Our guest today: Beth Orsoff
Why we love her: She's one sassy girl!
Her latest: Vlad All Over
The scoop: Gwen Andersen loves being a schoolteacher, but she isn’t exactly raking in the big bucks. With her bank account shrinking by the minute, she needs a well-paying summer job if she’s going to hold onto the childhood home she inherited from her parents. So when the father of one of her students asks her to fill in as his au pair for the summer, she knows she should be thrilled. Alexander Romanescu is loaded, and Gwen adores his daughter Isabella. Plus, they’re planning to spend the vacation at their ancestral estate—in Romania!
And yet Gwen can’t shake the nagging feeling that saying yes to this man could lead to more than she bargained for. She knows so little about him—and the idea of spending six weeks in the land of Dracula and Vlad the Impaler is more than a little creepy. But the legends of Romania will be the least of her concerns if she doesn’t make some money…fast. And so Gwen says yes: yes to the job, yes to a European excursion…and yes to a summer that will change her path forever.
Our thoughts: Fun, fun, FUN!
Giveaway: FIVE copies! Leave a comment and you'll be entered to win. We'll choose a winner after 3pm PST on November 25th.
Fun Fact: See her "best life moment" below!
Where to read more about Beth: Her website or Facebook.
CHICK LIT IS NOT DEAD PRESENTS...BETH ORSOFF'S 5 BEST EVERS
1. BEST SONG: I’m going to have to step out of character here and cheat a little bit on this one (and I’m generally a play-by-the-rules kind of gal, so this really is out of character for me). I can’t choose one song, but I can tell you that one thing my husband and I love to do is watch those “Top 100” shows on VH1. My favorite would have to be “Top 100 Songs of the 80s” because (dating myself here) that encompasses my high school and college years and I often associate those songs with a memory. Now if you asked me to immediately name all the songs I couldn’t name more than a few without looking up the list on the internet, but when I’m watching the show I only have to hear a few bars before I immediately recognize the song and starting singing along (yeah, I’m one of those—that’s why these shows are best watched in the privacy of one’s living room). “100 Greatest One Hit Wonders of the 80s” is a good one too because then you get to find out what happened to the artists as well. Occasionally it’s something terrible and then I feel really awful for the person, but more often than not they’re either still working in the music business, often in another capacity, or they’ve made a good life for themselves doing something else. Then I get to satisfy my curiosity and take a walk down memory lane.
2. BEST MOVIE: This is a really tough one for me because I’m a huge movie fan. In fact, I can never use “favorite movie” as my security question because I can’t trust myself to remember which one I picked that day (identity thieves take note). But if you held a gun to my head and forced me to choose it would have to be “When Harry Met Sally.” I not only love, love, love this movie, but it’s also the first movie my husband and I ever watched together, which was many, many years before we married—but that’s a whole other story! I love “When Harry Met Sally” so much that I watch it every year on either New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day. And every year it makes me crave Mallomars (I’m not sure I agree with Harry that they’re the greatest cookie of all time, but they’re definitely in the Top Three). This movie is so fabulous that I can quote every line of dialogue. Seriously. If you’ve never seen this film, correct this injustice immediately.
3. BEST BOOK: Another one of those impossible to choose only one questions. Because I love reading and writing chick lit I have to pick “Bridget Jones’s Diary,” which is not only hysterically funny, but is also partially responsible for my trying my hand at chick lit in the first place. But I also love “Gone with the Wind” (book and movie). Normally I will always read the book before I see the movie because once I’ve seen the movie I don’t have the patience to go back and read the book since I already know the whole story. Not so with “Gone With the Wind.” That book is amazing. “Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm . . .” Is that not a great first line? I think so. And then there’s “Beach Music” by Pat Conroy—so lyrical. I listened to this one as an audiobook and sometimes the words were so beautiful I had to rewind and listen to them again. And “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.” I listened to this one as an audiobook too and one day while driving to work I got caught in construction traffic and it took me an extra hour to get to the office. Normally I would’ve been flipping out, but that morning I couldn’t have cared less because it meant I had an extra hour to read that extraordinary book. Really, it’s impossible to choose just one.
4. BEST PIECE OF ADVICE: Stop caring what other people think. Admittedly this is a hard one. But if you can pull it off, if you can truly let go of other people’s expectations and opinions and pre-conceived notions about who you are and what you do and how you should be living your life, it’s possible to be a much happier person.
5. BEST LIFE MOMENT: I’ll let you all in on a little secret: I’m eight months pregnant with my first child. So I’m kind of hoping my best life memory is yet to come.
Congrats Beth! xoxo, L&L