Robin Lefler is the voice of reason...plus a book giveaway

Credit: Alex Dekker

Happy Halloween! 👻 We have a fun TREAT for you.

Today we welcome Robin Lefler, whose debut rom-com, Reasonable Adults, released last week. This sounds like a fun story and we enjoyed chatting with Robin about it, along with some other things. Thanks to Kensington, we have FIVE copies to give away!

Robin Lefler lives near Toronto with her husband, two children, and an anxious goldendoodle. Over the course of a career in tech, she has traveled the globe but generally prefers to be at home, where she can easily locate coffee, wine, and high-quality waffles.

After high school, Robin spent one semester attempting to become an English teacher before settling on equine massage therapy as her career of choice. She graduated two years later and made the only reasonable choice, fleeing to Australia. Doing everything from leading trail rides through rainforests to being a fit model for a clothing company catering to women of retirement age, Robin continued to fail at finding her life’s work and eventually returned to Canada.

Throughout this time (and, like so many, for as long as she can remember) Robin wrote. Short stories, blog posts, the first fifteen pages of countless novels. After stumbling into a job in tech sales, she experienced publication for the first time – a personal essay about buying her first home in The Globe & Mail. More than a decade later, Robin found the gumption to push past those first fifteen pages... (Bio adapted from Robin's website.) 

Visit Robin at her website and on Instagram.

Synopsis:

The morning after a humiliating post-breakup social media post (#sponsoredbywine), Kate Rigsby learns she’s lost her marketing job along with her almost-fiancé. Worse, she realizes how little she truly cared about either. Craving a reset, Kate flees the big-city life she spent many years building—and almost as many doubting—to take a temporary gig at Treetops, a swanky, off-the-grid creative retreat in Muskoka, complete with meditation circles, deluxe spa, and artisanal cocktails. At least, that’s what the brochure promises. . . 

The reality is a struggling resort that’s stuck in the 1990s, fax machine included. Kate’s office is a bunker, her boss is a nightmare, and at night she shares a freezing hut with her seventy-pound Goldendoodle. Then there’s the sexy, off-limits coworker whose easy smile and lumberjack forearms are distracting Kate from the already near-impossible task of making this snowbound oasis profitable.

On the upside, the surroundings are breathtaking. The Treetops crew is quirky and (mostly) kind. And somehow, Kate’s starting to feel new enthusiasm for her career—and her life. In fact, she’s daring to challenge herself in ways she never dreamed of before.

With wit and heart, Reasonable Adults explores the crossroads we all face—and how a detour born of disaster can take us just where we need to go. (Courtesy of Amazon.)

"Reasonable Adults has everything I look for in a rom com; a relatable heroine, dialogue that zings, an original setting and most importantly - a dog. This is fresh, fun, feel-good fiction." 

—Sophie Cousens, New York Times bestselling author of This Time Next Year

  

"Reasonable Adults is smart, romantic comedy filled with madcap moments that will leave you laughing out loud. An absolute delight!" 

—Trish Doller, international bestselling author of The Suite Spot

 

"A sparkling debut novel about reinvention, self-discovery, and second chances. With a memorable setting at a troubled artists’ colony, a quirky cast of characters, and a double serving of romance and redemption, Reasonable Adults is sure to satisfy.” 

—Kate Hilton, author of Better Luck Next Time

 

In one sentence, what was the road to publishing like for you?
Much faster than expected and just as emotional as I thought it would be.

How is Kate similar to or different from you?
When I was writing Reasonable Adults it sometimes felt like Kate was just me wearing a costume. As my drafts progressed, her character gained more of her own identity, but we still have quite a bit in common. 

Kate shares my love of dogs and tendency to deflect conflict with jokes. She tends to be ready with the witty rejoinders I always come up with much too late. We’re both ambitious while also feeling a bit at sea when it comes to the expectations around Being a Grown Up. Like Kate, I found an unsuspecting group of people in my thirties who became “my people” and it changed everything.

If Reasonable Adults were made into a movie, who would you cast in the leading roles?
Oh gosh. The amount of time I’ve spent thinking about this over the past couple years! For me, so much of Kate’s charm is in her wry humor and the ability to deliver lines in what I imagine as her tone. I always hear Emma Stone.

For Matt, I’d go with Luke Grimes. I think he’d really pull off Matt’s low-key-yet-emotionally-invested vibe. 

Share a favorite Halloween memory.
When I was five or six I decided at the last minute (like, at dinner before we were going trick or treating) that I wanted to dress up as an angel. I remember my dad fighting to shape wire coat hangers and slide pantyhose over them to make my wings, and how absolutely thrilled I was with the results. As a parent, I can only imagine how frustrated he was to be doing that when we probably should already have been out the door, but he did it. And (as I remember it) he didn’t complain about it (to me). Man, I loved those wings.

If your life were a TV series, which celebrity would you want to narrate it? 
Part of me wants to say David Attenborough because he’s so very charming and I often feel like I’m in suburban life or death situations (“One might think the climbing structure suitable for a child of this age, given her confidence and apparent dexterity. She will soon learn twisty slides are best left to those with a more developed sense of limb coordination. Her mother watches, anxious.”). BUT. Truly, it would need to be Catherine O’Hara.

What is the last movie you saw that you would recommend?
Admittedly, I rarely watch TV or movies these days, but I did make sure to check out Happiness for Beginners, based on Katherine Center’s wonderful novel of the same name and it was LOVELY. Highly recommend for fans of romcoms.

Thanks to Robin for visiting with us and to Kensington for sharing her book with our readers.

How to win: Use Rafflecopter to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using Rafflecopter on our blog, enter the giveaway here. 

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Giveaway ends November 5th at midnight EST.

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