The Perfect Valentine- Brenda Janowitz - Great ThoughtsGreat Thoughts

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Each year, I invite one author to share a post for Valentine’s Day. This year, author Brenda Janowitz joins us with a simply perfect post. Brenda’s next book, The Grace Kelly Dress publishes 3/3. She also just wrote this incredible Modern Love column in the New York Times.

The Perfect Valentine by Brenda Janowitz

I am completely and madly in love with books. The look of them, the feel of them, the smell of them. (Oh, the smell. Is there anything better than the smell of a book on a cold winter’s day?) But more importantly, I love the way a book can make me feel. A good book can take me away to another place, another time. Away from my real life, away from my problems. Sometimes a good book illuminates life for me in a way which I hadn’t thought about before. Sometimes a good book is as comforting as a warm hug.

I read constantly. I read before bed, I read when I’m waiting for my kids at their various after-school activities. (When other moms are on their phones, I’ve got my head in a book.) I always have a book handy—in my bag, in my car, in the family room, on my bedside table. I read for hours at a time, if I can, or I read for five minutes at a time, when I can’t.

My love affair with books began when I was just a kid. My mother would take me to the library, where I’d browse the shelves with wonder. Mysteries, romance, science fiction…. I read everything I could get my hands on. And then, when I was old enough: getting my own library card. I can still remember the heady feeling of taking out armfuls of books, ready to explore new stories, new worlds.

Now, as an adult, I have the ultimate job for a bookworm: I’m the Books Correspondent for PopSugar, where I get to read books before they are published and talk about which ones were my favorites. (Yes, the little girl me inside is jumping up and down as I speak.)

This Valentine’s Day, when I think about my great loves, there’s my husband and my two sons. But there’s also my love for books, which has always been with me always, and has never once let me down.

The Grace Kelly Dress by Brenda Janowitz

The Grace Kelly Dress by Brenda Janowitz publishes on March 3rd. It is a delight. Emily Giffin and Kristin Hannah agree!

“Exactly the type of book I love: charming, smart, and brimming with heart.”

—EMILY GIFFIN, #1 New York Times bestselling author of All We Ever Wanted

“Fast paced and entertaining from beginning to end.”

—KRISTIN HANNAH, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nightingale

Pre-order it here.

Two years after Grace Kelly’s royal wedding, her iconic dress is still all the rage in Paris—and one replica, and the secrets it carries, will inspire three generations of women to forge their own paths in life and in love.

Paris, 1958: Rose, a seamstress at a fashionable atelier, has been entrusted with sewing a Grace Kelly—look-alike gown for a wealthy bride-to-be. But when, against better judgment, she finds herself falling in love with the bride’s handsome brother, Rose must make an impossible choice, one that could put all she’s worked for at risk: love, security and of course, the dress.

Sixty years later, tech CEO Rachel, who goes by the childhood nickname “Rocky,” has inherited the dress for her upcoming wedding in New York City. But there’s just one problem: Rocky doesn’t want to wear it. A family heirloom dating back to the 1950s, the dress just isn’t her. Rocky knows this admission will break her mother Joan’s heart. But what she doesn’t know is why Joan insists on the dress—or the heartbreaking secret that changed her mother’s life decades before, as she herself prepared to wear it.

As the lives of these three women come together in surprising ways, the revelation of the dress’s history collides with long-buried family heartaches. And in the lead-up to Rocky’s wedding, they’ll have to confront the past before they can embrace the beautiful possibilities of the future.