Spotlight & Giveaway: Summer Reading by Jenn McKinlay

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Jenn McKinlay to HJ!

Hi Jenn and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Summer Reading!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Samantha Gale returns to her family’s summer cottage on Martha’s Vineyard to chaperone her fourteen-year-old half brother Tyler, while their parents take the trip of a lifetime to Europe. Returning home is hard for Sam as she’s trying to resurrect her chef career and bond with Tyler but the universe has even bigger plans for her when she meets librarian Bennett Reynolds on the ferry to the island. He’s clearly a book lover and she has dyslexia, so it’s not an obvious pairing but when Sam offers to help him locate the father he has never known, they find their attraction to potent to ignore. But can a librarian ho doesn’t do romance and a chef who doesn’t do reading commit for the long haul or is it just a summer fling?
 

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

“How about you? Who are your go to authors?”
He looked thoughtful and said, “Oh, you know, Kafka, Joyce, Proust…”
Even I, the non-reader, knew these were literary heavy hitters. My voice came out a little higher than normal when I asked, “For fun?”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• There is a scene where Sam teaches Tyler how to shuffle dance, so naturally I had to learn how to do the running man and T-step, too. So fun, although I’m still not very good.
• Because Sam is a chef of Portuguese descent, I had her focus on Portuguese recipes, which my sister-in-law (who is from the Azores) and her family took the time to teach me. I included my favorites in the book!

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

Banter. I love a hero and heroine who immediately start in with the verbal wordplay. It always feels as if they’ve each finally met someone who understands them completely.

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

Yes, all of that. I always feel things very deeply when I’m writing. I believe that as a writer, you have to feel the emotions while you’re crafting the scene otherwise they don’t come across on the page.

Readers should read this book….

I hope they read it because it’s feel good fiction. While it deals with some very heavy topics like dyslexia and grief, it also celebrates relationships and finding that one person who really “gets” you. I hope they take away a new understanding of dyslexia and that there is always a way to overcome the obstacles in front of you. Always.

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

Presently, I am in proposal writing mode. I recently turned in Love at First Book, a women’s fiction romcom set in a bookshop in Ireland, which will come out next year. My next release, after Summer Reading, is a mystery entitled Sugar Plum Poisoned, a Cupcake Bakery mystery which will come out in October of this year.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 1 Print copy of Summer Reading by Jenn McKinlay

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Excerpt from Summer Reading:

The ferry from Woods Hole to Martha’s Vineyard was standing room only. Shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, the passengers were packed as tight as two coats of paint. I had a rowdy group of college kids at my back, which was fine, as I’d carved out a spot at the rail near the bow of the ship and was taking in big gulps of salty sea air while counting down the seconds of the forty-five-minute ride.
It was the first time I’d returned to the Gale family cottage in Oak Bluffs for an extended stay—I’d only managed quick weekends here and there around my busy work schedule—in ten years, and I was feeling mostly anxious with a flicker of anticipation. Preoccupied with the idea of spending the entire summer on island, I did not hear the commotion at my back until it was almost too late.
“Bruh!” a deep voice yelled.
I turned around to see a gaggle of man-boys in matching T-shirts—it took my neurodivergent brain a moment to decipher the Greek letters on their shirts, identifying them as frat boys—roughhousing.

Is gaggle the right word? I’m sure they’d have preferred something cool like crew, but honestly, with their baggy shorts, sideways ball caps, and sparsely whiskered chins, they looked more like a cackle of hyenas or a parliament of parrots. Either way, one of them was noticeably turning a sickly shade of green, and his cheeks started to swell. When he began to convulse as if a demon was punching its way up from his stomach, his friends scrambled to get away from him.
I realized with horror that he was going to vomit and the only thing between him and the open sea was me, trapped against the railing. In a panic, I looked for a viable exit. Unfortunately, I was penned in by a stalwart woman with headphones on and a hot guy reading a book. I had a split second to decide who would be easier to move. I went with reader guy, simply because I figured he could at least hear me when I yelled, “Move!”
I was wrong. He didn’t hear me and he didn’t move. In fact, he was so nonresponsive, it was like he was on another planet. As the dude doing the herky-jerky lunged toward me, I gave the man a nudge. He still didn’t respond. Desperate, I slapped my hand over the words in his book. He snapped his head in my direction with a peeved expression. Then he looked past me and his eyes went wide. In one motion, he grabbed me and pulled me down and to the side, out of the line of fire.
The puker almost made it to the rail. Almost. I

