Spotlight & Giveaway: The Good Boy by Stella Hayward

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Stella Hayward to HJ!

Hi Stella and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Good Boy!

 
Hello, welcome to the world of The Good Boy!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Genie comes from a long line of magical women, or at least that’s what her grandmother claims. Genie has her doubts – but when she accidentally turns her dog, Rory, into a human man, she must enlist the help of her best friend and the boy next door, Miles, to her her find a way to turn him back into a dog before he’s stuck as a human forever.

Meanwhile, Rory finds there are some benefits to being a human. Opposable thumbs, unlimited chocolate and a knack for making friends. As he navigates life as a human he helps Miles and Genie discover how they really feel about each other, and shows them how to be more human by being more dog.
 

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

It’s hard to choose but one of my favourite scenes is when Genie and Miles takes Rory to a nightclub for the first time:

‘Do you think Miles is ok?’
Following his gaze, I see Miles pressed up against one of the mirror-tiled walls, where a girl in a tight shiny dress has him cornered. He’s smiling, and laughing at her jokes, she is handing him a drink she has just bought him. There used to be a time when being a nerd was kryptonite when it came to pulling girls, but these days its positively an aphrodisiac. He does look objectively hot standing there, laughing and flirting like the attractive, well-adjusted and solvent good catch he is.
‘I think he is doing just fine,’ I say to Rory, ignoring the familiar sharp pang of wistfulness I often feel in the middle of my chest.
‘It’s just that she looks like she wants to sniff his butt, and you told me that was not a good thing in humans.’
‘He’s a big boy,’ I say with a determined shrug. ‘And this is my birthday party! Come on Rory, uncover both your ears and let’s dance!’

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• There are three dogs in my family, and I constantly narrate their inner thoughts for them, so when it came to finding a voice for Rory, it was actually pretty easy !
• Rory is based on a real dog that I knew for about ten years, who was very cheeky but brave, food focused and handsome. And he had an air about him, that maybe he understood *everything.*
• The Good Boy is set in Scarborough, where I live in a house over looking the sea. It’s a fun and I went to visit a psychic for research. She told me that The Good Boy would be a huge success!! Will she be right?
• There’s a scene set in Whitby where they really do have a goths and vampires convention every summer. Its great to go and see all the people dressed as Dracula (and Nosferatu) taking over the streets, and heading up to Whitby abbey to gather. They did break the world record for the number of vampires gathered in any one place!
• I am half Maltese, and Malta is a small but magical island. Sadly I don’t seem to have any magical powers yet, but I keep trying.
• Writing this book inspired by to adopt our third dog, he is a three legged former street dog from Romania called Rufus. Ironically he hates Golden Retrievers, no one knows why!
• I decided to make Rory a Golden Retriever long before Golden Retriever boyfriends where a thing – hey, maybe I am magical after all?!
  While I was writing this book it was called MY CRAZY DOG BOOK and I still call it that sometimes.

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

Genie and Miles first met when they were both at school and Miles was the outsider. Genie protected him from bullies and he has always protected her in return. Hen ever lets her down. The thing they both like about each other at first is their humour, loyalty and kindness. As they grow older they start to see other qualities in each other and there was a moment when they might once have got together. But Genie missed that moment, and now she is certain it’s too late.

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

I laughed so much when I wrote the novel, I loved writing Rory and his obsessions with cheese, David Attenborough and squirrels. I think maybe there’s a scene where Mile’s cat, Matilda, attacks Rory at a dinner part with Genie’s love rival Claudia, that made me cry laughing. (Poor Rory! Don’t worry he’s ok in the end…)

‘Miles!’ Claudia screams. ‘Do something before the cat has his eye out!’
‘Not my eyes, I like my eyes!’ Rory screams.
‘Right, yes.’ Miles gets up. ‘Um. Right, yes, Rory… Rory! Stop thrashing about. You’re scaring her.’
‘She’s scaring me!’ Rory mutters from behind the muffle of Matilda’s tummy fur. ‘And my eyes.’
‘I know, but if you relax, she will relax,’ Miles says, very calmly. ‘Just stay perfectly still and maybe she will get bored.’
‘I do not feel relaxed, Miles,’ Rory says. ‘I feel exactly the opposite of relaxed. I feel unrelaxed.’

Readers should read this book….

If they like magical, wholesome, funny, uplifting dreamy romance where friends become lovers while on a quest to discover themselves.

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

I also write under the name Rowan Coleman, and I have an epic WW2 love story with a magical twist coming out in July, called NEVER TEAR US APART. I’m writing the follow up to THE GOOD BOY right now, and I can’t tell you too much, except it’s called MY BRILLIANT AI BOYFRIEND…!!
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of THE GOOD BOY by Stella Hayward

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Book Info:

A delightful and hilarious romance with a magical twist, about a young woman who finds her quiet world completely upended when her dog is transformed into a human man.
On the eve of Genie’s thirtieth birthday, her grandmother gives her an unexpected gift. For women in their bloodline, they can grant another family member’s wish at midnight. Genie laughs it off, and, after an evening fending off invasive questions about her nonexistent love life, returns home to her empty house and her golden retriever, Rory. As she hugs him and gets ready for bed, she wishes to herself that he were human—that would solve all her problems!
The next morning she wakes to a naked man sleeping in the dog bed.
Human Rory has big Golden Retriever Energy—like a dumb, adoring Hemsworth. But he doesn’t like being a human. He doesn’t like wearing clothes or human manners, and he would never manage a human job.
Genie needs to help turn Rory back. She enlists the aid of Miles, her oldest friend and boy next door, to track down a way to reverse her wish. The quest brings them closer than they’ve ever been before—perhaps Rory will be the key to granting her heart’s desire after all.
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Meet the Author:

Stella Hayward is a pseudonym for Rowan Coleman, the internationally bestselling and award-winning author and screenwriter of sixteen novels, including The Memory Book, The Summer of Impossible Things, and The Girl at the Window. A lifelong Bronte fan, under the Bronte inspired pen name Bella Ellis, Rowan also writes the Bronte Mysteries–a carefully researched series of novels that imagine that before they were famous the Bronte Sisters were amateur detectives.
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