Trust Me On This is OUT TODAY!!
It's a momentous day for the (Writing) Group Chat—our first sophomore book baby has arrived, with Lauren Parvizi’s Trust Me On This!
Hi (Writing) Group Chat, it’s Hadley here, with the incredible honor of introducing our group’s first sophomore novel! Trust Me On This by Lauren Parvizi releases today from Lake Union Publishing, and we couldn’t be prouder.
This gorgeous, emotional story about two estranged sisters forced together on an unexpected road trip will make you smile and cry in equal measure—and will also make you hungry, because the protagonist is a talented LA chef, and Lauren writes about food and cooking in exquisite, mouth-watering detail.
Bestselling author Sara Goodman Confino calls Trust Me On This “the book you didn’t know your heart needed,” and I wholeheartedly agree. As someone who’s always longed for a sister, I found myself immediately swept into the lives of Zahra and Aurora Starling, half-sisters who couldn’t be more different. Zahra’s traumatic past has made her prickly and guarded, while actress Aurora is just as bubbly and outgoing as you’d expect from Hollywood’s favorite little sister. They haven’t ever been close, but when they learn their father is dying—and has a secret he’s only willing to share with them together, in person—the sisters end up road-tripping from LA to Seattle, 1000+ miles of involuntary bonding that might end up being exactly what they need.
You’ll finish the book thinking deeply about the complicated bonds of family and what we owe to our relatives versus what we owe to ourselves. USA Today bestselling author Colleen Oakley says Trust Me On This contains “so much emotional truth and authenticity, I can’t believe this is only Lauren Parvizi’s second book. I’m blown away by her talent and can’t wait to see what she writes next.”
So true! We’re all very much in awe of Lauren, who somehow managed to draft, revise, and edit this beautiful novel in less than a year while also caring for a baby and a kindergartner. But we’re not surprised, because Lauren has always been the trailblazer of our group—the first to sign with an agent, the first to get a book deal, and the first to publish her debut novel, La Vie According to Rose, about a magical, life-changing trip to Paris.
Join us in wishing Lauren the absolute happiest of pub days, and read on to learn about some of her most memorable moments on the path to publishing her sophomore novel.
Ways You Can Show Your Love For Trust Me on This:
Order - Available TODAY anywhere books are sold. (Bonus points if you support your local indie! Additional info and preorder links here.)
Review - Probably the most helpful thing you can do for an author! Spread the love on Goodreads & Amazon
Post - Take a pic of the book and post on social media! Or, just repost something from Lauren’s accounts. Grid posts, stories, anything is welcome - the more people see the same cover the more likely they are to read or buy, so let’s break the internet! You can find her @laurenparviziauthor on all platforms: Instagram, Threads, and TikTok.
Tell People IRL - When someone asks, “Read anything good lately?” drop Lauren’s name and tell them all about Trust Me On This!
Lauren’s Memorable Moments on the Way To Publication:
Funny Moment: Okay, all, buckle up, this is a long one. It’s about an incident I’m calling the “cloudpocalypse”—NOT a weather-related event. It all started last summer when I was finishing my developmental edit (that’s the big picture edit prior to copy edits and proofreads). I was making progress when I had what seemed like the prudent idea to auto-save my document to the cloud, just in case something catastrophic happened to my computer. Eventually, I sent off my edited document with thousands (and I do mean thousands) of changes, from minor word choice swaps to full scene re-writes, as well as answers to many dozens of comments, and all was well. Or so I thought.
It turned out the document I sent my editor only had a third of my changes tracked. I’d managed to send the original version before I started saving to the cloud. I guess when I started auto-saving changes, I also began working from a new cloud version with the same name (?) masquerading as a document saved to my laptop (??). If you’re confused, please trust, SO AM I!!
But I didn’t know all this yet. Instead, my editor then wasted her precious time and life, re-reading an incomplete manuscript, very diplomatically asking me to address the same issues she’d already noted, and probably wondering all the while what my deal was. I didn’t figure it out until she came back to me with her second round of edits, and I was wondering what her deal was and why she kept asking me to fix things I already had and—oh no!
I can’t even describe how burned out I felt at this point, and thinking I might have to re-do weeks of work that I’d never be able to truly recapture made me physically ill, verging on a breakdown. Thank goodness, the group was able to calm me down, and Hadley had the presence of mind to figure out that the final document probably did exist somewhere on the elusive cloud. I found it there (huzzah!!), and then it was a matter of using the Compare function in Google Docs (another shoutout to Hadley!) to align my changes. Of course, there were weird overlaps, so I had to go through each edit and confirm the correct text.
My editor was kind of enough to accept and re-read this strange Frankendoc, and I suppose it gave me an opportunity to read through the darn thing. One. More. Time. I was also lucky to be visiting my mom for the week, and she was able to watch the kids while I worked. I vividly remember her telling me, “You will get through this,” and me sobbing into my lap, “I know! But I don’t want to have to.” Anyway, I did get through it, and the whole nightmare legitimately does make me laugh now. Which just goes to show, the worst moments sometimes make for the best stories.
Favorite Moment: When my copy of Trust Me On This arrived at my house, the first thing I did, after giving it a wide-eyed once-over, was put it on the bookshelf beside La Vie, According to Rose. Seeing them together seems like such a small blip in the scheme of all the publishing things, but it’s a pure joy.
Surreal Moment: This, now! Knowing a book with my name on it, my heart in it, is out in the world continues to be absolutely mind-boggling to me. It’s the moment where I relinquish complete control and let her find her own way, hopefully straight into the hands of the readers who need this book most.
Congratulations, Lauren! And welcome to the world, Trust Me On This! We know readers are going to love this book as much as we do.
Fabulous cover! Congratulations!
Congrats, Lauren! Gorgeous cover and I have no doubt the story is, too.