Nicole Evelina's Been Searching For You
One might subtitle this book, “Searching for Romance in the Cold, Single World.” Each of Nicole Evelina’s characters handles being a singleton in individual ways.
Annabeth Coe, the main character is a romantic searching for “the head-over-heels heart-melting love,” while still recovering from a years ago disasterous boyfriend, Nick.
Mia, her sexy good friend has no loyalties to her boyfriend or anyone else. Miles, Annabeth’s best friend and work colleague, is Mia’s beleaguered boyfriend. Laine, Annabeth’s boss, is a career woman. Victor, a painter on the way to being discovered, seems to be a good fit until his career proves to need a more “perfect” partner. Alex, a literature professor, is still mourning his last girlfriend.
Annabeth has a birthday tradition: she writes to her dream man and refuses to accept anything but her vision of a romantic partner. She’s pushed by friends and family to open herself to dating. “Where’s your boyfriend?” “You aren’t getting any younger.” “Tick-tock.”
Like her main character, Annabeth, the author is in public relations and an historic fiction writer. Annabeth would rather stay at home with a good book and glass of wine rather than go to the noisy, meat-market singles bars. Nicole writes, “At the end of a long day, I want to read or watch a story where women are wooed. That's what rom-coms are, after all, fairy tales for those who have outgrown Cinderella, but still want the prince and princess to get married in the end.” And that’s what you are going to find—a modern Cinderella story.
Annabeth searches for her dream man. Nicole admitted to me that she is a “hopeless romantic and I firmly believe in soul mates.” As an English major, I found it very appealing that she picked for this dream man a “literature professor for Alex because there is nothing sexier to me than an intelligent man who knows his books.”
Been Searching for You contains believable events and relationships because the author and her friends experienced so much of it. Nicole told me “I really focused on making Been Searching for You be a novel you could actually see happen in real life. This book is very personal to me. I started writing it because I was tired of many romance novels forcing the heroine to be married by the time she was 30,…[even though] I haven’t yet experienced [this] in real life.” She hadn’t had the happily ever after in her 20’s or early ‘30’s. “I think books that are not so unrealistic are more satisfying when you are out of the naive haze of your 20’s because they give you hope that good things could still happen to you.
Nicole wanted to write a romance of someone who still hasn’t lost the dream. With humor, strong women, and a few unscrupulous characters, Nicole writes a romance without the saccharine of many in this genre. Perfect for romance genre fans!
Nicole gave me her Cosmopolitan recipe, saying "Annabeth and Mia will both drink just about anything!" Make a Cosmo, put up your feet and enjoy Been Searching for You!