Guest List

#1 Amazon Best-SellerThe invitations for their ten-year high school reunion have arrived. But not everyone is looking forward to the event… Corie cringes at the idea of going to the Conejo High School reunion. No longer the sweet and innocent girl her friends knew, she dreads facing them, knowing she’s hiding more secrets than she can count. Fiery Scarlet, formerly Corie’s best friend, is now a high-powered attorney who has all but left the little town of Conejo Springs behind. She’s managed to block the memories for this long… but is it time to reconsider? Renata’s self-confidence is still as low as it was in high school, despite continually working out and desperately trying not to worry about what people think of her. Will she have the courage to face the crowd of girls whose approval she never stopped seeking? And sassy Kate is organizing the whole thing, even though she graduated in the class before them. What’s up her sleeve? The high school reunion could be a smash hit or a total disaster. It all depends on who shows up. “Enticing and delightfully dramatic... Not to miss!” – Award-winning author Jennie Goutet Discover the tangled friendships and deep-rooted secrets of Conejo Springs in the Friendship & Secrets series. Each book can be read as a standalone. Interview with the Author Guest List is a prequel novella to the highly praised novel Letters for Scarlet. So should I read it first? Up to you! The books can be read in either order. I wrote Letters for Scarlet first, but realized there was a lot more backstory to my characters than could fit in just one book! Guest List takes us back a bit in time and delves a little deeper into some of the secondary characters from Letters for Scarlet. It’s a short read but it covers a lot of ground, particularly the different ways female friendships play out over time. And what was your inspiration to write Letters for Scarlet? When I was teaching high school English, my seniors wrote letters to themselves, which I saved and sent to them five years after graduation. I imagined the impact of a tragedy happening in that time span and increased the period to ten years so the characters could be older and more established in their lives. There are lots of great women's fiction stories to choose from these days! What makes Guest List and Letters for Scarlet fresh? I switch between narrators, sometimes employing first-person-present and sometimes third-person-past, to show my characters’ lives from different points of view—both their strengths and flaws. Personally, I don't like characters who are all hero or all villain. Is this book part of a series? Each book can be read as a standalone, but all have ties to the world of friendship and secrets rooted in Conejo Springs: Book 1: Guest List Book 2: Letters for Scarlet Book 3: Forgetting Ophelia What do you enjoy reading? Primarily, I love women's fiction, literary fiction, and memoir. But any time spent reading is a good time!