Out in the street behind them, I could see the new sign swinging gently in the spring breeze, orange and black and gold and green: ‘The Ginger Cat’.
If you’ve loved the fabulous sass, all the laughs and the irresistible feel-good factor of Just Saying, then don’t miss out on Sophie’s incredible bestseller Sorry Not Sorry. Get ready for non-stop lols, a good girl turning delightfully bad, and endless margaritas!
Get it now!
Sorry Not Sorry
Is this all there is? I scraped the last dregs of Caramel Chew Chew ice cream out of the bottom of the tub with my finger and licked it. It left a sticky smear on my phone’s screen when I typed into Google, ‘How to find love, sex and happiness.’
Charlotte has always been a good girl. But being good is getting boring…
She’s not just stuck in a rut – she’s buried in it up to her chin. The only company she has in bed is the back catalogue of Netflix and falling in love feels like the stuff of fairy tales. So when she stumbles across a popular podcast, ‘Sorry Not Sorry’, which challenges women to embrace their inner bad girl, she jumps at the chance to shake things up.
Old Charlotte would never ask for a stranger’s number, go on a blind date or buy lacy lingerie… But New Charlotte is waving goodbye to her comfort zone (with a side order of margaritas). And it turns out that good things happen to bad girls…
A fabulously feel-good novel that will make you laugh till you cry and leave you living life to the full, margarita in hand! If you’re a fan of romantic comedies by Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk or Matt Dunn, and love TV shows like Girls, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, you won’t be able to put down this hilarious read.
Get it here!
Hear More from Sophie
Want to keep up to date with Sophie’s latest releases?
Sign up here!
We promise to never share your email with anyone else, and we’ll only contact you when there’s a new book out.
A Letter from Sophie
Dear reader,
I want to say a huge thank you for choosing to read Just Saying. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up to date with all my latest releases, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
Sign up here!
I started writing Just Saying in November 2019, and I am writing this note on Easter Sunday 2020, in what feels like a different world. While I was working on the first chapters of this novel, the first news about the Covid-19 pandemic had only just begun to spread out of China; today, it has changed – and ended – lives all over the world.
Here in London, we’re entering our fourth week in lockdown. Many people have joked that for a writer, quarantine is not that different from normal life; we’re used to spending long hours indoors, not talking to anyone. The worlds we create exist inside our computer screens, so for real life to suddenly become virtual, with Zoom drinks taking the place of meeting friends in a bar, exercise sessions happening online and video calls replacing meetings with colleagues isn’t too much of a shock to the system.
And yet, daily life has changed beyond recognition. People queue outside shops, their faces obscured by masks and their hands encased in gloves. On our daily exercise, we slalom across paths to preserve two metres of distance from others. We obsess over supermarket delivery slots. We read with horror about overstretched hospitals, doctors and nurses falling ill, funerals taking place without mourners.
I’ve been so humbled to have been contacted by readers telling me that my books have helped to keep you entertained, distracted, even smiling, in this strange time. Thank you all for reading – for living for a few hours in the lives of my characters. I hope that you and the people you love come out of this crisis safe and well.
www.sophieranald.com
Books by Sophie Ranald
Just Saying
No, We Can’t Be Friends
It’s Not You It’s Him
Sorry Not Sorry
Out with the Ex, In with the New
It Would be Wrong to Steal My Sister’s Boyfriend (Wouldn’t it?)
A Groom with a View
Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?
You Can’t Fall in Love with Your Ex (Can You?)
Available in audio
Our with the Ex, In with the New (available in the UK and in the US)
Out with the Ex, In with the New
Gemma didn’t expect her life to look like this. She’s still living with her mother, who steals her leggings and tells her off for leaving crumbs in the butter. After twenty failed interviews she thought she’d bagged her dream job as a journalist – except it turns out to be writing articles about cats that look like George Clooney. Luckily she has her wonderful boyfriend, Jack, to help her forget just how rubbish things are.
Then Jack dumps her out of the blue. With nothing but her childhood teddy bear, Stanley, and a whole heap of heartbreak, Gemma resolves to turn things around. She throws herself into her new job and soon she’s hanging out with cheeky, golden-haired hunk Charlie, eating in swanky restaurants and sipping trendy cocktails – and her old life seems like a distant memory.
But it’s not long until her shiny new world starts to lose its sparkle – and Gemma misses the days of wearing battered pink converse and eating peanut butter on toast in bed. Then Jack turns up, backpack in tow, and things starts to go wrong with Charlie. ‘Out with the old, in with the new’, the saying goes. But what happens if neither one is quite right?
This laugh-out-loud romantic comedy is for anyone who’s ever cried their eyes out to love songs after a break-up or accidentally drunk-texted their ex. Fans of Sophie Kinsella and Lindsey Kelk will love this unmissable read which is all about falling in love with the most important person: yourself!
Get it here!
It’s Not You It’s Him
New Year’s Eve. The most overrated night of the year, right? I have to get through a night of enforced fun, drink all the prosecco and talk about new beginnings. But I don’t want new beginnings. I want my old beginning back.