heard the hot splat of vomit on the deck behind me and hoped it didn’t land on the backs of my shoes.
Mercifully, reader man’s quick thinking shielded me from the worst of it. Frat boy was hanging over the railing, and as the vomiting started in earnest, the crowd finally pressed back, way back, and we scuttled out of the blast zone.
My rescuer let go of me and asked, “Are you all right?”
I opened my mouth to answer, when the smell hit me. That distinctive stomach-curling, nose-wrinkling, gag-inducing smell that accompanies undigested food and bile. My mouth pooled with saliva, and I felt my throat convulse. This was an emergency of epic proportions, as I am a sympathy puker. You puke, I puke, we all puke. Truly, if someone hurls near me, it becomes a gastro-geyser of Old Faithful proportions. I spun away from the man in a flurry of arms that slapped his book out of his hands and sent it careening toward the ocean.
He let out a yell and made a grab for it. He missed and leaned over the railing, looking as if he was actually contemplating making a dive for it.
I felt terrible and would have apologized, but I was too busy holding my fist to my mouth while trying not to lose my breakfast. The egg-and-bacon sandwich I’d enjoyed suddenly seemed like the worst decision ever, and it took all of my powers of concentration not to

hurl. I tried to breathe through my mouth but the retching sounds frat boy was making were not helping.
“Come on.” Reader guy took my arm and helped me move farther away. I turned my head away in case I was sick. I could feel my stomach heaving and then—
“Ouch! You pinched me!” I cried.
My hero, although that seemed like an overstatement given that he had just inflicted pain upon my person, had nipped the skin on the inside of my elbow with enough force to startle me and make me rub my arm.
“Still feel like throwing up?” he asked.
I paused to assess. The episode had passed. I blinked at him. He was taller than me. Lean with broad shoulders, wavy dark brown hair that reached his collar. He had nice features, arching eyebrows, sculpted cheekbones, and a defined jaw covered in a thin layer of scruff. His eyes were a blue-gray much like the ocean surrounding us. Dressed in a navy sweatshirt, khaki shorts, and black lace-up work boots, he looked like a local.
He stared at me expectantly, and I realized he’d asked a question and was waiting for an answer. Feeling like an idiot for blatantly checking him out, I attempted to play it off as if I was still wrestling with the urge to upchuck. I raised my hand in a “wait” gesture and then slowly nodded.
“No, I think I’m okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. Then he smiled at me—it was a dazzler—making me forget the horror of the last few minutes. “You tossed my book into the ocean.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said. Nervousness and relief that I hadn’t lost my breakfast caused me to attempt to make light of the situation. This was a bad play. “At least it was just a book and not an essential item, but I’ll absolutely buy you a replacement.”
“Not necessary.” He frowned at me and then looked at the sea, where the paperback was now polluting the ocean—one more thing for me to feel bad about—and then back at me and said, “I take it you’re not a reader.”
And there it was, the judgmental tone I’d heard my whole life when it became known that I was not a natural-born reader. Why were book people always so perplexed by nonbook people? I mean, it’s not like I wanted to have dyslexia. Naturally, when feeling defensive about my neurodivergence, I said the most offensive thing I could think of.
“Books are boring,” I responded. Yes, I, Samantha Gale, went there. I knew full well this was likely heresy for this guy, and I was right. His reaction did not disappoint.

Excerpted from SUMMER READING by Jenn McKinlay, published by Berkley, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2023

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

When a woman who’d rather do anything than read meets a swoon-worthy bookworm, sparks fly, making for one hot-summer fling in New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay’s new rom-com.

For Samantha Gale, a summer on Martha’s Vineyard at her family’s tiny cottage was supposed to be about resurrecting her career as a chef, until she’s tasked with chaperoning her half-brother, Tyler. The teenage brainiac is spending his summer at the local library in a robotics competition, and there’s no place Sam, who has dyslexia, likes less than the library. And because the universe hates her, the library’s interim director turns out to be the hot-reader guy whose book she accidentally destroyed on the ferry ride to the island.

Bennett Reynolds is on a quest to find his father, whose identity he’s never known. He’s taken the temporary job on the island to research the summer his mother spent there when she got pregnant with him. Ben tells himself he isn’t interested in a relationship right now. Yet as soon as Sam knocks his book into the ocean, he can’t stop thinking about her.

An irresistible attraction blossoms when Ben inspires Sam to create the cookbook she’s always dreamed about and she jumps all in on helping him find his father, and soon they realize their summer fling may heat up into a happily ever after.
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Meet the Author:

Jenn McKinlay is the award-winning, New York Times, USA Today, and Publishers Weekly bestselling author of several mystery and romance series. Her work has been translated into multiple languages in countries all over the world. She lives in sunny Arizona in a house that is overrun with kids, pets, and her husband’s guitars.
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