Spotlight & Giveaway: ONE CHRISTMAS MORNING by Rachel Greenlaw

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Rachel Greenlaw to HJ!

Hi Rachel and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, ONE CHRISTMAS MORNING!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The story opens as Eva is preparing to open her shop in London, just before Christmas. She’s overwhelmed with work but desperate for the shop launch she’s been working so hard on to go well. She is expected at a house party on the wild moors of North Cornwall, and plans to launch the shop as soon as she returns. But when she arrives at Penhallow, the manor house where the party is being held, she realises she needs to be back in London. She puts work before her husband and friends. She leaves at midnight, but on the road, she sees someone who should not be there, who died three years before. Her gran.
Eva wakes up back at Penhallow on Christmas day but not as herself. She wakes in the body of her assistant, Diana. Eva will go through Christmas day, again and again, waking in the bodies of the different guests, seeing herself through their eyes. And she will see how far she has pushed her husband, James away and how much she desperately needs to change, before she loses the people closest to her. Eva needs to find that elusive work-life balance, prioritising the business she’s worked so hard to build, but also the people she loves.
 

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

“He was handing me piles of those T-shirts he liked to wear, band ones that you buy at gigs with big, capital letters sprayed across them. I was chatting about nothing, maybe the rain, as I folded and he said the words so quietly, like a sigh, like he’d been holding them in forever.
I love you.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I had to sneak in a reference to how much I love packing cubes! You’ll spot it in one of the opening chapters
• I wrote the first fifteen thousand words of this book in just one weekend
• A whole chapter is a tribute to my love of the sea and sea swimming!
• There is a very Twilight inspired game played by Eva, James and the gang in this story…

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

Eva and James meet in their university library and read each other’s favourite books!

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

The final scenes had me crying as I wrote them (and I still cry every time I read over them!)

Readers should read this book….

If you love a story that feels like a warm hug, the release of a big, gulpy breath and a moment when you think, yes! I feel like that too! Then this is the story for you…

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

I have just finished a round of edits on my next book for adults, which will be out with Avon in the US and Canada in 2024. It’s a romance with a mystery threaded through it, set in a small, witchy kind of town in the shadow of a vast mountain range, and if you love Practical Magic or Spells for Forgetting, this one might be for you.
I also have the first book in a YA romantasy trilogy out in March 2024, Compass and Blade, which is about a girl called Mira who lives on a small island with a community of wreckers, and she sets off on a journey to find something buried deep in the ocean with a boy who she may or may not be able to trust…it’s inspired by the islands where I live and my love of the genre. This book is for anyone who loves a page turning, thrilling romantic adventure!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One finished copy of ONE CHRISTMAS MORNING!

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What do you look for in a great book? What hooks you the most to keep reading?

 
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Excerpt from One Christmas Morning:

I am surrounded by cardboard boxes. There are piles of them,
heaped up all around me in an arc on the newly laid, slightly
dusty shop floor. And all I can do is close my eyes, lean back
against them and wish I could wind time forward. A week
would do. Maybe a fortnight. Then all the items in these boxes
would be arranged on the shelves, scattered artfully across the
middle tables and customers would be wandering in and out,
arms piled high with throws and candle holders. I allow that
image to sink in for a moment.

Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do so a dream becomes
real? Visualise it?

But it’s not long before the cold seeps in through my jeans
and I throw myself forward with a sigh. It’s five days before
we open. Five days before my dream becomes a reality, and all
I feel is hot, stifling panic. My phone rings and I force myself
to get up, hurriedly rustling through the open boxes, turning
in a circle on the heels of my perfectly white trainers. There.
It’s on the new counter. I lunge for it, swiping it open as I catch
the name.

‘James?’

‘I got the Thai. They didn’t have the beef massaman, so I got chicken instead. Should be another…’ his tinny voice slips away and I picture him shaking back his sleeve, checking his watch, ‘twenty minutes?’
‘James, the thing is… I…’ My words stick in my throat, excuses glued to the roof of my mouth.

There is a pause, a beat of silence. ‘You forgot, didn’t you?’

A wash of shame fills my chest and I close my eyes. We were
meant to get a takeaway tonight. Just me and him, alone in our
flat so we could catch up, refuel. Have a date night like an actual
husband and wife, like we used to. But of course, I forgot. As
I got the last load of scent diffusers on the shelves for the launch,
another arrived, then Diana called to say there was a delay with
the printed paper bags… then suddenly it was dark outside and
all I could do was sit on the floor. Just sit and stare at nothing,
my mind filling with a tiredness that sleep can’t cure.
I clear my throat. ‘I’ll be back in an hour. Give me an hour
and I’ll get all this put away in the stockroom. I can pop back
in afterwards, after we’ve had dinner—’

‘Eva…’

‘What?’

