Spotlight & Giveaway: Where You’re Planted by Melanie Sweeney

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Melanie Sweeney to HJ!

Hi Melanie and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Where You’re Planted!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

When a hurricane damages her public library, children’s librarian and single mom, Tansy, must attempt to save it from permanent closure by moving it into a small shed in the adjacent county botanic gardens. There, she immediately butts heads with Jack, the grumpy park director, who also happens to be the jerk who rescued her and her daughter – and scolded her – during the storm.
 

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

“What we made in all this, you and me, is just as rare and significant as a thousand-year flood. It’s once in a lifetime. In more than a lifetime.”

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• This book was loosely inspired by my own first-hand experience during Hurricane Harvey in 2017. That storm severely damaged our local library, and our librarians relocated it to a shed in the adjacent botanic gardens until the building was finally renovated seven years later. I made up all the characters and the romance, but I wrote the book as an homage to those librarians.
• I knew nothing about gardening before I wrote this book! I can’t keep a plant alive to save my own life. But I did a lot of research and toured the botanic gardens the book’s setting was based on, and I learned a lot.

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

Because Jack and Tansy are truly at odds for a good stretch when the book starts, their initial attraction is only physical – and somewhat against their will! But once they let their guard down, they develop professional respect for each other first, bonding over their similar missions to provide needed services and safe spaces for their community. Tansy is a hyper-independent single mom, and Jack’s heart has been guarded for many years, so it’s a slow burn that unfolds in part around her daughter, who has struggled since the hurricane, and the fact that she feels safe with him.

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

The first time Tansy and Jack kiss comes on the heels of him having a panic attack, which she helps him breathe through. This scene was so exciting to write because it’s more than halfway through the book, and there’s finally this huge break in the sexual tension between them while everything (emotions, a storm outside) is heightened. I was so ready for them to finally get that moment, and it definitely made me blush! And then laugh because, immediately afterward, Tansy worries she’s taken advantage of him. I love this moment when Jack sets her straight about his attraction to her:

“I lured you into a sense of—”
“A sense of what?”
She stammered and finally spit out, “Misplaced arousal.”
He laughed because arousal was so clinical and didn’t come anywhere close to describing the genuine heat still thrumming in his veins. “Well, hell, Tansy, you’ve been luring me into something for fucking weeks. It wasn’t the damn box breathing.”
“What are you talking about I’ve lured you for weeks?”
“With your combative little attitude and the flimsy ties on those skirts. I mean, do you own anything with a zipper, or is it all just fabric haphazardly draped around you? That yoga tank top? This?” He gestured accusingly toward where today’s dress tied around the back of her neck, exposing her shoulders and the upper half of her back. “You have any idea how many times I’ve wanted to pull those ties and watch you unravel? My God, Tansy.”

Readers should read this book….

If they love romance that feels extraordinary and rare but still realistic. These are flawed characters with real-world problems. They don’t fall in love by magic but through working alongside each other. I personally love a romance that feels accessible to me as a reader, like epic love isn’t only for fictional people but something we can all have with a little bit of luck and whole lot of bravery, vulnerability, and work.

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

What are you currently working on? What are your up-coming releases?
I’m not under contract for my next book yet, but what I’m working on right now has my usual signature of flawed characters grounded in realistic conflict with plenty of angst, humor, and steam.
 
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A finished copy of WHERE YOU’RE PLANTED by Melanie Sweeney 

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Which of your belongings would you save in a hurricane?

 
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Excerpt from Where You’re Planted:

In this excerpt, Jack helps Tansy install her kitchen cabinets:

