Ten Trends to Seduce Your Best Friend by Penny Reid-Review & Excerpt Tour
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ABOUT THE BOOK: April 12, 2022.
Winnifred Gobaldi and Byron Visser are not best friends.
Yes, they’ve known each other for years, but they’re not even friendly. Winnie considers them more like casual, distant acquaintances who find each other barely tolerable, especially when he’s being condescending (which is all the time).
The truth is, they have nothing in common. She’s a public school science teacher with stars in her eyes, and he’s a pretentious, joyless double PhD turned world-famous bestselling fiction author. She loves sharing her passion for promulgating women in STEM careers and building community via social media, and he eschews all socialization, virtual or otherwise. She’s looking for a side hustle to help pay down a mountain of student debt, and his financial portfolio is the stuff of fiduciary wet dreams. So why are they faking a #bestfriend relationship for millions of online spectators?
When a simple case of tit-for-tat trends between nonfriends leads to a wholly unexpected kind of pretend, nothing is simple. Sometimes, it takes a public audience to reveal the truth of private feelings, and rarely—very rarely—you should believe what you see online.
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REVIEW:TEN TRENDS TO SEDUCE YOUR BESTFRIEND by Penny Reid is a contemporary, adult romance story line focusing on twenty-seven year old author/genius Byron Visser, and twenty-six year old teacher/podcaster Winnifred Gobaldi.
Told from dual first person perspectives (Win and Byron) TEN TRENDS TO SEDUCE YOUR BESTFRIEND follows the building romance and relationship between twenty-seven year old author/genius Byron Visser, and twenty-six year old teacher/podcaster Winnifred Gobaldi. Byron Visser is a genius, an author and an ‘odd duck’ in the world of social norms. His best friend is Amelia, whose best friend is Winnifred Gobaldi, a young woman whose podcast promotes science, more specifically STEM-Science, technology, engineering and mathematics for girls but in this Win finds herself at a cross-roads when an grant to further her STEM promotion for women involves a larger social media platform, and a romantic TikTok challenge. Enter Byron Visser, genius, best selling author, and the man who stars in Win’s fantasies and dreams. What ensues is the building but atypical romance and relationship between Win and Byron, as our couple must navigate the world of social media, anxiety, miscommunication and misunderstanding.
Byron Visser could be considered an ‘odd duck’; a young man whose life experiences are limited; a man whose dislike of people and social norms is anything but acceptable to the outside world by Byron has fallen in love with his best friend’s roommate, a woman whose quirks and oddities grate at our hero’s sense of well being. Winnifred Bogaldi has always felt like a failure in the face of Byron Visser’s silent condemnations and perfect control of his life but Winnifred will soon discover that Byron’s eccentricities and peculiarities hide something much deeper, something our heroine realizes before anyone else. Working together to help further Winnifred’s chances at winning the TikTok challenge, our couple will discover their mutual disdain for one another hides a volatile attraction neither one is able to admit.
The relationship between Byron and Winnifred begins as enemies to frenemies to ‘lovers’. Neither one is experienced in the relationship department, and their social awkwardness is exacerbated by fear, anxiety and a lack of, or miscommunication. There are no $ex scenes, everything is implied or fades to black.
We are introduced to Byron’s best friend and Winnifred’s roommate Amelia; Byron’s roommate Jeff Choi, and Jeff’s girlfriend Lucy.
TEN TRENDS TO SEDUCE YOUR BESTFRIEND is a very slow building story line of friendships and relationships, misunderstanding and miscommunication, acceptance and love. The premise is thought provoking, engaging and captivating; the romance is sensitive; the characters are naïve, unique and quirky.
Copy supplied for review
Reviewed by Sandy
“Look harder.”
My forehead wrinkled, giving my attention back to her phone. I didn’t know what she wanted me to see, but now the video was repeating and—
“OH MY GOD!” I grabbed the phone. “This—this is—”
“Shh! Yes.” Now Amelia looked around, presumably to make certain none of the Seattleites surrounding us felt a disturbance in the politeness force. “Yes. I recorded it live. I’m so, so, so sorry.”
I leaned forward. “So that means it’s been—”
“Posted since last night. That’s right.” She covered her face again, groaning. “I’m so sorry.”
My eyes caught on the number of views, and I stood from the table, my chair scraping noisily on the linoleum. “ONE MILLION VIEWS?”
“Sorry!” she whispered loudly to someone at a nearby table. “We’ll just—we’re leaving.” Amelia grabbed my laptop and notebook and tilted her head toward the exit. “Time to go, and it was one point three the last time I checked. Now get your bag.”
Numbly, I lowered her phone and grabbed for my backpack and coat, fumbling with the strap. My fingers didn’t seem to work. She walked around the table and placed a hand on my back, helping to usher me out of the quiet area and waiting until we were standing in the hall to say, “I’m so sorry. It was an accident.”
“I can’t . . .” I couldn’t do anything. I couldn’t think, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t speak. One point three million views. What must Byron think? “Oh crap,” I whispered, my gaze swinging around the interior of the library, unable to settle. “What about Byron? Does he know? How is he going to feel about this?”
“I don’t know if he knows. I’ve been trying to call him all morning. He won’t pick up his phone, and I’m frankly a little scared to leave a voice mail. Since he’s not on social media, he might not know.” Stuffing my laptop and notebook into my backpack, Amelia put the strap on my shoulder and took her cell phone from where I still gripped it.
I immediately covered my face like I could hide from this. My cheeks were hot. As much time as I’d spent this morning coming to terms with Jeff’s decisions last night, I’d spent ZERO seconds thinking about my ridiculous reaction to Byron’s performance. I wouldn’t allow myself to think about it. What was the point? He’d been pretending, acting, playing a part, and—as per usual—I’d left the interaction feeling like a fool.
“We have to delete it,” I rasped, my mouth dry, my brain on fire. “Before he sees it and finds out, we have to delete it.”
“No! No. Don’t do that.” She pressed the phone to her chest.
“What? Why not?”
“Think for a second.” She pushed me toward the elevator. “If you delete it, it might become a whole thing. He’s a famous guy who millions of people are starving to know more about. He has no social media and suddenly he’s on TikTok with you? And this isn’t like your lab video from Friday, this is you two together, acting like you’re close friends crushing on each other. We need to call him—together—and tell him. But first we need him to answer his damn phone.” Amelia nodded at her own assertion while stabbing the elevator call button with her index finger.
“Call him? You want to call him together?” Oh God. I didn’t want to call him. I never wanted to talk to him again. “You don’t think he’ll want us to take it down ASAP? Like you said, millions of people want to know about him. Don’t you think he’ll view this as an invasion of privacy?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?” I flinched back. “I think you mean, most certainly yes.”
“No.” She pulled me by the arm into the elevator and pressed all the right buttons. “We should call him, leave a voice mail together where we tell him exactly what happened, and ask what he wants to do about it. If you take it down, it might create more difficulty for him than if you left it up and let it run its course.”
I covered my face again, leaning against the wall for support. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Hey, on the bright side, you have over ten thousand new followers. That’s . . . something.”
I groaned. I would’ve given up every single one of my new followers if it would’ve somehow undone the posting of that video. What a nightmare.
Penny Reid is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today Best Selling Author of the Winston Brothers, Knitting in the City, Rugby, and Hypothesis series. She used to spend her days writing federal grant proposals as a biomedical researcher, but now she just writes books. She’s also a full time mom to three diminutive adults, wife, daughter, knitter, crocheter, sewer, general crafter, and thought ninja.
Please feel free to drop her a line. She’d be happy to hijack your thoughts! You can find her on her blog or email her: pennreid at gmail dot com
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