Spotlight & Giveaway: The Goodbye Café by Mariah Stewart

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Mariah Stewart to HJ!

Hi Mariah and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Goodbye Café!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

Allie, Des, and Cara meet as sisters for the first time when they’re called to the office of their deceased father’s attorney who was tasked with explaining the terms of their dad’s will. In order to inherit their portion of his sizable estate, the three women would have to live in the family Pocono Mountain home in Hidden Falls, PA and restore the Sugarhouse, a boarded up 1920s theater built by their great-grandfather. Once in Hidden Falls, Des and Cara adapt fairly easily to small town life, but Allie has a lot more baggage: an ex back in California, a drinking problem, and Nikki, her fifteen-year old daughter she’s had to leave behind with the ex until the school year ends. Now with Nikki in Hidden Falls for the summer and the work on the Sugarhouse almost completed, Allie can’t leave town and get back to her old life quickly enough. Then their aunt Barney buys the town’s favorite café, and everyone has to pitch in to make it work. All work and no play don’t give Allie much time to explore the possibilities with Ben Haldeman, the local chief of police with whom she’s had a contentious relationship. But somehow, she works it out and even manages to help solve a family mystery or two.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

At the earliest light of a summer day that promised to be even hotter than the record-breaking heat of the day before, Allie Hudson Monroe made her quiet way through the otherwise deserted streets of Hidden Falls, Pennsylvania. She strode with purpose, a large canvas bag over her shoulder, toward the intersection of Hudson Street and Main, where she crossed, and once on the other side, entered the Sugarhouse, the 1920s Art Deco theater that was her family’s legacy.
Built by her great-grandfather and bequeathed to her and her two sisters by their father, Franklin “Fritz” Hudson, the Sugarhouse had been boarded up for years. Since Fritz’d specified in his will that his three daughters had to live together in the family home on Hudson Street and restore the theater before they could receive their generous individual inheritances, his “wish” had actually been more of an ultimatum.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• The story was inspired by a family secret (my mother was an adult when she discovered her father had another family in a different state).
• The theater in the book was inspired by a real 1920s theater in Lansdowne, PA, where we’d lived for 35 years.
• The real theater was in a scene in the film, The Silver Linings Playbook. You can read about the Lansdowne Theater here: http://www.lansdownetheater.org/
  Watch the clip of the theater’s CEO, Matt Schultz, on the TODAY SHOW for a tour of this gorgeous, historic building.
• Buttons, the little fluffy white rescue dog, is modeled on a real rescue dog belonging to a long-time reader.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

My characters always surprise me. As a matter of fact, it wasn’t until I was writing the epilogue that I discovered something I hadn’t known about one of the central characters. It was like BOOM! when I realized what had actually taken place without me knowing until the end! And this was the third book in the series. But when I found myself typing…what it was I was typing…I realized it was absolutely right and made perfect sense.
Allie, my heroine, has a fourteen going on fifteen-year-old daughter whose custody she shares with her ex. She also a serious problem with alcohol. Allie’d become accustomed to drinking week nights during the school year when Nikki was staying at her father’s. Getting her drinking under control in a way that made sense for that character was a challenge.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

Allie’d worked late at the café, and Ben had come in late to grab dinner. He’d worked a double shift over the weekend between a drug bust and a five-car accident that included serious injuries and a fatality, and he was dead on his feet. But he offered to drive Allie home after she closed up for the night so she wouldn’t have to walk home alone in the dark, so she offered to make coffee because he was obviously exhausted.

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

I think if there’s any real message in The Goodbye Café, or anything to learn from the characters, it’s that it’s never really too late. Never too late to find family. Never too late to find love. Never too late to try something new. Never too late to do the right thing.

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

Right now I’m working on something that’s very different from anything I’ve ever done before so I’m just not talking about it until it’s finished. The story has been in my head for about eight or ten years and I never had a chance to work on it, so I’m taking the time to do that now. I will say this: I’ve been published since 1995 and this is the most fun I’ve ever had with a story, so we’ll see what’s what when the dust settles!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Print copy of THE GOODBYE CAFE (The Hudson Sisters Series) by Mariah Stewart

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Have you discovered a previously deep dark family secret? Was it a happy secret or one that wasn’t so happy? How did you react at the time – and how do you feel about it now?

