Spotlight & Giveaway: The Perfect Rom-Com by Melissa Ferguson

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Melissa Ferguson to HJ!

Hi Melissa and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, The Perfect Rom-Com!

 
Hey, everyone! Thanks for popping by to hear about my newest sweet rom-com!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

The Perfect Rom-Com is basically a booklover’s twist on Two Weeks Notice. We have Bryony Page who is an aspiring writer driven by altruistic passion to save her grandmother’s founding organization, an adult ESL program for immigrants and refugees called The Bridge. After The Bridge runs into financial crisis, she decides to write a book to raise awareness and funds in attempts to save it and ends up going to her first writer’s conference anxious to win over literary giant, Jack Sterling in the fifteen-minute pitch appointment.

She fails tremendously (oh how I’ve been there), but as a last-ditch effort, she ends up telling him the truth about the manuscript of one of his top-selling clients. And to everyone’s surprise, is dead on. He offers her the opportunity to be a ghostwriter for his client and she agrees only in exchange of him taking on her manuscript.

Only problem is, she turns out to be too good as a ghostwriter for his vain, demanding client and skyrockets her rom-coms to the top of the lists. And suddenly, the agency realizes they can’t let her go, just as Jack realizes he can’t quite either.
 

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

I’ll give a quote other early readers have highlighted, “But as often happens in life, the greatest joys and greatest struggles tend to be delivered to your doorstep in the same basket. And it’s up to you to dissect the two and embrace the good without letting the bad overcome.” The older I get, the more I realize that at any given time we have a handful of good and not so good things we can focus on and let sway our perspective on our day. It’s an act of self-discipline in my life, especially after realizing how true that is, to practice gratitude and cling close to the reminders of daily blessings.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• I picked out the title for this book because the main character was tasked with writing “the perfect rom-com” (and because it has great seo potential online, ha!), and my publisher happily agreed to the title. I love it. The publishing team did such a beautiful job on the cover with the title and I am so pleased!
• I definitely wrote this book a bit from my own life experience. I attended my first writer’s conference and walked into my own pitch session as an aspiring writer back in 2015, and after experiencing all the chaos and humorous emotion of 25 writers with great hopes and fears all in one room with a single 15-minute appointment sitting down to 25 literary agents and editors of their dreams who held the keys to their futures, I knew I wanted to write about it one day. And so the opening scene of The Perfect Rom-Com was born.
• I wrote from my own experiences also as a former ESL to adult immigrants and refugees. It was such an amazing experience and the people were all so wonderful that I really felt how Bryony would be desperate to save this organization that really was more like a home.

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

I think what first attracted my hero to the heroine (he falls first, which I love), is when she surprises him. She’s so unlike the people he’s used to and he’s a bit jaded. She’s his breath of fresh air and she helps him realize he can be a better person without her even knowing it.

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

I loved writing the moment when Jack tells Bryony (after two years of their best friend/coworker relationship) that he’s been dating her.

“Fine. That fact is, nothing changed. For me.” He puts his hands out. “And everything, it seems, has changed. For you.”

“What?”

“Bryony. How often do we go out to dinner?”

“I don’t know. Maybe . . . once a week.”

“Three. Four if I’m lucky.”

I feel a little zing in my chest with his understated word choices. The way he says “if I’m lucky” as though, well, this is something he hopes for. Waits for.

“How often do we see each other?”

I shrug, my anticipation rising. “Well, every other day or so, I suppose. But we’ve got a lot in common. Work, like on this tour.”

“Which I chose to go on with you.”

“Bowling.”

“which I signed up for, for you.”

“Mutual friends.”

“Your friends. Your friends whom I’ve made my friends.” He must see the electricity in my eyes and adds, “I’m actually far less needy than you and can exist happily with only two or three important people in my life. All of which proves my point.”

“Which is?”

“That for all intents and purposes, up to this point, we have been dating.”

“What? No sir.” My ears flame at the boldness of his suggestion. “I think I would know if I am dating someone. And I was dating someone.” I clarify with an indignant air, “I was dating Parker, and I was very loyal.”

“You were indeed. Maybe I should clarify then,” Jack says, and there’s a bemused grin on his face as he looks down at me.

He slows the moment down.

Lets silence rest between us, so that only the sound of humming HVAC systems and cicadas whisper around. He takes a step toward me. “You weren’t dating me. But I was dating you.”

Readers should read this book….

If you are looking for a sweet, nostalgic You’ve Got Mail style to your books, that’s what I write.

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

I actually have a children’s book releasing in July that’s part of our family story called Our Friendly Farmhouse!
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: 1 finished copy of THE PERFECT ROM-COM, US only winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: What do you think about rom-com murder mysteries? I just finished my next one (titled Without a Clue, to release in 2026) and I’m anxious to hear people’s thoughts!

 
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Excerpt from The Perfect Rom-Com:

Excerpted from The Perfect Rom-Com, by Melissa Ferguson. Thomas Nelson, 2025. Reprinted with permission.

“Everything,” Jack says. “Just . . . everything.”

Jack Sterling’s startlingly green eyes narrow to slits, and for quite some time he just stares at me.

