First of all, I wanted to say thank you so much for picking up Meet Me in Manhattan. This book has been an absolute labour of love for me, and I really hope you enjoy it as much as I loved writing it.

One of the things that my readers ask me all the time is; where do you get all the ideas for your books? From anywhere and everywhere is the answer really, but for Meet Me in Manhattan, that magical road to Damascus moment came when I stumbled on an article about the whole dating/catfish phenomenon. And it got me thinking, the whole plethora of internet dating sites has changed our whole dating culture unrecognisably in the past decade, hasn’t it? We’ve all heard the horror stories about what happens when online dating goes belly-up, and they’d terrify you into staying single, and living with nothing but cats for company, till you’re old enough for nursing homes.

So then I started thinking, suppose my heroine is in an online relationship with a guy who lives on a whole other continent? For instance, the States? Where, because of the logistics of it, they physically can’t meet up as often as they’d like? And then I thought, in that case where better to set this story than Manhattan?

The thing is, I’ve a bit of a life-long love affair going on with Manhattan. I’ve been going there ever since I was a teenager, when my Dad would run in the NYC marathons year after year and we’d all tag along to support him. I swear to God, at this stage, I could nearly teach a night class on the best discount stores and outlet malls in the Tri-State borough. (But then, I’m a gal whose three favourite words in the English language are ‘reduced to clear’.)

And so Meet Me in Manhattan started to take shape. I had a ball working on this and researching it was even better still, and I’m praying that you’ll all enjoy reading it. And if you’d like to get in touch, there’s nothing I’d love more than to hear from you. You’ll find me on Twitter @carrollclaudia and on Facebook at ClaudiaCarrollBooks.

Hope you enjoy and happy reading!

xxxx

Chapter One

Exactly 8 p.m. on a Saturday night and here I am. Sitting all alone at a table for two in Fade Street Social, only one of the swishiest restaurants in town, primped and preened to within an inch of my life.

Peppering with nervous tension of course, but we’ll come back to that.

It’s a perfect table too – if I’d planned it, I couldn’t have chosen

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