Bethany Turner made a splash with the release of her debut Christian Fiction novel, The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck, last year, so readers have been ever so anxious to get their hands on the newly released, Wooing Cadie McCaffrey. Thanks to Revell Books, we can relieve the anxiety of one lucky reader with our giveaway below! If you have ever met Bethany, tuned into her The Book Club Closest to my House, caught one of her FB lives, or had her attend your own book club (we had the pleasure of her company at our last book club – via video chat – and it was the bomb!), you know she’s as fabulously entertaining and warm as her stories. This bookchat will reveal the same!

Enjoy!

After four years with her boyfriend, Cadie McCaffrey is thinking of ending things. Convinced Will doesn’t love her in the “forever” way she loves him, Cadie believes it’s time for her to let him go before life passes her by. When a misunderstanding leads to a mistake, leaving her hurt, disappointed, and full of regret, she finally sends him packing.

But for Will, the end of their relationship is only the beginning of his quest to figure out how to be the man Cadie wanted him to be. With the dubious guidance of his former pro-athlete work friends and tactics drawn from Cadie’s favorite romantic comedies, Will attempts to win her back. It’s a foolproof plan. What could possibly go wrong?

Bethany Turner is back with more of the heart and humor readers love. Anyone who enjoys a good romance or binges romantic comedies on Netflix will devour this delightful story.

Bookchat with Bethany

Please share a little about your characters, Cadie & Will

Cadie is head of the accounting department at American Sports Network (ASN), and she tends to keep her life like her spreadsheets—neat, tidy, accurate, predictable. But, she is in love with the idea of romance, and romance movies in particular, and privately craves a little bit of romantic chaos in her neat and tidy life. She grew up in the affluent hamlet of Syosset on Long Island but moved to Manhattan just as soon as she could. Her dad is a well-known pastor, and her mother is a Christian living author and television host. She holds herself to a pretty impossible standard most of the time.

Will, meanwhile, is a bit more relaxed. He’s very driven and goal-oriented, but most of the time he’s willing to take things as they come. He’s a sports researcher at ASN. He lost his dad years ago, and isn’t very close to anyone else in his family. (That isn’t addressed much in the book. Just a little extra from me!) He’s from Boston, but has been in NYC since grad school. Grad school is also when he gave his life to Christ. He’s pretty romantic—in his way—but he’s not always the best at picking up the cues as to what Cadie thinks is romantic. (Of course Cadie all-too-often expects him to read her mind…)

Communication isn’t Cadie and Will’s strong suit. Do you think this is common in relationships? (I’m turning you into a marriage counsellor now, Bethany!!)

Yes! Yes, yes, yes. I don’t want to pigeonhole men and women, because obviously not everyone is the same. But the fact is, men and women are very different, and quite often (not always but often), men think a bit more directly than women do. If a man asks a woman if everything is okay, and she insists that it is, he’s probably going to tend to trust that. Meanwhile, as women, I think we sometimes are thinking, “He should know that everything is not okay, and if I have to tell him, then we have a problem.” So then, when he trusts that everything is okay, we think he’s not concerned. But, he was concerned. That’s why he asked.

Will and Cadie get caught in those loops. There are even times when they are literally having separate conversations, and don’t even realize it. (And the reader may not realize it as they first read, either…) They’re each talking about completely different things, usually because of assumptions they’re making.

Will wants to sweep Cadie off her feet. He really does. And he is making plans to do so accordingly—even if he seems to be taking his own sweet time about it. Cadie takes the monotony of their relationship—and Will’s apparent lack of drive to take anything to the next step—as him not loving her as much as she loves him, when really nothing could be further from the truth. And it’s easy for us to say, “Just tell him what you want, Cadie!” But in her mind, she believes that if she has to tell him, it won’t be coming from his heart when he takes certain steps. She wants him to get there on his own—and not just because he wants to make her happy. The irony, of course, is that he does truly want to make her happy, and that desire is very much coming from his heart.

The confusing, never-ending vicious circle of that last paragraph? I think that’s what we quite often create for ourselves in relationships. As Will says at one point, “Just think of what might have happened if we’d actually talked.”

Describe your book in 5 adjectives

Funny, relatable, hopeful, frustrating, and swoony. If swoony is a word…

Will is sports mad, Cadie is not! What qualities did they each have that appealed to the other, when their interests were polar opposite?

I think humor was a big thing. They both have easy, natural senses of humor, and they were pretty instantly amused by each other. They’re also both very kind, and of course they have a common faith. And they’re both also fiercely loyal. There is so much that they respect about each other, in addition to an undeniable physical attraction. As far as their differing views about sports, no one was more skeptical about that than Cadie. She did not want to date a sports guy! But he appealed to her with his brain. Yes, he’s sports mad, but he also loves the science of it all. The statistics. That appeals to Cadie’s order-loving mind.

