We're pleased to welcome Reyna Marder Gentin to CLC today and to celebrate the publication of her latest novel, Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away! This mother and daughter story is sure to grab and hold your attention. Thanks to Caitlin Hamilton Marketing, we have one copy to give away!
Reyna Marder Gentin grew up in Great Neck, New York, and earned her undergraduate and law degrees from Yale. After a career as an appellate attorney with a public defender’s office, she turned to writing full-time. Her debut novel, Unreasonable Doubts, was a finalist for the 2019 Women’s Fiction Writers Association Star Award. My Name Is Layla (2021) won the Moonbeam Children’s Award gold medal for pre-teen fiction, and Both Are True (2021) was praised by The Nanny Diaries co-author Nicola Kraus as “a moving novel that examines what it means to start over—with surprising consequences.” Reyna lives with her family in Scarsdale, New York.
Visit Reyna online:
Jessica Harmon has spent her life in an emotional tug-of-war-yearning for her mother's attention while bracing for the rejection that always followed.
At thirty, Jessica's love life is a wreck, her confidence is shot, and she's adrift in New York City, stuck editing other people's novels at a vanity press while too paralyzed to write her own. She blames her failure to launch on the woman who raised her: Cynthia Harmon, a legendary poet and scholar, who dazzles her students and readers alike...but leaves her only child cold.
When Cynthia wins yet another major literary award and asks her daughter to assist her on the book tour, Jessica decides to give their relationship one last chance. When a crisis upends Cynthia's triumphant moment, the power dynamic begins to shift between the two women, and cracks start to show in the story Jessica has always been told-about her mother, her family, and herself.
Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away is a sharp, emotionally layered novel about mothers and daughters, long-held secrets, and understanding where we come from so we can choose who we become. (Courtesy of Amazon.)
"A stunning story brimming with emotional insight and razor-sharp prose. With pitch-perfect wit and aching vulnerability, this novel delivers a poignant, empowering portrait of a woman finally stepping out of the shadows and into her own voice."
- Jacqueline Friedland, USA Today bestselling author of Counting Backwards
"Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away is an honest and absorbing exploration of mothers and daughters. Spanning elite literary circles, long-held secrets, and eventual tragedy, Gentin brilliantly captures the pain and longing of familial abandonment, the path to acceptance, and the people we should know best, but never fully do. Poignant and unputdownable."
- Rochelle B. Weinstein, bestselling author of What You Do to Me
What is a favorite compliment you have received on your writing?
When a reader told me that she was so moved by the strength and courage of a character in my debut novel who was coping with a terminal illness that it gave her strength and courage to face the death of her father.
How is Jessica similar to or different from you?
Jessica is similar to me in that she’s searching — for purpose, for connection, for a way to express herself.
If Jessica Harmon Has Stepped Away was made into a movie, who would you cast in the leading roles?
I could see Emmy Rossum as Jessica, Annette Bening as Cynthia, and Dev Patel as Raj.
What is the last movie you saw that you would recommend?
The Holdovers.
If your life was a TV series, which celebrity would you want to narrate it?
I’d want Tina Fey to narrate it.
If we were to visit you right now, what places would you take us to see?
I would take you to see the shade garden in my backyard, I’d take you to visit my Little Free Library in front of my house, and I’d take you on the three and half mile walk my husband and I love going on in our neighborhood.
Thanks to Reyna for visiting with us and to Caitlin Hamilton Marketing for sharing her book with our readers.
How to win: Use KingSumo to enter the giveaway. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us. If you have trouble using KingSumo on our blog, enter the giveaway here.
Giveaway ends November 23rd at midnight EST.
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3 comments:
I stepped away from a longtime friendship.
I stepped away from working outside the home.
I stepped away from a volunteer role that got too much for me to cope with.
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