S’more to Lose
Beth Merlin
(The Campfire Series #2)
Publication date: December 5th 2017
Genres: Adult, Contemporary
Four years after her life-changing summer, Gigi Goldstein thinks saying goodbye to Camp Chinooka means saying hello to a brand new life. Now faced with a second chance at her career, she is filled with more hope than she’s felt in a long time. Her design house is taking the fashion world by storm, even attracting notice of Victoria Ellicott, the fashionable British socialite who just happens to be engaged to the future king of England. When Gigi is chosen to design the royal wedding dress in London, she is forced to confront her ex-fiancé, Perry Gillman, now a successful composer with a hit show on the West End.
But when Gigi learns Perry’s been dating Victoria’s sister, who rivals her in looks, style and sophistication, Gigi can’t help but feel inadequate in everything. Her world begins to crumble as she develops a creative block so debilitating, she fears that a wedding dress of royal proportions is never going to happen. Even a budding relationship with the handsome, wealthy, and rich Viscount of Satterley can’t make her forget about Perry and her inability to get over him. As the world gears up for the wedding of the century, Gigi is on the brink of buckling under the immense pressure of the uncertainties of her future and failures of her past.
Will she be able overcome her creative paralysis to design the dress of Victoria’s dreams, or will she break down now that she has even s’more to lose?
EXCERPT
It was hard to believe twelve of us had lived in this small space for eight weeks. No wonder Jordana and I were still such close friends—we’d spent almost two months with our beds practically touching. I couldn’t help but think of my campers and especially Madison who wept in my arms the last day of camp. She’d be around seventeen now, going into her senior year of high school. I wondered if she and Alex Shane had stayed in touch? Would she come back to Chinooka to work as a counselor now that she was old enough? I hoped so.I walked into the bathroom and turned on the lights. It all looked the same with the exception of the added shower stalls. I laughed to myself remembering my nightly sprint from the old shower house into the bunk, with nothing between me and the world but a towel and a prayer.
I left Bunk 14 and sat down at the same picnic table where I’d spent so many nights sitting OD. The same spot Perry confessed his secret about Annie and how she died. That moment had been the turning point in our relationship, both of us finally admitting why we’d abandoned the real world for the refuge of Camp Chinooka. Things seemed so complicated back then, but really, they were simple. We were two people desperately trying to reinvent ourselves and start over again.
Now, there were obligations and expectations. There was press and pressure. There was so much more to lose and we both felt it. People say there’s always one summer that changes you. For me, it was my last one at Chinooka. Everything fuzzy in my life had finally come into absolute focus and I went home a different person.
Was it too much to hope these grounds could work their magic a second time?
Author Bio:
Beth Merlin has a BA from The George Washington University where she minored in Creative Writing and a JD from New York Law School. She’s a native New Yorker who loves anything Broadway, rom-coms, her daughter Hadley, and a good maxi dress. She was introduced to her husband through a friend she met at sleepaway camp and considers the eight summers she spent there to be some of the most formative of her life. One S’more Summer is Beth’s debut novel.
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