Spotlight/Excerpt/Currently Reading: Do I Know You by Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka

I do love a good marriage-in-crisis romance and so far so good! Love the setting of the resort they're staying: Coastal Northern California where the pines and cliffside beach views are gorgeous!  Perfect setting while finding a way back to each other! 

Below I have the book info and an excerpt to share.

Do I Know You by Emily Wibberley & Austin Siegemund-Broka

Publication Date: January 24th 2023 by Berkley Romance

Pages: 352

Source: Publisher 

Links: Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Kobo | Goodreads

Excerpt:

Eliza

Say something.

I watch my husband out of the corner of my eye, imploring, wishing he would end the silence filling our car. In the window past him, the ocean glitters, unchanging. The California coastline should inspire wonder, with its rippling cliffs and its crystalline expanse, even when you've spent hours watching the water through the windshield. Instead, the thing I notice most is how it just keeps going.

Say something.

Graham doesn't. He drives, his long fingers clamped on the pebbled leather of the steering wheel, his posture stiff. The quiet, interrupted only by the occasional whoosh of cars passing us, prickles over me like the start of a sunburn.

Is this how this week will be?

I told myself it wouldn't. I've told myself that pretty much every day since Graham's parents handed us an envelope over dinner containing a weeklong, all-expenses-paid romantic getaway at the Treeline Resort to celebrate our fifth wedding anniversary. I convinced myself the week would be wonderful instead of awkward or claustrophobic. What couple wouldn't want to celebrate five years of marriage at a five-star hotel famous for its romantic ambience?

The quiet filling our car says it knows. Determined, I fight off my discouragement. I wish Graham would speak up, would offer something up into the silence-even comment on the weather-but he doesn't.

It's not only him not speaking, I remind myself. Screw sitting here waiting. Maybe I need to be less narrator, more main character.

I clear my throat. "We're doing good on-"

"Just three hours to go-" Graham quickly cuts in.

"Time," I finish, then wince, hearing the unintentional overlap of our voices. It's less like cutely finishing each other's sentences, more like two supermarket shoppers coincidentally reaching for the same shelf. Less unison, more collision.

I don't blame him for cutting in, for intuiting exactly what I was going to say. Every exchange my husband and I have managed in the past twenty-four hours has consisted of nothing except this one meaningless subject. When we should leave, how long the drive is, whether we should take the 1 or the 5 freeway. Unable to help myself, I glance over, wondering whether Graham shares my desperation to change our conversational flat tire.

He does. He shifts in his seat like someone's stowed rocks in the soft leather cushion under him.

I remember the way I described Graham Cutler to my friends and my parents fresh off our first dates. He's tall, I'd said. He's got blond hair, a cleft chin, intelligence in his eyes. The kind he could use to eviscerate rhetorical weaknesses, but he doesn't, not with me. We'd met and chatted with each other on a dating app, and when we got together in person, these observations were the first I connected to the personality I'd gotten to know on my phone.

The problem is, they're what I hear now. Observations. I've been married to Graham for five years, and when I look over from the passenger seat, my mind does nothing except reproduce the list of identifying marks I jotted down in my head when me met. He's tall. He has blond hair.

Book Description:

When a couple starts to feel like they're married to a stranger, a flirtatious game of pretend becomes the spark they need to reignite their relationship.

Eliza and Graham are anticipating an anything-but-sexy, weeklong getaway to celebrate their five-year anniversary. Nestled on the Northern California coastline, the resort prides itself on being a destination for those in love and those looking to find it. For Eliza and Graham, it might as well be a vacation with a roommate.

When a well-meaning guest mistakes Eliza and Graham for being single and introduces them at the hotel bar, they don't correct him. Suddenly, they're pretending to be perfect strangers and it's unexpectedly...fun? Eliza and Graham find themselves flirting like it's their first date, and waiting with butterflies in their stomach for the other to text back.

Everyone at the retreat can sense the electric chemistry between Eliza and Graham's alter egos. But when their scintillating game of roleplaying ends, will they still feel the heat?