It’s been ten days, two hours and forty-three minutes since Tansy got dumped. Two heartbreaking weeks since Renzo, who made her weak at the knees and dizzy with excitement, found out Tansy’s secret – and ended it on the spot.
Since then, she’s spent every evening scrolling through their old photos, drunk texted him twenty-six times (he stopped reading after five), and lost count of how many packets of Kleenex she’s cried her way through.
That’s where Operation Get Renzo Back comes in. She ropes in a new wing-woman, maxes out her credit card and accidentally-on-purpose bumps into him at every opportunity. Oh, and she finds a fake boyfriend, as you do…
But while she’s busy pretending, Tansy’s plan is thrown a major curveball. She has to learn the hard way that it’s not her, it’s him – and that sometimes, a break-up can end up being the making of you.
A fresh, funny and fabulous novel for anyone who has been dumped, got a post-break-up haircut, stalked an ex on Facebook, and then realised they were WAY better off without them. Fans of Sophie Kinsella, Lindsey Kelk and Matt Dunn will love this laugh-out-loud read.
Get it here!
No, We Can’t Be Friends
Everyone knows a girl like Sloane. She was always The Single One. She never brought a plus-one to weddings. She was the woman you’d set up with your single cousin. She joined ballroom dancing classes to meet men and was the queen of online dating.
But then she met Myles. Perfect Myles, with denim-blue eyes and a dazzling smile that melted her insides. She’d finally found The One.
Except she didn’t imagine that Myles’s idea of Happy Ever After would include Sloane battling an overflowing laundry basket, buying birthday cards for his family, and ironing his Calvin Klein underpants.
Then Sloane finds out that Myles has a secret.
The fairy tale is well and truly over. Her heart is blown to smithereens
. Eating her weight in Ben & Jerry’s and large Meat Feast pizzas can only get Sloane so far before she has to make a decision… Can she learn to love herself more than she loved the love of her life?
No, We Can’t Be Friends is a brilliantly relatable, hilarious and feel-good novel that every woman with a waste-of-space ex HAS to read! If you’re a fan of romantic comedies by Sophie Kinsella and Lindsey Kelk, and TV shows like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend and Jane the Virgin, pick up this laugh-out-loud book – you won’t regret it.
Get it here!
Acknowledgements
Although I’ve spent my fair share of time drinking in pubs, I’ve never had the experience of working in one. I expected researching this to be easy – after all, Britain is full of wonderful pubs that have been reinvented to meet the changing needs of the communities they serve. However, it quickly became apparent to me that I might as well have been trying to research the private life of international spies, so hard was it to find anyone who was willing to talk to me, or could spare the time! So I’m very grateful to Phil Harriss of the Plunkett Foundation, a worthy charity that restores disused pubs to community ownership, who generously shared his experience of saving the Kings Arms, which is now owned by the people of Shouldham in West Norfolk.
I also did some research the old-fashioned way, reading Mick Brown’s Running a Pub and Malcolm Mant’s brilliantly titled memoir 30 Years Behind Bars.
Huge thanks to Mike Harris, who advised me on the intricacies of immigration law and how a person of the Windrush generation might be affected by the UK’s often unjust ‘hostile environment’ policy. Dan Neidle and my dear friends Nikki Moulton and Louise Mahon helped me with insights into the workings of City law firms – thank you all.
As ever, despite all the help and advice from these clever people, I may have got things wrong, and any errors are all my own.
Throughout my writing career, I’ve been represented by The Soho Agency, and I couldn’t be more grateful for their expertise, wisdom and support. Thank you so very much Alice Saunders, Araminta Whitley and Niamh O’Grady.
I’m so fortunate to have the best publisher in the business. The team at Bookouture truly have the magic touch, making every aspect of my books as good as it can be. My ninja editor, Christina Demosthenous, takes my horrible first drafts and patiently and diligently transforms them into something I can be proud of. Noelle Holten, Kim Nash, Peta Nightingale, Alex Holmes and Alex Crowe have also provided invaluable support behind the scenes on publicity, production and promotion. Copy-editor Rhian McKay caught so many of my embarrassing glitches, and Lisa Horton came up with a totally gorgeous cover design. Thank you all.
While I was working on the edits for Just Saying, London and the world went into lockdown. During this deeply strange and worrying time, I’ve been kept sane by daily Facebook threads and weekly Zoom chats over wine with my wonderful friends, as well as killer online workouts with Henry Pinkrah and the amazing community at Base 13. There aren’t enough words in the world to express how grateful I am to have such kind, inspiring and supportive people in my life.
Finally, all my love and thanks to my crew at home – my darling Hopi and Purrs and Hither the cats. You’re the best.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
Thank you.
*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
www.bookouture.com
Copyright © Sophie Ranald, 2020
Sophie Ranald has asserted her right to be identified
as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
eBook ISBN: 978-1-83888-131-3
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Just Saying: An absolutely perfect and feel-good romantic comedy Page 29
