Harlequin Giveaway: Win a Trip to New York City!

How would you like to win a trip to New York City? 

To celebrate the release of IF YOU ONLY KNEW 

by Kristan Higgins, Harlequin is giving away a 

3-night, 4-day trip for two to New York City, 

including air, hotel and $1,000 in spending money! 

Now that's an awesome giveaway and to make it

even more fun, check out this additional

offer from Kristan's September 6th blog:

"Don’t forget: my publisher is sending one of you and a friend to New York City! Four days and three nights at the beautiful Tribeca Grand Hotel (as featured in IF YOU ONLY KNEW!), travel and a thousand bucks to spend! Plus, if you want, I’ll pop down to the city and take you out to dinner. Make sure you’re on my mailing list! Enter on the home page of my website."  

How do you enter, you may ask? 

Just click on the link below and write, in 100 words or less, 

why you need to escape to New York City with a friend. 

Good luck!

Click to enter 

From New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Kristan Higgins comes her much-anticipated new novel, IF YOU ONLY KNEW, a perceptive and touching story—centered on two sisters and the bittersweet summer that changes their lives forever—that displays all the quirky humor and captivating romance that fans have come to expect from the acclaimed creator of the tremendously popular Blue Heron series. 

When wedding dress designer Jenny Tate finds herself holding the baby of her ex-husband and his seemingly perfect new wife, all she can see is the life she had always imagined for them—but one her ex never did…not with Jenny, anyway.

Wanting to distance herself from the constant reminder of what will never be, Jenny decides to swap Manhattan for a brand-new start in an old place…her hometown up the Hudson River where, at the very least, she’ll have the love and support of her sister Rachel’s solid family to embrace her. Rachel believes she has the idyllic life—stay-at-home mom to young triplets and married to the ideal husband…until the day she accidentally discovers that her “perfect” spouse has been sexting and having an affair with a coworker. Devastated and furious, Rachel finds herself frozen—unable to forgive her husband for ruining their perfect life, yet terrified of losing everything they’ve built. Her parents had a “perfect” marriage, after all, and Rachel won’t accept anything less for herself. But Jenny knows something Rachel doesn’t—a secret she’s kept to herself since childhood, but to reveal it might be the last thing the emotionally fragile Rachel needs.

Amid all the emotional pain and drama, with their worlds upended by revelations of lustful affairs and marital indifference, both Jenny and Rachel must rely on each other as they try to make sense of their screwed-up lives. But for any chance at future happiness, they must first come to terms with the truth behind not only their marriages, but themselves, as well.

IF YOU ONLY KNEW 

KRISTAN HIGGINS 

$14.95 U.S./$17.95 CAN. ISBN-13: 978-0-373-78497-4

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author and two-time winner of the Romance Writers of America RITA® Award, Kristan lives with her family in a small Connecticut town that boasts a wonderful library, a great agricultural fair, a really good ice-cream stand and not much else. She is the mother of two lovely kids and the wife of a brave firefighter who is also (perhaps more important) a fantastic cook. Previously a copywriter, Kristan began writing fiction when her children graced her life with simultaneous afternoon naps. Writing, she found, was infinitely more satisfying than folding laundry, and so began her first novel. Kristan holds a BA in English from the College of the Holy Cross, which means she can identify dangling participles, quote many great novels and play a mean game of Scrabble. Kristan is an award-winning baker, devoted fan of the New York Yankees and an avid reader. She and her crew spend as much time as possible at the family home on Cape Cod, where they shiver in the Atlantic, ride bikes, swat horseflies and don’t catch any fish.

Kristan is an award-winning baker, devoted fan of the New York Yankees and an avid reader. She and her crew spend as much time as possible at the family home on Cape Cod, where they shiver in the Atlantic, ride bikes, swat horseflies and don’t catch any fish.

Click here to visit Kristan Higgins' website.

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Click here to read an excerpt from IF YOU ONLY KNEW.

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Review - - If You Only Knew

If You Only Knew

By Kristan Higgins

Publisher: Harlequin HQN

Release Date: August 25, 2015

Eighteen months after her divorce from Dr. Owen Takahashi, a plastic surgeon with a social conscience, Jenny Tate is leaving Manhattan where she has enjoyed considerable success as a designer of wedding dresses to return to her hometown, Cambry-on-Hudson. If she had any doubts that her decision to open her own shop where she planned to sell custom-designed wedding gowns was the right choice, they are erased when a baby shower for Owen’s new wife ends with Jenny helping to deliver their baby in the apartment that Jenny once shared with Owen. She needs some distance from the Takahashi family and her role as best friend to her ex and Ana-Sofia, his perfect Peruvian mate. Her shop, Bliss, a great new apartment, and the presence of her sister and nieces in Cambry-on-Hudson are reasons enough to be excited about the move.

Unlike her sister, Rachel Carver’s ambitions never centered on her career, although she enjoyed her work as a graphic designer at a company that made computer games for kids. But Rachel’s dream was always to have a husband, a home, and children. It took some time and in vitro fertilization before the babies came, but now Adam and Rachel have triplet daughters whom they both adore. But life with three preschoolers is demanding and exhausting, so exhausting that Rachel even fell asleep once during sex. Still, she is happy with her life and in love with her husband. When she discovers a sexually explicit photo on her husband’s phone, she buries her questions and accepts his explanation. When she learns later that Adam is engaged in an affair with a colleague, she is hurt and angry.

When a penitent Adam begs for a second chance, Rachel, after considering their years together and Adam’s strengths as a father and provider, agrees to reconcile. But trust once broken is not so easily restored, and Adam’s promises prove to have little substance. While Rachel is examining her choices, uncertain about what is best for her and her children, Jenny is finding joy in a relationship with her sometimes surly, always studly, and definitely mysterious landlord, Leo Killian. But Leo has a full load of baggage, and he is far from ready for the kind of commitment Jenny wants. As both sisters deal with the emotional stress of conflicted relationships and weigh the costs of their choices, they offer one another love and support, emotional and practical.  

In this book, Higgins departs from her usual contemporary romances to give her readers a women’s fiction tale that is as much about the personal journeys of Jenny and Rachel and the bond of sisterhood that unites them as it is about their relationships with the men in their lives. The change in genres does not mean that the qualities Higgins fans love in her books are missing. There is humor here, some great dialog, mother issues and family secrets, and, of course, a loveable dog, but there is also heartbreak, anxiety, and real poignancy.

Quirky Jenny is the kind of character I expect a Higgins heroine to be, and I liked her from the beginning, even when her behavior made me shake my head. I found Rachel less likeable, but to be honest, this may well have been because her story was too close to some family matters about which I have strong opinions. Leo is wounded and in hiding from himself and from life. I found him sympathetic and interesting. Even Adam is more than a one-dimensional jerk, and several other secondary characters add texture and complexity to the story.

If you like Kristan Higgins and women’s fiction, I think you will find this novel well worth reading. Higgins provides a layered treatment of marriage, infidelity, and divorce that includes a look, sometimes probing and sometimes glancing, at half a dozen different relationships. Do be warned, however, that the ending is not the rosy-epilogue, fairy tale finish that some romance readers demand.  I won’t be surprised if Higgins joins authors like Robyn Carr and Susan Mallery in producing a women’s fiction novel periodically along with her contemporary romances. She has proven she has the skills to do it.  With that said, I admit that I will never be as excited about a woman’s fiction novel as I am about the next Blue Heron book that will be published in January 2016. (Connor’s story—yay!)

~Janga