Guest Post by Erin Lawless
‘Somewhere Only We Know’ was published on the 11th June 2015 by HarperImpulse. The lovely Erin Lawless has written a guest post about the main characters for my blog.
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Somewhere Only We Know is the story of the spirited Nadia Osipova and the downtrodden Alex Bradley, but it’s a lot more than your usual ‘boy meets girl’ and ‘opposites attract’ tale…
Russian-born Nadia has been living in the UK since she was a pre-teen, but with the political climate the way that it is there are definitely no more visa extensions forthcoming… She’s got all her hopes pinned on one last appeal before deportation and she’s trying to stay positive. But on the other hand, just in case, it’s probably prudent to make sure she spends the summer visiting all of her favourite places, and doing all the things she never got around to, just in case…
Alex joined the Home Office’s graduate scheme after university hoping to get some experience on his CV and some money in his bank account before moving on to more exciting things. More than half a decade later and he’s still there, cringing through the same weekly team meetings, being passed over for all the promotions and picking through an unending stream of visa application letters. Nadia’s is the only one that he ever remembered.
And then, quite by chance, the two meet, and an unlikely relationship is sparked. Nadia decides on a whim to take the tentative Alex under her wing and invites him to join her as she makes her way through her London ‘bucket list’. Alex – in equal parts horrified and fascinated by this whirlwind of a girl – decides not to tell her that he once saw her visa application and to go with the flow of this unexpected friendship.
And that unexpected friendship grows through the summer, through half-fictious boyfriends for Nadia and Alex’s painfully unrequited love for his flatmate’s girlfriend, through near-misses and almost-kisses. Nadia’s court date looms. Will Alex pull himself out of his rut long enough to realise what he has with Nadia before it’s too late…?
About Erin Lawless
Erin Lawless lives a happy life full of wonderful friends, in love with a man who buys her books instead of flowers. To mix things up a little, she writes books where friends and lovers hit obstacles and (usually) overcome them. When she’s not doing that she reads absolutely everything she gets her hands on, spends an inordinate amount of time in pyjamas and runs a fun-but-informative blog on British history.
Links
Website – http://www.erinlawless.co.uk
Twitter – http://www.twitter.com/rinylou
Facebook – http://www.facebook.com/erinlawlessauthor
Goodreads – http://www.goodreads.com/rinylou