In TASTE, readers meet Byronic hero, Master Sommelier Jason Frazier. He’s hot, single, and one of Wine Observer’s “40 under 40.” A legendary blind taster with uncanny talent, Jason sets his sights on TV stardom. He plans to build an empire and finally put to rest his family’s belief that he merely “drinks for a living” by winning the most elite, nationally televised wine competition in Vegas and getting a three-show network deal.
Jason is publicly set up with an A-list actress who could catapult him to the top of the Hollywood machine. For Jason, real romance is a hard pass––until he meets a lowly wine rep who is far from his type. Yet, for the first time, a woman challenges him. It’s inconvenient and irritating, but he can’t shake her.
Then, he loses his sense of taste.
Complicated family dynamics amp up when his wealthy father dies. Jason suddenly becomes his alcoholic mother’s conservator. She moves to LA to be near him, eroding his perfectly ordered life. Jason’s taste is not returning; his inheritance is at risk, his romantic life is in shambles, and he spirals down. Will he devise a way to win in Vegas without his superpower, receiving the success he’s set his sights on? Will he choose love over selling out to Hollywood?
TASTE is a contemporary romance at 87k words, powered by an antagonistic protagonist readers will root for. Think Chuck Palahniuk meets Emily Henry meets Eleven Madison Park’s wine list.
57-year-old, LA stylist Bryn Blanchard, is navigating a shrunken post-menopausal libido, but she’s hungry to reignite the romance with her dashing husband, Errol, and plans a sexy getaway, except that a scheduled MRI for chronic headaches reveals a brain tumor, sending Bryn on an entirely different journey.
Five years. That’s the prognosis for stage 4 metastatic malignant melanoma of the brain and lung––longer, if Bryn responds well to the treatments that she’ll undergo the rest of her life (however long that will be).
Home from the hospital after brain surgery, Bryn senses Errol’s distance. The chemistry they once shared has flatlined. She chalks it up to the stress of caring for a partner with cancer, but red flags are flying.
Bryn finds herself solo at her first immunotherapy session––Errol has escaped into work, and her BFF, Aditi, is off shooting a TV show. Her privileged, newish friends, “The Pilates Possé,” push Bryn to leverage cancer for a big TikTok following, although her attempts leave her feeling like an imposter. Bryn’s surprised when Errol invites her estranged brother, Mike, to play caregiver. But Mike’s not who Bryn thought he was.
At the Bel Air Cancer Clinic, Bryn meets Robin, a retired, charismatic studio musician living at the Chateau Marmont, who shares the same diagnosis. Despite the unattractive side effects of cancer, Robin makes her feel beautiful and seen. His kind, spiritual philosophy makes Bryn wonder if she’s been focusing on the wrong things. As her connection with Robin deepens, Errol is MIA, her brother discloses a secret about his true self, and Aditi’s surprise visit further shakes up Bryn’s world. Will her marriage and friendships survive? Will Bryn?
Long Monday is a 90k-word upmarket contemporary romance novel about radical self-acceptance, friendship, and forgiveness. Readers will relate to the raw journey to self as in Miranda July’s All Fours, the comedic view of facing illness and betrayal in Katie Yee’s Maggie; or, a Man and a Woman Walk into a Bar, and finding love in an unlikely place as in Perfect Distraction by Allison Ashley.
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