Please give a warm welcome to Christine S. Feldman, who stops by Book Lovers Inc. to celebrate the release of Coming Home, her debut romance novel! Christine is a fellow friends-to-lovers fan, just like myself and here she talks about why she enjoys reading and writing this trope so much. Join us and if you answer Christine’s question at the end you could even win an Amazon gift card! 😉 Christine, take it away!

I love friends-to-lovers romances. They’re some of my favorites. That’s probably why I still sit down and watch movies like Some Kind of Wonderful or When Harry Met Sally whenever they come on T.V. even though I already have the dialogue memorized.

There’s something about the hero and heroine starting out as friends that seems to add a deeper layer to the romance, because they already have so much history together. And when they finally see each other in a new light…well, I get tingly all over. So I suppose it’s not too surprising that my debut novel involves former friends falling for each other.

In Coming Home, my nomadic heroine Callie has returned to her hometown to help her mother recuperate from an accident and finds herself getting reacquainted with the man she silently pined for as a teenager: Danny, her older brother’s best friend. Only this time around, he seems to finally be noticing her as a woman and not just as his best friend’s kid sister. There are issues in the past that complicate things, but that doesn’t mean they can’t enjoy a casual evening as friends, right?

At least, that’s the way it starts.

In the following excerpt, Callie is getting ready for an evening out with Danny and trying to convince herself that her feelings for Danny are purely platonic. Her subconscious, however, begs to differ:

Callie checked her watch. Six forty. He would be here soon.
She stood before the mirror in her childhood bedroom, wondering for the umpteenthtime if she ought to change. Maybe the shirt she had on was too low-cut, too clingy. Would Danny think she was trying to come on to him? Ridiculous, she told herself. She had worn this same shirt many times before and never worried about how she looked.

Then again, maybe it was too casual. But they were unlikely to go anywhere tonight that had a dress code, right? It was just an evening with two friends hanging out together.

She frowned at her reflection. The jeans had to go. Sliding the pants down her hips, she kicked them off and returned to her closet. She hadn’t brought much with her from New York, and now she wished she had taken the time to pack more thoroughly. She pulled a summery skirt off a hanger and stepped into it. It was cute, breezy. A good choice for a warm evening. And if it showed off a fair amount of leg, well, she could live with that.

Fine, she thought, checking herself out in the mirror from every angle. Good enough. She had to stop stressing over this.

She stepped into a pair of strappy heels and then paused, her eyes lighting on her hair. Maybe the bun was too formal, like she was trying too hard. She took the pins out and let her dark hair tumble down around her shoulders. That was better, wasn’t it? Much more laid-back. Satisfied, she grabbed her purse from off the bed, and left the room, closing the door behind her.

A moment later she came back into the room and hastily put her hair back up again.

Is there a woman out there who hasn’t experienced this kind of anxiety at one point or another when getting ready for a date? I know I have. So I can relate to Callie, and I can root for her because I’ve been in her shoes. I hope you will, too.

Are you a friends-to-lovers fan?

Coming Home by Christine S. Feldman

No woman ever really forgets her first love. Callie Sorenson is no exception. Hers was tall, tanned, and—as her older brother’s best friend—completely off limits.

Danny McCutcheon.

It’s a name that Callie hasn’t spoken in years, even if the man to whom it belongs has never really been all that far from her thoughts. Or her heart. But now a twist of fate will bring her back to the childhood home she left behind years ago, and to the hometown boy for whom she secretly longed.

When her mother takes a bad fall and breaks her hip, Callie leaves the bright lights of New York City to fly back west and help with the rehabilitation. It’s a tense homecoming due to a long time estrangement between mother and daughter, and it drives Callie to confront both a painful personal loss and her unanswered questions about the father who abandoned her when she was just a child.

It also brings her face to face with Danny again, and Callie quickly realizes that old feelings die hard.

But for Danny, it’s new feelings that are a problem. Callie is not the young girl he remembers but a woman now, and a very desirable one. They both have reasons to fight the growing attraction between them, but the temptation may just prove to be too much to resist, despite some very real risk to their hearts. The past casts a long shadow over the future, though, and Callie will have to overcome it or else face losing the one man who means the most to her.

Read an excerpt

Buy at:  Amazon |  Goodreads