books so far and is the first time I will have published an open-door sex scene, so basically the whole thing has me blushing! Building the tension in the story was so fun, especially since one of the gameshow rules is that Olivia and Chuck can’t touch each other while they are in the house, or they lose prize money. There are several instances where they just can’t stand it, and where they intentionally torture each other. One of my favorites is the morning Chuck purposely causes Olivia to walk in on him looking hot working out, and then she gets payback by going for a swim in front of him:

“A flush burned Olivia’s cheeks at thought of being on film dripping in her swimsuit, but it was nothing compared to the heat she felt from Chuck’s gaze. Whatever game they’d been playing, she’d won. She knew it by the look on his face like he wanted to take her bikini off with his teeth.”

Readers should read this book….

If they want to laugh! If they love reality TV! This book’s premise is the most “fun” one I’ve written in the sense that it’s kind of ridiculous but fully embraces that ridiculousness. I hope readers laugh, swoon, root for our lovers, and most of all just have a good time.

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

I am awaiting copyedits for my 2025 rom-com Last Night Was Fun, which is about a pair of bitter office rivals competing for the same promotion who strike up an anonymous texting relationship and fall for each other when one of them is given a fake number after a bad date that happens to belong to the other. It’s full of banter and texting with You’ve Got Mail vibes, and the big “It’s been you this whole time?!” reveal scene is one of my favorites that I’ve ever written. Also, it’s sports-adjacent because they both work for a professional baseball team. It will be out next summer!

I also have a book coming out in another genre in March 2025. It’s called The Big Fix and is a commercial fiction/action-rom-dramedy about a bookish college professor who ends up on the run with a celebrity fixer when she’s mistaken for his girlfriend after witnessing a crime. It is the most fun I’ve ever had writing, and I can’t wait for it to hit shelves next year!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of NAME YOUR PRICE by Holly James

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Excerpt from Name Your Price:

Chapter 1
Olivia Martin could not pinpoint the moment she became the type of woman who wanted to throw dishes, but it might have been when she met Chuck Walsh. Together, they had only two speeds: tearing each other’s clothes off or tearing each other’s heads off. And that morning, someone was going to get decapitated.
“Well, that’s just fine!” Chuck bellowed, arms out as he danced his bare feet away like she might actually let loose the coffee mug in her lifted hand. He’d hardly had time to pull on his pants before they began shouting. She was scantly better in her underwear and his tee shirt she’d grabbed from the floor as they had, in fact, just finished tearing each other’s clothes off.
“Fine? It’s fine?” Olivia yelled, and set the mug down before she did anything else she’d regret, given she was already roiling in self-directed rage for sleeping with him. The mere thought of smashing the mug into his kitchen floor filled her with a satisfying rush, but she let it go. If only she had the same willpower to resist when it came to him.
The dishes were utilitarian at best anyway—something to stock Chuck’s cabinets in an illusion of domesticity when the man lived off fancy restaurant menus and set catering. She could smash up his whole West Hollywood apartment with a bat, and he wouldn’t care. If she really wanted to hurt him, she needed to go for the miniature city skyline of skincare products lining his bathroom sink. Creams and balms and serums made to preserve his gorgeous face in a state of tempting perfection. Or his closet. As much as she loved tearing his clothes off, Chuck loved putting them on, and who could blame him; he looked hot as hell in anything he wore.
They hadn’t even made it to his bedroom that time. They’d done it right there on the kitchen floor in a heated makeup session that turned Olivia’s messy world right side up for all of ten minutes. Ten minutes of Chuck’s hands and mouth, his obscenely flawless body, his knowledge of her body like a cartographer tracing his favorite map. It had been perfect, like it always was, and she’d expressed her appreciation for his skill by digging her nails into his back and kicking the floor in repeated thuds the downstairs neighbors could surely hear.
And then Chuck opened his mouth and reminded her what they had been making up over in the first place.
“Yes, it’s fine if you never want to talk to me again because quite frankly, I can’t take this anymore!” he said, and threw out his arms in a dramatic show. His wingspan took up half the granite and chrome kitchen. He lived in an apartment well above his means, something truly better suited for an A-lister, which was part of the reason he was so broke.
But Olivia was hardly one to talk. She was broke too.
Olivia grumbled again, feeling cheated that she was the one who’d come over to break up with him, and not only had they just slept together, but now he was turning himself into the victim.
He was a magnetic, irresistible, but ruinous force, and she knew what had to be done. Even the Titanic sank, after all. And something as big as what they had together, something electric but fraught with arrogance and egocentrism—belief that their problems would resolve on their own without any work—was always destined to sink anyway.
But she couldn’t deny that the spark was still there, would probably always be there. Standing there in his kitchen, Chuck looking so good barefoot and shirtless in jeans that it should have been illegal, she felt her body aching for him. She sensed the urge in him too. She saw it in the way his tongue flashed over his lips while he stared at her, chest heaving from all the shouting. Even though they’d just had each other, they could never get enough. Even if it killed them both.
They were fire and gasoline—or they had become as much. Back when they’d met, when Olivia had come to interview him for an actor spotlight feature in Mix, the entertainment magazine she wrote for, there’d been an instant spark. She’d found herself agreeing to a date that same night and immediately passed the interview assignment to someone else because she knew after one afternoon with him that they had no shot at a professional relationship. The spark quickly exploded into an all-consuming addiction of fighting and making up that she’d tried and failed to kick multiple times over the past six months, but Chuck was so loyal that extracting him from her life left Olivia considering calling an exorcist.
If she was honest, though, it was as much him not leaving as it was her not letting him go.
Until now.
“I can’t believe you didn’t show up!” she shouted, her renewed anger back to boiling now that her blood had stopped speeding from being tangled up on the floor with him.
“I was busy,” he said, repeating his useless defense from earlier.
Olivia scoffed and folded her arms. “You knew about the party for weeks, Chuck. You had plenty of time to plan.” Memory of the disappointed look on her beloved grandmother’s face from the night before stabbed her in the heart all over again. “I reserved a special room at her favorite restaurant. I even got permission to invite her best friend from the care home. You were supposed to be there but instead left me alone with two octogenarians wearing their best pearls and wondering why they’d been stood up!”
He flinched at each truth she volleyed at him.
Instead of listening to his excuses last night when he finally called hours later, she showed up at his apartment bright and early this morning to give him a piece of her mind.
She ended up giving him her body too, but that was neither here nor there. What mattered was that it was the final straw, and they were done. Over. No more Olivia and Chuck.
“What was so important that you skipped my grandmother’s birthday party?” she asked with a glare, knowing his response would not measure up. Not unless he’d been rescuing kittens from a burning building and donating AB negative blood to save lives at the same time.
“I had a last-minute audition,” Chuck said. He lifted his arms and let them fall at his sides.
Olivia glared at him. It was plausible since they’d gone to dinner while the sun was still high in the sky to suit the guest of honor’s meal schedule. And she knew Chuck had been struggling to find work lately because of the recent incident that had given him the reputation of being difficult on set, so he was likely to jump on any opportunity he had.
A moment of weakness got the best of her.
“Did you get the part?”
Chuck chewed his lip and silently stared at the floor in response.
Olivia instantly regretted her sympathy and went back to fury. “Argh!” she growled, and snatched her denim shorts off the floor to step back into them.
“Where are you going?” Chuck called after her when she marched for the front door.
“Away from you, once and for all!” she said, and wrenched open the door.
He followed her and took their argument into the hallway. “Liv, I said I’m sorry for missing the party. I’ll write Grandma Ruby an apology letter. I’ll send her flowers. I’ll—”
She whirled on him and shouted, “You can’t fix this, Chuck!” She turned and jammed her finger into the elevator button. Thoughts of taking the stairs to get away from him faster tempted her, but ten stories seemed like nine too many in that moment. “You always do this! You’re so obsessed with your career that you can’t see beyond your own nose. You forget there are other people in the world—namely, me!” She reached out and pressed her palm to his bare chest to prevent him from following her as he was wont to do. The brief contact was regrettably pleasant, and she told herself it would be the last time she ever touched Chuck Walsh.
Chuck had different ideas because he followed her into the elevator when it arrived anyway. “That’s not fair, Olivia. You know I’m killing myself to make it in this industry, and I have to take opportunities when they come up.”
“Well, they always seem to come up at the worst times, Chuck.”
“You know I can’t control that. Not all of us have the industry dangling at our fingertips like you do.”
She turned to him with a sharp glare. “Do not go there.”
He flinched for the slightest second, knowing he’d toed a line that was off-limits. Then his eyes narrowed into a cool glare. “Why am I always the bad guy? You think you’ve done everything right in this relationship?”
She folded her arms and stared up at the ceiling, not wanting to hear it. She watched the floors light up as they sank lower to the ground.
Chuck faced her with his hands on his hips, seemingly unperturbed that he was about to arrive half naked in the building lobby. “What about how you never let anyone help you with anything? Or how you turn everything into a competition that you have to win all the time? Or the way you leave toothpaste in the sink and use the last of the coffee and have horrible taste in music?”
She gasped, most offended by the final remark. The other things were half-true, but her taste in music? Line. Crossed.
“Now you’re just being mean,” she said as they arrived in the lobby with a ding.
Chuck spilled out into the room behind her, a modern tile and stone space, with his arms out and still arguing. Her flip-flops smacked against the shiny floor. Heads turned from the few other building occupants who happened to be coming and going. They were so wrapped up in arguing with each other, the staring hardly registered. “I’m not being mean, I’m being honest!” Chuck said.
Olivia stopped near the round table in the lobby’s center and caught a whiff of the freesias billowing from a vase there. She turned and Chuck almost ran into her from following so closely. Already breaking her no-more-touching promise, she jabbed her finger at his chest. “You want honest, Chuck? Okay, let’s play this game. How about how you leave the toilet seat up and I fall in, in the middle of the night. Or how you never do the dishes. Or how you bend over backward trying to keep everyone happy all the time—”
“Yet it somehow never seems to work with you.”
“—or the way you sleep through every movie I want to watch—”
“Stop picking boring movies, and I won’t fall asleep.”
“—or how when you chew, it sounds like rocks in a dryer—”
“You know I have a mandibular disorder.”
“—or how you take up the whole bed lying diagonally—”
“Sorry I’m six foot three.”
“—or how you leave on every light in the house. My electricity bill is higher on the nights you stay over.”
“Well, that won’t be a problem anymore either because—”
“WE’RE DONE!” they said at the same time.
They’d reached the lobby doors. Olivia pushed through them onto the sidewalk bathed in morning L.A. sun, the gauzy bluish kind that made one acutely aware of the city’s air quality.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

