Spotlight & Giveaway: To Have and To Heist by Sara Desai

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Sara Desai to HJ!

Hi Sara and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, To Have and To Heist!

 
Hi HJ! Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here!
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

To Have and To Heist is a romcom caper about Simi whose life is on a downhill slide. She is drowning in student debt, working at a dead end job, and she has had to move back in with her parents who are desperate to see her married. And to top it off her best friend has just been accused of stealing a multi-million dollar necklace. Simi meets charming, mysterious Jack who offers to help her clear her friend’s name if she can help him with a little heist. Simi puts together a crew of misfits who are desperate for cash and everything goes wrong as they try to steal the necklace from a mafia boss’s mansion disguised as wedding planners.
 

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

“Villainy might pay, but it can’t buy a sense of fashion.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• Fun Fact #1: I watched A LOT of heist movies to research the book: Oceans 11, 12, 13, and 8, Tower Heist, The Thomas Crowne Affair, The Italian Job, Baby Driver, The Usual Suspects, A Fish Called Wanda, The Art of the Steal, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Fast Five, Masterminds, Reservoir Dogs, The Ladykillers, Logan Lucky…
• Fun Fact #2: I used the Mission: Impossible (1996) cable drop scene as inspiration for a scene in the book in which Rose, our sex-positive octogenarian, does a similar drop to rescue the crew.
• Fun Fact #3: My daughter worked in a candy store while I was writing the book so I included it in the story along with my favorite candy from her store: peach penguins!

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

Jack is first attracted to Simi because he sees her desperately trying to save her friend who is trapped on the third floor of a museum and she refuses to give up despite the impossible odds. Simi is first attracted to Jack because he saves her when he could have easily run away and entertains her with his quirky personality.

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

The coffee scene had me laughing out loud. Jack, our hero, has been kidnapped and tied up by the mysterious Mr. X but he doesn’t lose his sense of humor:

Mr. X sips coffee from a cup with the name “Susan” scrawled across it in black pen. He’s never told you his real name, and you are excited at the little glimpse into his true self. He doesn’t look like a ‘Susan’ to you, but you don’t like to judge.
“How’s that trenta double-blended extra-hot mocha…” You read off the cup. “Twelve pumps sugar-free pumpkin spice, Twelve pumps sugar-free hazelnut, 12 pumps sugar-free caramel, 12 pumps sugar-free vanilla, five pumps toffee nut, two heaping scoops of matcha, a splash of soy, coffee to the star on the siren’s head, two raw sugars, extra whip, a sprinkle of cinnamon, a drizzle of caramel, and…just move your thumb so I can read the rest…”
“No foam,” he offers.
“I’ll bet that’s what all the girls say.”
Mr. X isn’t amused. “This is entirely unnecessary.”
“I must agree. Why do you need fifty-three pumps when it only takes one if you do it right? I’ll bet the girls say that, too.”

Readers should read this book….

The Vibrant Years by Sonali Dev. Beautiful heart-warming story with richly drawn characters.

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

I’m currently working on the sequel to TO HAVE AND TO HEIST. It will be my next release!
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: One copy of TO HAVE AND TO HEIST for a U.S. only winner.

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Would you pull off a heist if it was for a good reason?

 
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Excerpt from To Have and To Heist:

“Oh my God! Chloe!” I held a mirror over the mouth of the naked octogenarian on the floor to see if he was breathing. People who need people are adept at multitasking, even if it involves getting emotional support from your bestie while trying to revive one of your landlady’s many “gentleman callers.” Not that I begrudged eighty-year-old Rose her extracurricular activities. She’d kindly rented me her basement suite at a reduced rent in exchange for helping with chores and keeping her company on her rare evenings in. Someone in the house had to be getting some good stuff, and it wasn’t me.

“What’s wrong?” Chloe’s soothing voice crackled over my phone speaker. I was due for a phone upgrade, but between rent, loan payments, therapy, and living expenses, even my entry-level office salary plus a side gig in a candy store didn’t pay enough to indulge.

“I think I killed someone.”

Chloe didn’t miss a beat. “I’ll grab some bleach and be right over.”

“You’ll be late for work.”

“It’s an IT help desk, babe. We spend most of the day telling people to turn the computer off and on again. I can easily get someone to cover for me.”

Chloe is my ride-or-die. No questions. No judgment. Everyone should have a friend whose first thought is to run for the bleach when you call to tell her you might have killed someone.

