Andie has just landed a plum job as a senior publicist in a New York publishing house. But her euphoria evaporates on her first day when she learns that her very first gig in the new job is to support bestselling author Jack Carlson on a month-long tour of Europe.
She and Jack dated briefly as students at Edinburgh University until things all went very wrong. There is no doubt in Andie’s mind that the smooth, good-looking author was responsible for a traumatic experience she went through at the end of her time at university, five years before, when she also had to cope with her father’s death. So the associations are not good.
To say her attitude to Jack at their first book event together is frosty would be understating just a little. In fact, she’s happiest when swearing and snarling at him.
But Andie thinks of herself as a professional, and with gritted teeth she accompanies Jack through a series of publicity events from London to Berlin, Paris and Dublin. It’s hard to watch someone you loathe being treated with respect and adulation, and Andie struggles – to comic effect. They soon agree to a truce, which works to varying degrees.
The novel’s publisher is calling Bad Publicity its biggest romance of 2025. It has all the ingredients of a slapstick love story – exes meeting up after years, both at the peak of their careers, but both having all kinds of insecurities and weaknesses bubbling underneath.
In fact, Andie is a bit of a hot mess. She feels guilty that she’s not in touch enough with her widowed mother in London and she’s worried about her best friend, who seems to be having boyfriend troubles.
Meanwhile, she is trying to keep all the balls in the air with her new job and reassure head office that she doesn’t in fact loathe Jack and is handling any challenges along the way.
Jack, it turns out, can be annoyingly kind, lacking in ego and appears vulnerable at times, suffering from an estranged relationship with his father. He also surprises her with his talents. Casting agents would probably be thinking Leo Woodall, who’s currently starring beside Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy. And Andie definitely has some Bridget Jones moments. As the trip continues, Andie discovers that, despite her best efforts and probably to no reader’s surprise, the two have quite a lot in common.
Gillam, in her debut novel, paces the story adeptly. The reader has to wait quite a while to find out what really happened in Edinburgh, but there is plenty else going on plot-wise. The author herself has worked in publishing as an editor so it is no surprise that the details of the book world ring true.
If 2025 is already throwing too much negativity at you, then this will-they-won’t-they-you-know-they-will romance as Andie and Jack swan around Europe might be the perfect escape.
Bad Publicity, by Bianca Gillam (Bloomsbury, $22.99), is out now.
