Fool Me Once

January 17, 2022
With this tension-fueled love story set in the world of Texas politics, Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife) pivots from murder mysteries to rom-coms. Hypercompetent Lee Stone—the hard-partying Stoner to her college friends—is a competitive and driven woman committed to friends, fun, and her career as communications director for an electric car company. But after what she thinks of as her “Four Great Heartbreaks,” she’s uninterested in romantic commitments. Ben Laderman, number four on Lee’s list, has come a long way since Lee broke both his heart and his focus just when he needed to keep his spot at the top of his law school class. Now he’s working with the Texas governor on his Green Machine bill—which happens to be Lee’s political passion project. With both her bill and the promotion she hopes it will bring suddenly tied to Ben, Lee panics, convinced Ben plans to steal her project as revenge for the way they broke up. But as they’re forced to work together, it becomes clear that she’s fooling herself if she thinks she’s over him. Sparks fly and laughs abound as Winstead rides the line between enemies-to-lovers and second-chance romance tropes. Readers will want to snap this up. Agent: Melissa Edwards, Stonesong.

March 15, 2022
By day, Lee Stone is a hardworking communications director for an up-and-coming electric vehicle company. By night, though, she's Stoner, a funny, messy, tequila-drinking partier with plenty of bad dating stories and more than a few men in the rotation. Stoner has a complicated romantic history, with her ""Four Major Heartbreaks"" marking the turning points in her love life. When Lee pitches a new electric-vehicle bill with the Texas governor's policy director, she's shattered to learn that her new partner was the other half of one of those heartbreaks. Now it's up to Lee to decide if she's going to let Stoner's past ruin her biggest chance at personal and professional happiness. Winstead (In My Dreams I Hold a Knife, 2021) offers a sharp and witty rom-com-styled novel in the vein of HBO's The Flight Attendant and Julie Valerie's Holly Banks Full of Angst (2019). Politically savvy, romantically challenged Stoner is a warmly relatable heroine with a self-destructive streak a mile wide. Exploring the draw of idealism in many forms, Fool Me Once is a gem.

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Starred review from February 1, 2022
Two exes must suddenly work together to get a green energy bill passed in Texas in this romantic comedy. Lee "Stoner" Stone is a success: She's Director of Communications for Lise Motors, a women-run electric car company, and the brains behind the Green Machine, a bill to replace all Texas state vehicles with electric cars. She's also a bit of a mess, prepared to drink anyone under the table, up for anything, and queen of the walk of shame. After her "Four Major Heartbreaks," she's decided that love is a lie and is here for the good times only. When news comes that the governor has finally hired a policy director, she's ready to turn on the charm only to discover that it's Ben Laderman, her grad school boyfriend and fourth Major Heartbreak. When both bosses decide Stoner and Ben should team up to convince the Senate's last three holdouts to vote "yes," all the time she and Ben spend together might force Stoner to reevaluate her position on love and relationships. Early in the novel, Stoner wonders where the rom-coms about women "with actual character flaws" are, and this is what Winstead has delivered--a love story for every truly hot mess. Stoner's tendency to meet stress and problems with alcohol, drugs, and no-strings-attached sex set her apart from the typical romance heroine but make her ultimate happy ending that much stronger. The characters surrounding her, from a close group of girlfriends to a concerned family and the family-esque mentors at work, are all wonderful friends and foils. Along the way, Ben and Stoner each make real, legitimate mistakes, which makes their eventually coming together feel incredibly earned. The politicking is also almost painfully real. A romance with bite, wit, and heart.

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