I shrug. “I am trying to find something that is good about this book and coming up short.”

“Nothing. You, very literally, can think of nothing good about this book. Amelia Benedict’s book.”

I shrug again.

Then, just as the cowbell-ringing conference girl leans over us to whisper it’s time to “move along” (a person whom he ignores entirely), he smiles.

Jack really smiles, for the first time. I’ve finally given him something to smile about.

Then he shakes his head like I pulled a good one over on him. Reaches out his hand fully now and, this time, pretty much grabs my hand and shakes it. “And let me guess. You could do better.”

He doesn’t give me a chance to answer.

“Very . . . unique to meet you, Bryony of Florence. Nice even. You’re plucky. I like that. I hope you and your very large manuscript spend some quality time together deciding which limbs to cut off. Perhaps I’ll see you next year—if, heaven forbid, I am forced to return to this place.”

I give up.

If “spend a year chopping up your beloved manuscript and then on the horrible off chance I’m here you can possibly see me at another pitch session” is the best I’m going to get, it’s time to call it. I’m not cut out for Jack Sterling. Or this conference, for that matter. Or clearly writing.

A gust of wind blows through me. This must be the feeling people have when they finally accept their own inevitable death. The small, very small consolation prize here is the knowledge that I did my best. I fought to the end. And at the very, very least, I was honest. I will go out with my dignity.

I smile back at him as I take up my folder and rise. “I like all my words, Jack. I don’t think there will be any cutting. And as for your client’s romance—”

“Amelia Benedict’s?” he adds with the tiniest flicker of “You know, the Amelia Benedict?”

“The one,” I continue with a nod. “Objectively speaking here and polite niceties aside, I could do better. For starters, drop the third point of view of the event director’s dog—it’s not cute; it just comes off as weird. Give the captain a second-in-command position so he has someone actually in charge who has the authority to tell him to cut the girl. Cut out 70 percent of the ‘supers’ and replace them with meaningful descriptors, and delete all references to Extellilango. It’s not a real place. It doesn’t sound like a real place. And if you are going to create a fictional place, you should at least make it sound remotely plausible instead of a location you’d find in Star Wars. But really, if she’s going for somewhere on earth that’s warm with volcanoes, she should just go with Punalu‘u Beach or Mosteiros Beach in the Azores, or Reynisfjara, Iceland. Personally, I’d go with Reynisfjara.”

He’s looking at me with incredulity again, and I add, “I teach ESL to adult immigrants and refugees—as I tried to explain with the Why I Wrote My Book page. I’ve learned something about their homes in the past fifteen years.”

Oh dear. The adrenaline that has fueled me the last fifteen minutes is fizzling out to a jittery end, and I find myself anxious to get out of here in the next ten seconds. Because in about ten seconds, I have no doubt that wherever I am, I will be slumping down under the full weight of defeat. Probably crying. Like a wind-up toy crumpled over in the corner.

And I’d really rather not be a slumped-over, weeping toy crum- pled on the floor here.

His smile wilts a little as I let go of our shaking hands and pull back. “Anyway, take my card. Better yet, take a handful.” And like a claw machine game, I reach blindly in my bag and grab a handful of stragglers. Two or three business cards flutter to the table.

And with impending tears pounding at the doorsteps of my eyes, I give a tight smile and stride away as quickly as my heels can take me.

Just like all the other recruits here.

Who didn’t make it.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

She’s written dozens of smash-hit romance novels. Too bad no one knows it.

Aspiring author Bryony Page attends her first writers conference bursting with optimism and ready to sell her manuscript with long-shot dreams of raising awareness for The Bridge, her grandmother’s financially struggling organization where she teaches ESL full-time. But after a disastrous pitch session, she stumbles into correcting another author’s work in a last-ditch attempt to make a good impression with the agent. And she, as it turns out, is spot on.

No one is more surprised than Bryony when the agent offers her the opportunity to be a ghostwriter for Amelia Benedict, popular rom-com novelist. Bryony agrees on one condition: she’ll write books for this vain, demanding woman just as long as Jack Sterling, literary agent of the legendary Foundry Literary Agency, works to sell her own book too.

What nobody predicted, however, was that Bryony’s books would turn Amelia Benedict into the Amelia Benedict, household name and bestselling author with millions of copies sold around the world.

And just like that, the Foundry Agency can’t let her go.

But on a personal note, Jack is realizing he can’t either.

Don’t miss the delightful romantic comedy, The Perfect Rom-Com by Melissa Ferguson, a story of two seemingly mismatched hearts brought together by fate, proving that sometimes, the perfect love story is hidden in the pages of a well-loved book.
Book Links:  Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Melissa Ferguson is the bestselling author of titles including How to Plot a Payback, Meet Me in the Margins, and Famous for a Living. She lives in Tennessee with her husband and children in their growing farmhouse lifestyle and writes heartwarming romantic comedies that have been featured in such places as The Hollywood Reporter, Travel + Leisure, and The New York Post. Follow Melissa with over 800,000 other subscribers on Instagram and TikTok at @ourfriendlyfarmhouse or her newsletter: melissaferguson.com
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