Blog Tour ~ Extract and Giveaway | Who's That Girl ~ Mhairi McFarlane

I'm delighted to be kicking of the blog tour to celebrate the paperback release of Mhairi McFarlane's fabulous novel, Who's That Girl?

And what better way to start a blog tour than by giving you a chance to win your own copy!

Below I have all the details of the book for you and the gorgeous new paperback cover, plus a little extract teaser and then finally the giveaway details - so please ensure you read right to the end!

Who's That Girl?

Mhairi McFarlane

HarperCollins

Hardback April 2016

Paperback February 2017

Hardback | Paperback Pre-Order | Kindle

She kissed the groom. She’s not the bride…

Edie thought she’d found The One…until he told her he was marrying someone else. And on the day of his wedding, when he kisses her, life really does go pear-shaped…

Labelled as a home-wrecker and office outcast, when her boss offers her the chance to get out of town Edie jumps at it, even though moving back in with her eccentric father and prickly sister isn’t exactly the escape she needs.

When her work throws her into the path of rising star and heartthrob Elliot, Edie is expecting a highly strung diva. But as their unexpected friendship develops, Elliot isn’t the only one in the spotlight…

Who’s that girl? Edie is ready to find out.

Extract

Life through a phone is a lie. Edie imagined the process like

a diagram from physics lessons, the one on that Pink Floyd

album cover – a beam of white light refracted in a prism,

splintering and fanning out as a rainbow.

I mean, how much artifice, she wondered, was crammed

into this one appealing photograph? She gazed at its seductive

fictions in the slightly greasy, warm slab of screen in her palm

as she queued at the hotel bar.

Activity in the room whirled around her, messy unkempt

sweaty reality, soundtracked by The Supremes ‘Where Did

Our Love Go?’ In this still life, everything was forever image

managed and perfect.

Untruth number one: she and Louis looked like they adored

each other’s company. In order to squeeze into the frame, Edie

had rested her head against his shoulder. She was coquettish,

wearing a mysterious smile. He was doing the self-satisfied,

slightly 007 quirk of the lip that conveyed hey life is great, no

big deal. It really wasn’t a big deal.

They’d spent five hours as platonic plus ones – the wedding planner had demanded pairs, like Noah’s Ark – and now they

were grating on each other, in heat and booze and wedding

clothes with waistbands that had got tighter and tighter, as if

inflating a blood pressure cuff.

Edie’s heels had, like those high enough for special occa-

sions, moved from ‘wobbly and pinchy, but borderline tolerable’

to stabbing at her viciously like some mythic pain where she’d

given up her mermaid tail for size 4s and the love of a prince.

Falsehood number two, the composition. Twinkling-happy

party girl Edie, looking up through roadsweeper-brush-sized

false lashes. You could glimpse the top half of her red dress,

with nicely hoisted pale bosom, stomach carefully held in.

Louis’s cheekbones were even more ‘killer in a Bret Easton

Ellis’ sharp than usual, chin angled downwards.

This was because they’d held the lens at arm’s length above

their heads and discarded five less flattering images, bartering

over who liked which one. Edie had eye bags, Louis objected

he looked gaunt, the expressions were slightly too studied,

the shadows had not fallen in their favour. OK, another, another!

Pose, click, flash. Half a dozen was the charm: they both looked

good, but not too much like they’d tried to look good.

(‘Why does everyone do that expression now, like you’re

sucking on a sour plum?’ Edie’s dad asked, last time she was

home. ‘To make yourself look thin and pouty, I suppose. But

you don’t look like that face you pull, in real life. How

strange.’)

Louis, an Instagram professional and very sour plum, fiddled

with the brightness and contrast settings. ‘Now to filter

ourselves to fuck.’

He selected ‘Amaro’, bathing them in a fairytale cloud of

lemonade fog. Complexions were perfected. The mood was

filmic and dreamy, you’d think it captured a perfect moment.

You had to (not) be there.

And then there was the caption. The biggest deception of

all. Louis tapped it out and hit ‘post.’ ‘Congratulations Jack &

Charlotte! Amazing day! So happy for you guys <3 #perfectcouple

living their #bestlife.’

This was mostly for the benefit of the rest of the Ad Hoc

agency, who’d all found elegant excuses not to travel from

London to Harrogate. Nothing tested popularity like several

hundred miles of motorway.

Like after admiring Like rolled in. ‘Sigh. You two are another

#perfectcouple!’ ‘Shame I’m a bender!’ Louis replied. That’d

be the least of our problems, Edie thought. They’d all done the

arithmetic with Louis, that if he slagged off everyone else to

you, he slagged you off, too.

