NEW RELEASE
Marrying Out of Money - Nicky Schmidt (2011)
What do you do when your mother attempts to broker an arranged marriage for you to a self-absorbed, playboy aristocrat with a waning fortune? And what if your intended just happens to be someone you despise? If you are coffee heiress Lou Hubbard, you conspire with your best friend to be the most undesirable option Viscount Harry Stomeworth has ever seen in an effort to turn everyone off the match. Unfortunately, the threat of having to marry the most despicable person on earth isn't the only issue Lou is dealing with at the moment. With a slacker, rock star boyfriend hounding her for money and her best friend, Fin, dealing with a recent health crisis, Lou barely has time to focus on her job as right-hand woman to her father in the family's coffee business. But just when she thinks life can't get any crazier, Lou finds herself actually falling for Harry, which causes her to stop and re-evaluate her current situation. Marrying Out of Money is a witty example of what happens when your mother meddles in your love life instead of letting nature take its course. Although I felt the story could have wrapped up a bit sooner than it did, I thoroughly enjoyed it and found myself laughing out loud at the antics of this eclectic cast of characters. (LEK)
Marrying Out of Money is Nicky Schmidt's follow-up novel after her award-winning debut Naked in Knightsbridge (she won our 2009 Pink Thong Award for Most Promising Author). The author who writes under a pseudonym reveals on her blog that she lost three months worth of her manuscript due to computer error and had to rewrite several chapters. The summary says: "Marrying Out of Money follows the life and perils of rich coffee heiress Lou, who is madly infatuated with the less than erudite, tree-hugging, scruffy-to-the-point-of-smelly Hedge - member of rock band 4BY4. Lou's social-climbing mother decides that enough is enough, and hooks up with a poverty-stricken aristocrat to arrange a marriage between Lou and the snotty, outrageously good-looking Harry Partington - 40th in line to the throne. Not surprisingly, for both parties, it's hate on first sight. Still desperately in love with rock star Hedge, but with her beloved father ill and wanting nothing more that to see her married, Lou sets about making herself so repulsive that the aristocrats decide a future on a derelict council estate is preferable to having her as a daughter-in-law. Of course, nothing goes according to plan, and Lou finds herself questioning the wisdom of her actions, when she discovers that horrible Harry has a sensitive side after all." It's out in November. To check out the cover of Schmidt's third novel, The Anti-Model Agency, about a model who seeks revenge after being dumped from her agency for being overweight, head to our 2011 release dates section.