Sparks ignite as a pair of broke exes get locked in a house together on a reality show for a chance to win a million dollars, a second-chance romance that perfectly captures the absurd sincerity of made-for-TV love.

Olivia Martin and Chuck Walsh have chemistry. Too much chemistry, perhaps. Their every interaction as a couple either lights the house up with sexual tension or burns it down with anger. After one huge, very public fight, they finally break up for good. Or so they think. Someone was filming their dramatic argument in the street and—because Olivia’s parents were Hollywood royalty, and because Chuck’s an actor whose star is on the rise—the video goes viral. When Name Your Price, a reality game show, sees the footage, they invite Olivia and Chuck to shoot a very unusual challenge: Live locked in a house together for one month and they will be paid a million dollars. Each.

Olivia really needs the money if she’s going to keep her beloved grandmother in her nursing home, and Chuck is desperate for any chance to win Olivia back. So the game is on—even as the show tries to pluck every nerve with only one bed, one bathroom, and a set of rules that will lose them money if broken—including no touching. With stakes that have never been higher and their explosive chemistry at a fever pitch, can Chuck and Olivia keep it together (and their hands off each other) for one month? Find out next week on Name Your Price!
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Meet the Author:

Holly James is the author of adult romance and commercial fiction. She holds a PhD in psychology and has worked in both academia and the tech industry. When she’s not reading or writing a book, she can be found on the beach or hiking in the woods. Born and raised in Northern California, she currently lives at the southern end of the state with her husband and their dog. Find her at hollyjamesbooks.com and on Instagram at @hellohollyjames.
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