I loved all the pop culture references in your story. Did they come naturally as you wrote the story or did you have specific ones you wanted to include before you started writing?

Almost across the board, they came naturally. The fact is, pop culture is my second language. There were a few references that I knew from the beginning I wanted to include, I guess—iconic Empire State Building moments from Sleepless in Seattle spring to mind—but I didn’t have any idea how they would fit in. But when the time came, I knew.

Bethany’s Writing Space

Chapter headings! It’s unusual for a novel to have them – why did you include them?

Well, my editor and I kind of stumbled onto the idea of having them in The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck, and then they ended up working beautifully. We found that we could really set the tone for all that was to come in the chapter, and maybe even make readers giggle…before they even understood why! With Wooing Cadie McCaffrey, the chapter headings really sprang first from necessity. The story jumps around a bit, and timing is pivotal as we build up to some reveals. We get to discover how Cadie and Will got in the mess they’re in, almost at the same time they do, so the chapter titles were a great way to provide clarity to the order of things. And then from there, I just started having fun with it! In every case the chapter heading is a reference to time and order, and it’s also a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference to something said by one of the characters.

What are the major themes in this story?

The importance of communication is definitely one, as we talked about. And also forgiveness—from God, of each other, and of ourselves. There’s nothing so big and bad in our lives that it can scare off God.

Which character did you enjoy writing most?

Definitely Will Whitaker. This was the first time I wrote part of a story from the guy’s POV, and that was an interesting challenge. I needed him to be real and I needed the man’s side of things to be believable. The fact is, this is a novel in which you spend a fair amount of time frustrated with each of the primary characters—and that is very much by design. Part of that frustration comes from being in their heads, and knowing what they’re thinking—and the incorrect assumptions they’re making. But I think being in both POVs also endears them to the reader. They’re both trying. They really are! They just can’t get on the same page. But I loved my time in Will’s head. He really is a heck of a guy.

Which character gave you the most grief?

Cadie’s mother, Nessa. When I first started writing her, she was kind of awful. She was cold and harsh, and unrelenting. And the fact is, she can be all of those things at times. But as I wrote, I realized she wasn’t as cut and dried as I had expected her to be. She gave me a lot of grief because she just kept surprising me.

What emotions did you experience while writing this story?

There were times my heart just completely broke for Will and Cadie. I felt like a powerless parent on the sidelines, confident that those two crazy kids were perfect for each other, but needing to let them work through all their problems themselves. I also swooned a lot over Will. I had the benefit of being in his head and knowing exactly what his intentions were, so I was always able to see the love and concern beneath each word and action that came across as insensitive to Cadie. And yes, I also felt the frustration that the reader feels. But, as difficult as it is for them to get around to finally talking, they really needed to suffer a bit before they could get to that point. In the suffering, they learned a lot of valuable lessons, so I just had to step back and let them work through it!

Thank you for writing authentically about modern love and the issues Christians face. What motivates you to write these kinds of stories?

When we act like life gets easy once you choose to follow Jesus, I believe we do a huge disservice to our faith. We were never promised it would be easy. Quite the opposite. We need different types of writers to write different types of stories to appeal to different types of readers, and I believe the type of story God is leading me to write has to address some messy, challenging issues. Because life is messy and challenging. We are not supposed to be of the world, but we absolutely have to be in the world. And the fact is if we don’t believe these are challenges Christians are facing, we’re deceiving ourselves. So we have two choices. We can ignore it and bury the things that challenge us and don’t fit into our picture of what the Christian life “should” look like, or we can confront the reality head on and have some uncomfortable conversations that may ultimately lead us closer to the Lord. I’m choosing to be uncomfortable and have the conversations.

What is in your writing pipeline now?

I’m waiting to get edits back, probably in the next couple months, on my next romantic comedy for Revell. It’s the story of two celebrity chefs who could not possibly be more different, and who could not possibly dislike each other more. I think it’s going to be fun going with them on their journey to forgiveness…and maybe even love!

Thanks Bethany – what a fabulous feature 🙂 

Bethany Turner is the award-winning author of The Secret Life of Sarah Hollenbeck and the director of administration for Rock Springs Church in southwest Colorado. A former bank executive and a three-time cancer survivor (all before she turned 35), Bethany knows that when God has plans for your life, it doesn’t matter what anyone else has to say. Because of that, she’s chosen to follow his call to write. She lives with her husband and their two sons in Colorado, where she writes for a new generation of readers who crave fiction that tackles the thorny issues of life with humor and insight.

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Review of Wooing Cadie McCaffrey
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Buy from Amazon: Wooing Cadie McCaffrey or Koorong

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