Spotlight & Giveaway: Sweet On You by Carla de Guzman

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Carla de Guzman to HJ!

Hi Carla and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Sweet On You!

To start off, can you please tell us a little bit about this book?:

Sweet on You is about Sari Tomas, a barista who finds her Christmas season ruined by the opening of the bakery next to her café, and the infuriating (but annoyingly charming) baker next door. Through a prank war, and the magic of karaoke the two stubborn dummies finally see what everyone else seems to—that they might just be the best thing that happened to each other.
 

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

“The bakery is my work. But I belong with you. I’m here to stay. I want to work this out with you, and make a home here. Finally take the plastic off of my couch. I can’t imagine a morning without bonete and coffee, or hearing church bells when I drive home. But most of all, I can’t imagine being here without you. You’re home to me now.”

What inspired this book?

It started by watching too many episodes of Great British Bakeoff, was solidified by jokes during a coffee tour with some friends, and was heavily inspired by the wonderful books in the #romanceclass catalog, as well as the Christmases my family and I have spent in Lipa, where my mother’s family is from.

How did you ‘get to know’ your main characters? Did they ever surprise you?

I got to know them very slowly, but I think after I pictured their faces more clearly (via the models we eventually couldn’t use for the cover), I had a clearer picture of who I wanted Sari and Gab to be.

Gabriel turned out to be a lot more playful and fun than I initially pictured him to be! He’s the oldest brother of eight, so I expected him to be strict and a bit more stiff, but no, the man wanted to be a puppy, and I was happy with that. Sari felt things more deeply than I initially thought she would. She carried around a lot of hurt, which was why I loved writing her scene on the beach where she came to terms with her hurt and how to deal with it.

What was your favorite scene to write?

I write my stories in chronological order, always, and I think the scene where Sari and Gab first meet was one of my favorites. Writing bits where the couple are flirting (regardless of if they know it or not, because I know, haha!) are always my favorites, but I like that Gabriel is so excited about his bakery and making muffins that he doesn’t notice how his charm is not working on Sari. Or is it? (it is, a little bit).

“Can I interest you in a dalandan muffin?” he yelled over the music.
“What?” she asked, completely caught off guard. Damn this guy, this baker, this, whatever his name was, who had wormed his way under her skin for the last month without actually showing his face, and now he was here and burrowing himself deeper. She hated it. Hated him, too.
“Well, not dalandan, it’s actually sinturis. I’d never heard of sinturis before, but it’s apparently a local variety. I got these from Blossom Farms in Bolbok,” he continued like he didn’t give much of a shit for Sari’s annoyance, or her quiet. “Have you ever been? It’s totally amazing, I was there for their pineapple planting the other day. They harvested sinturis recently, and they gave me a basket since I just moved in. I’m still tweaking the recipe, so it’s not going to be perfect, but anyway. Muffin?”
“Sari,” she corrected him behind gritted teeth. “Not muffin.”
“No,” he said, and the guy had the utter gall to chuckle like it was adorable that she could barely hear him over the sounds of “Araw-Araw”. Not a Christmas song, but a good one, still. “Do you want a muffin, Sari?”

What was the most difficult scene to write?

I usually have so much fun writing the couple together that I find it really difficult to ease them into conflict, especially for these two, who would stubbornly much rather wait for the end of time before they admit they’re having problems. So Gabriel and Sari’s final conflict about Sunday Bakery’s future was really difficult for me, mostly because drawing confessions from them about their true feelings was like drawing water from a rock.

Would you say this book showcases your writing style or is it a departure for you?

I think Sweet on You was very much within my writing style, which I think is to the book’s credit, because I have the most fun when I’m writing in my style. Describing things so much it almost feels unnecessary? Check. Flirting, so much flirting? Check.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

Because of the lockdowns and the way our government is handling the pandemic, the way we will celebrate Christmas here is definitely going to change. Sweet on You became an accidental memory of what Christmas used to be, and I think that if I can bring those warm and fuzzy feelings of kilig to a reader somehow, then I will feel successful.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

Right now I’m working on a second book in the series, which hasn’t been easy! But on the pipeline, I have a Broadway romance between a TV actress and a theater’s managing director, called Making A Scene, coming out late this year. I also have a new edition of one of my earlier books, If The Dress Fits, coming out early next year.