“Hurry. He’s barely breathing.” I cleaned the mirror and held it over his mouth again, making a mental note to thank my parents for sending me to a first aid course in twelfth grade. They thought they were paving my way to med school. Instead, the course just confirmed that no one should put their life in my hands.

“I’d better bring a tarp, too,” Chloe said.

“There’s no blood.”

“You might still need the tarp in case he loses control of his bowels.”

“Crap.”

“Exactly. I’ve been reading a lot of romantic suspense books,” she said. “I know everything about dead bodies.”

“I don’t think he’s that dead.” I held the dude’s wrist in my hand. “I feel a pulse. I’m not sure if it’s his or mine. My heart is pounding so hard, I can’t tell.”

“Is he only mostly dead? Like in The Princess Bride?”

Chloe loves romance. We watch The Princess Bride every year on her birthday and rom-coms when it’s her turn to choose on movie nights. Honestly, all that mushy stuff is like nails on a chalkboard to me, but this is Chloe. In seventh grade, she took the fall when I brought a set of steak knives to school for my Edward Scissorhands Halloween costume, and in eleventh grade she sneaked me in the classroom window when I overslept and almost missed our final calculus exam. There isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for her.

“Is there a degree of deadness that involves breathing?” I asked.

“You were the one who was supposed to become a doctor.”

I heard cupboards slam, keys rattle on the counter, the click of a lock. Chloe was on her way. She was nothing if not efficient.

“If I’d become a doctor, I wouldn’t be living in a low-rent basement suite and drowning in debt.” I pressed an ear to the dude’s chest, listening for a heartbeat.

“You would have had even more debt,” she said over the rapid thud of footsteps and the hum of traffic. A single mom working three jobs to make ends meet, Chloe couldn’t afford a car, so she took public transport to get around.

“Yes, but I would also have had the kind of job that would enable me to pay it off before I hit middle age.”

“Almost at the bus stop.” Chloe huffed into the phone.

I gave myself a mental pat on the back for choosing to stay in our hometown of Evanston, Illinois, when I finally moved out of my parents’ house. I had briefly considered finding a place in Downtown Chicago, but rents were high, and I spent most of my free time with Chloe and her daughter, Olivia, so putting almost fourteen miles between us didn’t make sense.

“The paramedics are here,” Rose called out from the hallway. She’d put on a robe after I called the ambulance, a small mercy for which I was undyingly grateful. I wasn’t judging her. I just didn’t need a visual of what the future held in store for me fifty years from now.

“Gotta go, babe,” I said to Chloe. “Rose needs me. I’ll see you soon.”

A gorgeous blond paramedic with green eyes and a face so chiseled it could cut glass gestured me to the side while his two equally hot companions crouched down to check out the almost naked dude on the floor-I’d thrown a tea towel over his hips for the sake of modesty.

“What happened?” he asked.

“My basement suite flooded this morning.” I smoothed down my hair, acutely conscious that I’d come upstairs with a bad case of bedhead and wearing only PJ shorts and a ratty Chicago Bears sweatshirt. “I woke up with my stuff floating past my bed, so I came upstairs to tell Rose. She gave me keys to her place when I moved in so I could check in on her from time to time.”

He smiled, which I took as a good sign. Maybe he liked curvy South Asian girls with long, matted dark brown hair and a little extra lip fuzz because they hadn’t had time for the morning groom. Or maybe he was just a Bears fan.

“Unfortunately, I walked in on her and her boyfriend doing it on the couch.” The visual had been bad enough, but the cost of the extra therapy I’d need to undo the trauma of what I’d seen was beyond imagining.

“Doing what?” he asked.

“You know . . .”

Respect was the guiding principle of my family. Respect for parents. Respect for aunties. Respect for elders. With respect drilled into me from birth, I couldn’t bring myself to use the S word when it came to describing the intimate relations of two seniors. But what word could I use? Why did the paramedic have to be so sexy? Did he wear contacts or were his eyes really that vivid green? Was that a medical device in his pocket? I quickly shut down the runaway train of random thought process that was the bane of my existence.

“Boning.” The word dropped from my lips before I could catch it.

His finger froze on the tablet he was using to record my information. “Boning?”

“Okay. Fine. Sex,” I said quickly. “They were having sex. On the couch. Naked. Curtain ties were involved. And a curtain rod. I also saw a can of whipped cream, which I should really put back in the fridge so it doesn’t spoil.” I leaned in close, lowered my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I didn’t know that position was possible after the age of forty. The dude really knew his stuff. I guess that makes sense if you’ve been doing it for eighty-plus years minus maybe fifteen or so. Of course, I can only guess when he lost his virginity. I didn’t have sex for the first time until I was twenty.”

