Alice thought she’d found Mr Right. Her blue-eyed boyfriend Joe gives her butterflies, makes her bacon sandwiches when she’s hungover, and doesn’t have a nickname for any of his body parts.
She should have known it was too good to be true. Because one day, Alice and Joe bump into Zoë. According to him, Zoë’s ‘just an old friend’. But Alice saw the way they froze, and heard the strange note in Joe’s voice when he said her name.
Then, out of the blue, Zoë needs a place to live. And Joe has the bright idea of inviting her, and her fluffy ginger cat Frazzle, to stay with them.
Alice tries her hardest not to feel threatened. But the thing is, Zoë doesn’t survive off microwave meals, or go days without washing her glossy copper-coloured hair, or accidentally get mascara in her contact lenses.
Joe’s ex might be pretty much perfect, but there’s no way that Alice will let Zoë steal him. She’s on a mission to prove that three (four, if you count the cat) is definitely a crowd…
This fabulous, feel-good page-turner is for anyone who has ever got a little too drunk and checked out their partner’s ex! (We’ve all been there…) Fans of romantic comedies by Sophie Kinsella and Lindsey Kelk, and TV shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, will love this utterly relatable read.
Get it here!
Acknowledgements
When I was writing Thank You, Next, it sometimes felt as if Zoë spent her days ricocheting from her upstairs bedroom to her downstairs workplace to the gym and back again in a never-ending loop. There’s a reason for this – it’s pretty much what my life consisted of while I was working on this novel. Only when I was about halfway through did pubs and restaurants reopen in the UK and some semblance of normality return.
This meant that the usual face-to-face research that I so enjoy doing when I’m working on a book wasn’t able to happen. Nonetheless, there are many people who have helped me enormously during the process, and they all deserve a massive thank you.
Over socially distanced outdoor drinks, my lovely friend Nathan answered my questions about Grindr hook-up culture with breathtaking honesty, and I am so grateful for his insights. I know he will be disappointed that I gave Robbie a happy ending, but I have my fingers crossed that his own is just around the corner.
It’s been more years now than I care to count, but the Dungeons & Dragons games played with my sister Jassy as DM are as fresh in my mind as if they were yesterday. I could have written a whole book just about the adventures in Castle Drakeford, but – quite rightly – my wonderful editor would have taken a scalpel to it. But thank you, my darling sister, for all the happy hours we spent on those imaginary journeys.
Which brings me on to the team at Bookouture. I am so fortunate to have such an amazing publisher and work with such a professional, supportive, all-round bloody lovely team. Christina Demosthenous, my editor, holds my hand throughout the horrible solitary process of producing a first draft and the lovely, collaborative editing stages that follow, and makes my books the best they can possibly be. She also has endless patience when I whine that I can’t do this. Thank you, you are a star. Noelle Holten, Kim Nash, Peta Nightingale, Lauren Finger and Alex Crowe have also provided invaluable support behind the scenes on publicity, production and promotion, Lisa Horton came up with a totally gorgeous cover design, and Rhian McKay smashed it with a brilliant copy edit as always.
I also owe huge thanks to the team at the Soho Agency, who have looked after me since I started writing eight years ago. I couldn’t be more grateful for the expertise, wisdom and support of Alice Saunders, Araminta Whitley and Niamh O’Grady.
To Amanda, Becky, Carla, Catherine, Eleanor, Hazel, Helen, Jen, Jess, Katie, Kez, Lisa, Lou, Lucy, Lynda, Nikki, Rache, Sarah and Sian – love you all. Thank you for being my best friends and for the daily Covid chats that have kept us all sane over the past few months.
And finally, thanks to my darling Hopi and Purrs and Hither the cats. I couldn’t be cooped up with a nicer crew.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
Thank you.
*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
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Copyright © Sophie Ranald, 2020
Sophie Ranald has asserted her right to be identified
as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-80019-041-2
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.