And of course, Louis had not stopped grousing under his

breath about the ‘amazing’ wedding. Edie thought criticising

someone’s big day was like making fun of the way they ate,

or the size of their ankles. Good people instinctively under-

stood it was not fair game.

I really thought Charlotte would go for something more clean,

minimal. Like Carolyn Bessette marrying JFK Jnr. The crystal beading

on that gown’s a bit Pronuptia, isn’t it? Even women with taste

seems to lose the plot and go Disney disaster in a bridal salon. I

am so over those rose bouquets with pearl studs and white ribbon

round the stems, like a bandaged stump! Once a WAG has done

something, it is DONE. And sorry, but I find a tanned bride vulgar.

Ugh, two sips of that Buck’s Fizz and it was into a plant pot. I

can’t bear orange juice used to hide cheap champagne. Look at the

DJ, he’s about fifty in a blouson leather jacket, where did he get that

from, 1983? He looks like he should be on Top Gear. It’ll be

rocking out to Kings Of Leon’s ‘Sex On Fire’ and Toni Braxton

for the erection section. Why can’t weddings be more MODERN?

Giveaway

The lovely team at HarperCollins have kindly offered one reader of Lozza's Book Corner a sparkly new paperback version of Who's That Girl.

All you have to do is enter on the link below.

I shall leave the giveaway open until the end of the blog tour (schedule below - don't forget to check out the other fab bloggers!) and then pick one winner at random.

UK entries only

The winner will be announced via Twitter and Email and will have 3 working day's to respond.

If there is no reply, then a new winner will be picked.

Good Luck!

a Rafflecopter giveaway 

You Had Me At Hello by Mhairi McFarlane

Rachel and Ben. Ben and Rachel.

It was them against the world. Until it all fell apart.

It's been a decade since they last spoke, but when Rachel bumps into Ben one rainy day, the years melt away.

They'd been partners in crime and the best of friends. But it's clear life has moved on.

Ben is married. Rachel is not.

Yet in that split second, Rachel feels the old friendship return. And along with it, the broken heart she's never been able to mend.

"Very witty and funny... A total gem" ~ Marian Keyes

I'd been sent this book to read from my friend who raved about how good a read it was, and having then looked up a few reviews it was clear I had to make You Had Me At Hello my next review.

If I'm totally honest I found this a little slow to get into, however I think that is just because I'm not a great fan of novels that jump from present to past and back to present again and the first few chapters of You Had Me At Hello did this quite considerably. Once I'd got past that and in to the story it's an absolute delight to read.

Rachel, a court room reporter, is in a relationship with Rhys, in fact they are engaged, yet what Rachel wants for her wedding isnt what Rhys wants, and there doesn't seem to be any compromise. This results in Rachel ending her 13 year old relationship.

She relys heavily on her three best friends from her Uni days.. Mindy, Caroline and Ivor.

The out of the blue, Caroline announces that she saw Ben at the library ~ Ben was Rachel's best friend at uni who disappeared from her life after graduation ~ cue stalker Rachel who happens to "Bump" into him.

Their old friendship returns with banter and laughter as if they had never been apart! 

As the novel unfolds we learn that ten years prior to the pair running in to each other, they had a one night stand with Ben declaring is love for Rachel after three years of being best mates. Unfortunately it doesn't end with a happy ever after as Ben wants to go travelling whilst Rachel has a post grad placement. When Rhys turns up at their grad ball, Ben takes this as a sign that Rachel has made her mind up.

No one ever speaks of their one night again.

That is until, Rachel goes on a date with Simon, a friend of Olivia who happens to be Mrs Ben!

Needless to say it doesn't work out as all she can think about is Ben, and then when the four of them attend the same wedding, Simon stirs trouble by getting Olivia to confront Rachel about sleeping with Ben.

When Ben and Rachel finally talk things through and she reveals her true feelings, Ben pretty much tells her he's going to remain loyal to his wife, that they are moving away from Manchester and requests she doesn't sought him out again.

I genuinely thought at this point that that was it... Rachel and Ben were no longer, not that they were... But as with most chic lits, you always root for the main characters to be as one.

Before the ending the story focuses on Rachel trying to move on with life. And even though this ultimately is a love story, you will have to read it now to see how they end up, there is also a story of great friendships.

Caroline, Mindy and Ivor each help Rachel in her life's troubles in their own quirky ways, and each are there for each other when Caroline discovers her husband is having an affair and through a massive argument between Mindy and Ivor which upsets the groups dynamics.

You Had Me At Hello is brilliantly written. Once I'd got past the back and forth at the beginning of the book I was gripped with Rachel and Ben's story.... I real 'will they, won't they' scenario with lots of added humour and one liners!