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 1 ebook copy of SWEET ON YOU by Carla de Guzman, open internationally.

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Excerpt from Sweet On You:

“Oh, there you are!” Gabriel exclaimed, his entire face lighting up with glee as the music filled the air. Then he smugly looked over his shoulder. “Ransom, bring out the brazo.”
Sari gasped as Ransom came out of the shop carrying the bounty. Immediately Sari seethed, and she could almost feel steam coming out of her ears at the sight of the perfect, bouncy, caramelized log of sugar and eggs.
“You traitor,” she exclaimed at Ransom like they were caught in the middle of a telenovela, but she didn’t care. “I told you about my favorite cake in confidence!”
“Ransom knows who his boss is at the end of the day,” Gabriel said, whipping out a knife as Ransom placed the cake on a previously unnoticed table that had a tablecloth and a small stack of paper platitos and those biodegradable forks.
“Please leave me out of this,” Ransom begged them both politely. “I literally did not sign up for this.”
“In for a penny, in for a pound, Rans,” Gabriel said, patting his manager on the back, even though it was clear from the confusion from Ransom’s face that he had no idea what the very English expression meant. “Now who wants a free slice of brazo de mercedes?”
“I need a raise,” Ransom said miserably, and Sari was treated to the sight of her customers leaving her store, literally dropping bags of coffee beans back into the little outdoor selling area she’d set up, to exclaim over Gabriel’s cake. She could see it from where she was standing too—frothy, slightly toasted marshmallowy meringue with a just runny enough, sticky and sweet custard center. The cake looked absolutely perfect, with a lovely crust of sugar on the outside. Sari’s stomach growled, and she could almost taste the brazo de mercedes in her mouth, only to be sorely disappointed because her pride was in the way.
“You cheat.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “You dirty, rotten cheat.”
“All’s fair, muffin,” he teased, winking as he took a bite of his own slice of cake. “Now are you sure you don’t want a taste of my…brazo?”
He made a show of holding out his arm, twisting it and flexing it for maximum muscle exposure. And Sari would never, ever admit this to anyone (who would she admit it to, really?), but Gabriel had a very nice braso. It was the kind that could carry things, formed by the work of his own hands.
She gulped. Sure, most of the aunties eating cake were utterly confused as to what was going on, but still, Sari knew she had to retreat. So she huffed, and flounced back into her café without a slice of her favorite cake.
“I’m going to kill him,” she announced to her staff as she passed them on her way back up to her coffee lab. “I’m really going to kill him!”
“We think he’s nice, m’am!”
“Sagutin mo niyo na kasi, m’am Sari!”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

All’s fair in love and prank wars

For barista and café owner Sari Tomas, Christmas means parols, family and no-holds-barred karaoke contests. This year, though, a new neighbor is throwing a wrench in all her best-laid plans. The baker next door—“some fancy boy from Manila”—might have cute buns, but when he tries to poach her customers with cheap coffee and cheaper tactics, the competition is officially on.

And Baker Boy better be ready, because Sari never loses.

Foodie extraordinaire Gabriel Capras wants to prove to his dad that his career choice doesn’t make him any less a man. The Laneways might not be Manila, but the close-knit community is the perfect spot to grow his bakery into a thriving business. He wasn’t expecting a gorgeous adversary in the barista next door, but flirting with her makes his heart race, and it’s not just the caffeine.

It’s winner takes all this Christmas. And more than one competitor might just lose their heart for the holidays.

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Meet the Author:

Carla de Guzman is a Capricorn with a Libra moon and a Virgo rising, and she loves spending her midnights at her desk, writing contemporary romance. She loves to travel, and writes the love stories that those travels have inspired. She’s currently on a quest to see as many Impressionist paintings as she can, and is always in search of the perfect pain au chocolat.
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