Friends Forever
By Kate O’Keeffe
Picture this: three good friends are sitting around a crackling beach bonfire one evening in late-summer, sharing a bottle of wine, talking the way friends do about life, love, and the universe. The conversation turns to men and how, after ten years of going on dates with the wrong guys or being in relationships that simply go nowhere, they are all sick to death of it. Why can’t they find “The One”, the right guy, the one they know they are meant to be with forever?
Then, one of the friends suggests they make a pact and, maybe because they are all feeling a little desperate and perhaps even a little tipsy, they agree to it: they will marry the next guy they each date. That means they all get just one last first date.
That’s the premise for my new novel, One Last First Date. It may seem to be all about finding the right guy, and it’s definitely a romantic comedy, there’s no two ways about it. But at its core, it’s also a story about female friendship. It’s the first in my new Cozy Cottage Café Series. This novel follows the first of the friends to take the plunge, Cassie on her quest to find her happily ever-after guy. But her good friends are there for the ride, too, supporting her and looking out for her—even to the point where they hide out the back, watching when Cassie finally goes on her One Last First Date, offering her advice in the Ladies after one particularly embarrassing event.
Cassie’s friends take on different roles in her life: Paige is her positive-thinking friend, the one who believes in love and wants them all to get their happily ever afters; Marissa is the pragmatic one, reminding Cassie she’s the one who’s in control of her life, that she’s the one who needs to call the shots in her quest to find love. And what’s more, they’re all this thing together, for better or for worse.
I know I would never have made such a pact when I was single! I wanted to leave it up to fate and, lucky for me, it worked out. That said, I can totally understand the desire to take control in the dating stakes, which is why I wanted to write this series of novels. I kissed my fair share of frogs before I found my prince, and looking back on things now, I was lucky enough to have friends like Marissa and Paige who had my back, who could see the guys I was dating for what they were, one hundred times more clearly than I could.
That’s why this book is so much more than a romance between a man and a woman. Because, as women, friends are such an important part of our lives. Sure, there are ups and downs in any friendship, and Cassie, Marissa, and Paige are in for a bit of a rocky ride in this book series, but they matter to each other and they want the best for one another. And, most importantly, they’re friends before, during, and after their one last first dates.
About Kate
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