His eyes glazed over, a telltale sign that I’d overshared.

“Name?” he asked.

“Simi Chopra. Currently single.”

“I meant his name.”

I bit back a grimace. Why couldn’t he have been plain or even average? I could never speak in coherent sentences when a dude was too good-looking. “To be honest, she has so many boyfriends, I can’t keep track of their names. She usually goes for younger men-fifties to seventies and occasionally forties if they’re having an early midlife crisis. She said the octo-and nonagenarians usually have performance issues-although from what I saw, this dude is an exception. I kinda liked the last guy she was seeing. He runs the Lincoln Park 10K Run for the Zoo every year. He’s super fit and has a six-pack, although I did wonder if it might just be his ribs poking out because he only eats raw, especially grass. She liked his stamina, but she got annoyed at meal times because he kept running out to the backyard to graze.”

“Would anyone like tea?” Rose had gone to change when the paramedics arrived and was now wearing a tropical print dress with a giant pink belt cinched around her waist and a pair of matching heels. Rose was in theater and still performed onstage. She loved loud colors and bold prints because they matched her personality.

“Maybe not the best time,” I called out. “What’s this one’s name?”

“Stan,” she said. “I don’t know that much about him. I met him in a bar last week after a show and we’ve been hitting the mattress hard ever since. He’s eighty-eight with the stamina of a man in his fifties. It was nice being with someone mature for a change.”

The paramedic coughed, choked before asking, “How did he wind up on the floor?”

“I walked in and scared him,” I said. “Rose was on the couch. Sort of. She saw me and screamed. Stan jumped off her. Well, it was sort of a slow push away followed by a concomitant drop elsewhere. Not that I was looking, but your eyes have to go somewhere, and mine went there, and then I immediately wished they could be somewhere else.”

“I’m not here to judge,” he said, shaking his head in a way that belied his words.

I could see my chances of getting laid in the back of his ambulance were quickly disappearing. “He lost his balance trying to get up,” I continued. “Then he fell and hit his head on the coffee table. I called 911 and checked to make sure he was breathing with a makeup mirror.” I hesitated, waiting for an acknowledgment of my skill. None was forthcoming.

A rush of air cooled my heated cheeks before I heard the back door slam.

“I’m here,” Chloe called out. “I’ve got bleach and rubber gloves. The tarp’s in the car. Where’s the body? We could probably dump him in the river.” She froze behind the island counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. “You’re not alone.”

“Hello, darling.” Rose gave her a little wave. “I’m afraid I can’t offer you any tea. We’re on our way to the hospital.”

“That’s Chloe,” I told the paramedic. “She came to help.”

“Good thing we got here in time.” He jotted something down on his tablet.

Excerpted from To Have and to Heist by Sara Desai Copyright © 2023 by Sara Desai. Excerpted by permission of Berkley. All rights reserved.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

To exonerate her best friend, one woman must mastermind a jewelry heist during the wedding of the season in this hilarious romantic-comedy caper.

Simi Chopra is on a bad-luck streak. She’s lost yet another job, her student loan debt won’t stop growing, her basement apartment is a certifiable flood zone, and now her best friend has been accused of stealing a multimillion-dollar diamond necklace. To put it lightly, she’s desperate for a break—that’s right when Jack waltzes out of the bushes and into her life.

Jack is just as charming as he is mysterious. When he offers to help her find the missing necklace and steal it back, Simi jumps at the chance to clear her friend’s name and collect the substantial reward. But every good heist needs a crew. All she needs to do is transform a ragtag group of strangers into an elite heist crew, infiltrate a high-society wedding and steal the necklace from a dangerous criminal before the happy couple say “I do”. Meanwhile the bride is keeping secrets, a detective with a slow-burn smile keeps showing up at her door, and the ultimate robbery might not be the wedding con, but the way Jack is stealing her heart.
Book Links:  Amazon | B&N |
 
 

Meet the Author:

Sara Desai has been a lawyer, radio DJ, marathon runner, historian, bouncer, and librarian. She lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, kids, and an assortment of forest creatures who think they are pets. Sara writes sexy romantic comedy and contemporary romance with a multicultural twist. When not laughing at her own jokes, Sara can be found eating nachos.
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