He huffs an exasperated breath. ‘I can keep it warm in the
oven. Don’t get back too late, yeah?’

‘James, I’m sor—’

But the line has already gone dead.

A laugh claws up my throat, short and bitter, as I drop my
mobile phone back on the counter. Staring blearily around at
the tumble of boxes, the dustpan full of dust by the door, the
till still blinking angrily, not yet set up, I feel that sharp pain
again. That insistent prickle in the centre of my chest.

This is all I wanted. This is what I’ve been building towards for the past three years, this shop with its double-fronted sagegreen-framed windows, its casually rustic timber flooring. I take a deep, rattling breath and reach for the nearest shelf. I run my hand over the photo frames, the textured napkins, letting the
feel of fabric and wood ground me, anchor me. It reminds me
I’ve got this far. That I could be enough, if I push harder. Try
harder. I nod to myself, straightening a set of four white napkins,
smoothing them down until they are perfect again.
It’s all worth it. He’ll see.
I have to remind myself of this whenever I feel that gnaw
of doubt in my stomach. All the maxed-out credit cards, the
hours at trade fairs, the nights spent glued to my laptop screen.
For a moment, I allow myself to step into the haze of what
only I can picture. What I’m creating with this brand. The
charm of a well-decorated room, the scent of the ocean, afternoon light as it dances across the floorboards. This vision of
peace and calm that I so desperately needed a few years ago.
That other people might need too. Then I blow out a breath.
If James doesn’t get it, that’s fine. But this is everything I have
worked for, the all-consuming distraction I have needed over
the last three years, and I won’t stuff it up at the last minute.
I won’t fail this time.
James and I will be OK. We’ve just got to get through this
shop launch. Then we can go back to being a normal couple, the
two of us making weekend plans, going for Saturday brunch,
me cheering him on from the sidelines as he plays football on
a muddy pitch with his team, eating Thai takeaway like a picnic
on the carpet in front of our favourite TV show. Although
I guess… we haven’t done that for a while. When was the last
time I turned up to watch him play? I try to put my finger on a date. But maybe… maybe it’s been a couple of years. I use the weekends to work now.

My phone beeps again, this time with a text from Hallie.
A reminder of how to get to this Christmas house party she’s
organised this year. It’s probably the same message she’s sent to
her other guests, the cheery directions, the reminder to drive
safely! But I don’t need these directions. I know how to get to the
manor house, Penhallow, like following the creases of my palm.
It’s seared into my memory, every lane, every drystone wall.

It’s the holiday home I went to every year as a child, huge
and lumbering, the whole place to ourselves. The place that
haunts my dreams even now. I can still remember the way the
lichen spread like lace over its granite walls, the crunch of the
gravel in the driveway, the endless rooms that seemed to move
around in the night, as if by magic.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Book Info:

For fans of The Midnight Library and One Day in December who love a dash of Dickensian magic, One Christmas Morning is a heartwarming debut novel about a woman’s self-discovery, the strength found in friendship, and the promise of second chances.

Eva has spent the past three years burying herself in her work, trying to forget the heartbreaking events of the Christmas that ripped her world apart. This year, the last thing she wants is to attend her friend’s weekend-long Christmas party. But at her husband James’ insistence, here they are.

When Eva—overwhelmed by bittersweet memories—tries to sneak back to London in the middle of the night, she is visited by the ghost of her beloved grandmother. Gran tells Eva that if she doesn’t face her fears head-on and stop shutting out her loved ones, she risks losing them all forever.

When Eva wakes on Christmas morning, she finds herself living not her own life, but that of her hardworking assistant, Diana, whose overflowing inbox isn’t the only secret she’s been keeping. The next day, she wakes on Christmas morning again, this time in the body of her best friend’s little sister. As Eva lives the same day again and again through the perspectives of her friends, she is offered a glimpse into the lives of those she has been pushing away. With each Christmas Day comes a new lesson—and an insight into the secrets and struggles her loved ones have been hiding. To move forward, Eva must let go of the past. But is it too late to fix her future?
Book Links:  Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Rachel Greenlaw grew up in North Cornwall, surrounded by wild moorland and studied creative writing at university before moving to an island in the middle of the Atlantic, with all the allure of tropical palm trees in the summer and spine-tingling storms in the winter. When she’s not wandering the beaches and nature trails, she’s dreaming up her next story. She is the author of One Christmas Morning and the Compass and Blade trilogy.
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