Journeys with Jana: Fashion in Liz Crowe's #NewRelease: WIN PLACE SHOW

Unlike Liz Crowe, I have never been to the Kentucky Derby, but I watch it every year on TV. I watch it because I love horse racing, but the fashion, especially the hats and fascinators, are a total hoot. Liz Crowe's new release, WIN PLACE SHOW, sounds like a hoot as well. She's here to tell us about what her characters are wearing to the Derby. Welcome Liz!

The Kentucky Derby is a lot of things:

Major stakes horse race…

Giant revenue stream for Louisville (the city where it is held)…

Expensive to attend (even in the infield these days)…

A lot of fun….

But it’s also a Major Fashion Parade.

I’m lucky to have attended it several times. Three times in the infield where it’s less fashion and more par-tay, once in the grandstand and once in a private box (well, this was actually for Oaks Day which is the Friday before the first Saturday of May but it’s the same general thing these days). And every time I go, I absolutely love checking out how attendees interpret the whole “Derby Dress” thing.

There are plenty of giant fancy hats for the ladies to go with their lovely spring-themed dresses and shoes. The men tend to go for bow ties, pastels, plaids and fun bowler or pork pie hats.

Fashion plays a huge part in my new Derby-weekend-set rom com: Win Place Show. In fact, I’d call it its own character since part of the fun of attending this over-the-top event (and the events leading up to it) is getting all dolled up like Lucy and Nate do. However, for Lucy, it’s also part and parcel of her ambivalence about coming home every year for the event. It’s not that she doesn’t like her home town, or her family. She does. But she also craves the independence she discovered by leaving her home state to attend college, and staying away, working her job and enjoying her life out from under her well-meaning but overbearing mother’s thumb.

This quote says a lot about both the importance of the outfits she’ll wear and the reasons she has resisted returning home the way everyone (including Nate) want her to do:

Lucy slapped on some rudimentary makeup, dried and styled her hair enough to pass her mother’s scrutiny, then stood in front of the dresses hanging in her closet. A line of matching shoes were on the floor beneath them. Several hatboxes stacked on the shelves to one side. The floral-patterned one made her headache worse, so she chose a light blue option, with a halter neckline, tight-fitting bodice and skirt. It was a beautiful choice, as they all were. One thing she could never accuse her mother of was shopping poorly.

But I won’t deny having a ton of fun concocting Lucy and Nate’s wardrobes for the weekend:

A single, remaining dress, with a pair of matching shoes below it, a hat box and purse on the shelf above it hung in the otherwise empty closet. It was a light blue- green color, off the shoulder with cap sleeves, fitted bodice and a pattern of flowers that resembled Japanese cherry blossoms. It was made of soft, shantung silk, butter-like and flowy. Gorgeous, as usual, and the one she’d saved for today on purpose. The shoes were a pale, almost creamy pink, wedge heels, with ribbons to tie around her ankles, and a peep toe. The hat was the same color as the shoes, a darling little fascinator with tons of feathers and netting.

“Well, okay then, one more time around the track,” she said, tossing the dress onto her unmade bed.

I hope you get a chance to read WIN PLACE SHOW! I had a lot of fun writing it.

Liz in her Derby hat.

Blurb:

Win Place Show: All bets are on!

Start with a perfect spring weekend full of pretty dresses, high heels, fancy hats, horse races, and bourbon.

Combine with a friends-from-childhood couple whose ongoing misunderstandings have led Lucy Granger to swear she’ll never move back home.

Mix in a splash of combined family pressure for Lucy and Nate Hawthorne to be The Golden Couple.

Pour over crushed ice and garnish with plenty of hot, secret hookups.

Win. Place. Show.

A funny sort of romance chock full of dressing up, mint juleps, an axe-throwing bar, and a huge winning bet at the big race.

Excerpt:

Lucy dropped the phone to her side, wishing she could sleep another three hours to skip the whole still-a-tad-drunk part of the hangover. She had, indeed, made some poor choices the night before. Beginning with thinking she could slide back into easy, sexy time with Nate. She’d already more or less decided against it before he’d gotten there. But, of course, he’d shown up looking so flipping edible in a pair of dark jeans and a form-fitting purple polo with the Trifecta logo stitched where the little polo guy usually sat. Damn the man. He had no right to go around being so...hot.

He’d always been vain about his hair, something he’d discovered was a featured benefit about the same time he decided she no longer deserved his friendship. It was a wavy strawberry blond, cut just short enough so he didn’t have to use any products while it was full and tempting to female fingers. His eyes were so green, people accused him of wearing contacts to make them that way. Someone had obviously told him the trick about green eyes, that wearing purple made them even more striking.

“Some woman, I’m sure,” she said, lying flat on her back a few more seconds before hauling herself up and limping toward the shower.

Maintaining her anger at Nate was easy. She’d been ready to outright reject him. But when he’d shown up looking like some kind of a male model, turning every damn female head in the place, she’d stumbled. He was such a good dancer, not to mention a top notch kisser. So she’d gone with it, fueled by too much booze, ready to leap back into bed with him as if no time had passed since they last hooked up.

Thankfully, he’d given her an out by going all talkative. That was the last thing she wanted from him. So she’d walked away. And subsequently had a lot more to drink, hence her current condition, ergo she planned to lay blame for her pounding head and queasy stomach at his feet, too.

So there, Mr. Perfect.

The shower transformed her from being a woman with a hangover into a clean woman with a hangover and many regrets. She glared at her bloodshot eyes in the foggy mirror, hating herself for being here, in her stupid bathroom where she’d spent so many hours as a little girl and later a teenager, second guessing herself and her relationship with Nate.

She slapped on some rudimentary makeup, dried and styled her hair enough to pass her mother’s scrutiny, then stood in front of the dresses hanging in her closet. A line of matching shoes were on the floor beneath them. Several hatboxes stacked on the shelves to one side. The floral-patterned one made her headache worse, so she chose a light blue option, with a halter neckline, tight-fitting bodice and skirt. It was a beautiful choice, as they all were. One thing she could never accuse her mother of was shopping poorly.

She slid her feet into a pair of cream-colored high heels, then pondered the hats with a sigh. When they were little, she and Mimi loved this weekend more than any other. The opportunity to put on a pretty new dress, hat, and shoes had been the highlight of their year. The hours spent at the track over the course of Derby weekends were some of her best memories.

Buy Links:

Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09FH7BMCG

Universal buy link: https://books2read.com/winplaceshowromance

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/60143414-win-place-show

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/books/win-place-show-by-liz-crowe

Trailer: https://youtu.be/Y0OGI-iGVTc

ARC sign up (good through April 28, 2022): https://forms.gle/mkNU7UFMxqjg2M3P8

Heat rating: 3.75 out of 5

Author Bio:

Liz Crowe is a Kentucky native and graduate of the University of Louisville living in South Carolina. She's spent her time as a three-continent expat trailing spouse, mom of three, real estate agent, brewery owner and bar manager, and is currently a digital marketing and fundraising consultant, in addition to being an award-winning author. With stories set in breweries, on the soccer pitch, inside fictional television stations and successful real estate offices, and even in exotic locales like Istanbul, Turkey, her books are compelling and told with a fresh voice. The Liz Crowe backlist has something for any reader seeking complex storylines with humor and complete casts of characters that will delight and linger in the imagination long after the book is finished.

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