by Julie Murphy
Part of Meant to Be
First published 2022
Izzy is twenty-five, back home with her parents, and still an editorial assistant at a publishing house where she is the only Black employee. She expected more from her career by now. One day she overhears her boss venting about Beau Towers, a high-profile author who has gone silent on a long-awaited manuscript. Izzy spots her opening. If she can get to his Santa Barbara mansion and push him back to his desk, she might finally earn the promotion she has been grinding toward. It sounds simple enough. Beau turns out to be nothing like she pictured. He is guarded, difficult, and carrying his own quiet sense of being stuck. Izzy pushes anyway, because she has to. Slowly, pages start to come. The two of them begin to talk, really talk, and Izzy realizes Beau understands things about feeling out of place that she did not expect. As their deadline closes in, something shifts between them. This Beauty and the Beast retelling by Jasmine Guillory follows Izzy as she learns that getting what she wants at work and letting someone in are not problems she can solve separately.
Genres: fiction, romance, contemporary, adult, adult-fiction, contemporary-romance
Vibes: character-driven, emotional, intimate, romantic, thought-provoking
Tropes: fairy-tale-retelling, forced-proximity, friends-to-lovers, slow-burn
Setting: Santa Barbara, Publishing House
313 pages · Paperback · Hyperion Avenue
Content warnings: racism