“Shut up and make yourself useful, Jack.”
He slipped three screws between his lips and mumbled around them, “Yes, ma’am.” Then he effortlessly hoisted up the cabinet onto the ledger, grabbed the drill, and had the whole thing secured to the wall in under thirty seconds.
She was not prepared for his casual efficiency or the way his broad back flexed under his shirt. And now that she could breathe a little more freely after getting some of the weight off her chest, she wanted to find out how efficient Jack could be with his hands on her.
He moved on to the next cabinet, measuring and predrilling holes, lifting it into place, checking that it was flush with both the first cabinet and the wall. Tansy was determined to be useful in her own project, but that mostly amounted to her bracing an extra hand under the cabinets while he did everything else – clamping the units together, fitting shims behind them where the wall bowed, and drilling in the screws.
He muttered that she should sit, get off her sore ankle, but quickly realized she wasn’t going to listen to that nonsense. Still, even though this was surely a two-person job, she found herself almost exclusively in Jack’s way. He had to keep nudging her over with a hand at her hip and reaching around her, caging her body between his own and the cabinets, the delicious smell and heat of him enveloping her.
If he knew the effect his closeness was having, he wasn’t smug about it, and his focus never strayed from his task, even as it became harder for her not to put her hands on his shoulders just to feel them flex.
Increasingly, she felt like she’d stumbled into a home renovation porno, and the long stretch as they worked in silence dulled her irritation and leveled off her wine buzz, leaving her relaxed. Pliable. She let her fingers linger on his every time she passed him something and openly stared when he wasn’t looking and then even when he was. She was mesmerized by his throat, right there at her eyeline, the bob of his Adam’s apple when he swallowed, the sound of it in the too-quiet space. They were inches apart, yet no matter how her needy gaze bored into him, silently willing him to look at her, he maintained his focus straight over the top of her head.
Until she licked her lips, and his gaze stuttered down, snagged by the movement and probably by the unrestrained lust pooling in her eyes. His next screw slipped from his grasp. He huffed a tiny, frustrated breath – finally a crack in his restraint that told her she wasn’t alone in her lust haze.
She squeezed down between his solid, strong body and the cabinet he was bracing behind her. Her face dropped a breath from his belt buckle as she reached between his boots for the screw. Then she came back up and waited for him to meet her eyes, her heart thrumming wildly in her ears. She held the screw to his lips, and after a long, agonizing moment, they parted, and he dipped to take it and her fingertips into the warm heat of his mouth. His eyes were so dark and full of fire at the same time, pinning her there as he swiped his tongue against her thumb and then caught the screw between his teeth. He pulled back to rasp, “Tansy.”
“Hmm?”
He had one hand braced on the cabinet above her head, the drill in the other hand, and the screw still dancing between his lips when he spoke. “Could you not make me drop this cabinet on you?”
She wanted to kiss the screw right out of his mouth. Instead, she slid back a step and braced her shoulder blades against the cabinet, her face and neck hot.
He tore his eyes from hers to drill the screw into place and then dug two more from his pocket to finish securing it.
Finally, he turned her by her shoulders, walked her back against the opposite kitchen wall, and said, “Now put your hands on me.”

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

From the author of the “phenomenal achievement” (Kirkus) Take Me Home, a children’s librarian must temporarily move her public library into a shed in the county botanic gardens, where her archnemesis is the assistant director.

Single mom Tansy Perkins only has room in her life for her daughter and her library. And maybe the next book to add to her collection. But after a catastrophic hurricane severely damages her library, she’s forced to temporarily move her branch into the adjacent county botanic gardens, where Jack Reid—the world’s grouchiest gardener who rescued her and her daughter from the flood—happens to be the assistant director.

Jack has always preferred plants over people, having built a strong track record of avoiding relationships ever since his divorce six years ago. So, Tansy and her quirky band of bookish colleagues’ encroachment into his carefully-kept territory is a little more than irksome, especially when it means sharing his already-scarce resources.

When Jack and Tansy are tasked with working together on the spring festival, they have no choice but to call a truce. And soon their newfound professional partnership gives way to a deep intimacy that they’ve both been silently craving. But Tansy has lost too much to risk her heart, and Jack has sworn off real love. When an opportunity arises for funding that both the library and gardens need, will their loyalties lie with the futures they’d always planned for, or the new spark they’ve found with each other?
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Meet the Author:

Melanie Sweeney is the author of the USA Today bestseller, Take Me Home, and the forthcoming romance, Where You’re Planted. She writes realistic and uplifting contemporary romance about ordinary people finding extraordinary love. Melanie lives near Houston with her husband, three kids, and too many cats. When she’s not writing, she’s ice skating, embroidering, or learning old One Direction songs on her ukulele.
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