 
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Excerpt from The Goodbye Café:

“Here you…” She paused in the doorway. Ben was draped across the loveseat, his legs half on the floor, one of the toss pillows propped under his head, and he appeared to be dead to the world.
Allie set the mug on the table and picked up the crocheted throw from the back of the chair. She stood over the loveseat, the throw in her hands, and watched the rise and fall of his chest. The tension she usually saw in his face was gone, as if everything he’d had to witness over the past forty-eight hours – over the past several years – had temporarily been forgotten. In sleep, his hair tumbled over his forehead, his mouth slightly parted, Ben looked like a younger, sweeter version of the man she’d come to know.
With one hand, she brushed back the hair from his face, covered him with the throw, and whispered “Good night, Sleeping Beauty” as she turned off the lamp.
“Allie.”
He spoke her name so softly she wasn’t sure that he’d spoken at all.
“If I kissed you…would you kiss me back?”
Allie paused in the darkened room, the only hint of light coming from the hall. There was just a hint of mischief in her voice when she leaned over him and whispered, “Why don’t you kiss me and find out?”
He reached up and pulled her down, one hand on the back of her neck, the other at her waist. She hadn’t expected much more than a mild little peck. His lips on hers were gentle as a caress at first, almost teasing. But then both hands were on the sides of her face, pulling her in, and the kiss was anything but a tease. She was surprised at the flash of heat that rose between them, and at how quickly the kiss deepened. Mostly, she was surprised by how much she enjoyed it. When she finally pulled back, she gazed down, and for a moment tried to think of something flippant to say.
Ben’s eyes had closed when he’d kissed her – and stayed closed. He’d fallen fast asleep, a smile on his face.
Allie laughed softly in spite of herself. Had anyone ever fallen asleep immediately after kissing her? She’d cut Ben some slack this time. After all, hadn’t the poor guy been fighting sleep for the past hour? And at least he was smiling, so he must have enjoyed it.
Yes, but it had better not happen again.
Again?
Again implied there’d be another time, another kiss.
Oh, there would be, she nodded to herself as she climbed the steps to her room. And next time, there’d be no falling asleep on the job.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 

Book Info:

California girl Allie Hudson Monroe can’t wait for the day when the renovations on the Sugarhouse Theater are complete so she can finally collect the inheritance from her father and leave Pennsylvania. After all, her life and her fourteen-year-old daughter are in Los Angeles.

But Allie’s divorce left her tottering on the edge of bankruptcy, so to keep up on payments for her house and her daughter’s private school tuition, Allie packed up and flew out east. But fate has a curve-ball or two to toss in Allie’s direction—she just doesn’t know it yet.

She hadn’t anticipated how her life would change after reuniting with her estranged sister, Des, or meeting her previously unknown half-sister, Cara. And she’d certainly never expected to find small-town living charming. But the biggest surprise was that her long-forgotten artistry would save the day when the theater’s renovation fund dried up.

With opening day upon the sisters, Allie’s free to go. But for the first time in her life, she feels like the woman she was always meant to be. Will she return to the West Coast and resume her previous life, or will the love of “this amazing, endearing family of women” (Robyn Carr, #1 New York Times bestselling author) be enough to draw her back to the place where the Hudson roots grow so deep?

Book Links: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Goodbye-Cafe/Mariah-Stewart/The-Hudson-Sisters-Series/9781501145124
 
 

Meet the Author:

Mariah Stewart is the award-winning New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of numerous novels and several novellas and short stories. A native of Hightstown, New Jersey, she lives with her husband and two rambunctious rescue dogs amid the rolling hills of Chester County, Pennsylvania, where she savors country life and tends her gardens while she works on her next novel. Visit her website at MariahStewart.com, like her on Facebook at Facebook.com/AuthorMariahStewart, and follow her on Instagram @Mariah_Stewart_Books.