Meet the Author
Rachel Bowdler grew up and still lives just outside of Manchester, on the edge of West Yorkshire. She was insistent on becoming a dancer until the first time she put pen to paper, and has been writing ever since. After graduating from the University of Salford with a degree in English and Creative Writing, she delved briefly into the world of photography before becoming a freelance romance author, focusing on her passion of representing diverse characters and relationships in her stories, particularly with queer, curvy, and working-class protagonists. Her dream has always been to smell the pages of her own book, and she accomplished this after self-publishing her first novella, Paint Me Yours, in 2021. Her only wish now is that her words make readers feel warm and fuzzy inside – and maybe to see her book on a shelf one day.
When she isn’t assaulting her computer keyboard or daydreaming about fictional people in her pyjamas, you can find her cuddling and walking her talkative dog, Enzo, enjoying and photographing the rural scenery of the local Pennines, wishing it was time to put up her Christmas tree, and painting with watercolours (but not very well!).
Her festive debut novel, Honeymoon for One, will be brought to readers in November 2022 with Bonnier imprint, Embla Books.
Though they are polar opposites in many ways, best friends Bryce and Thea are both attracted to all things horror, including true crime — and to prove it, they co-host weekly podcast episodes of Perfect Crimes together with their producer, Mikey, in the dusty basement of Stone Grange’s local bookstore. When a string of murders suddenly begins to plague their small, unassuming town and the police find themselves at a loss, it seems that there’s nobody more qualified to help solve the mystery.
However, it’s soon realized that Bryce and Thea are already more entangled than they could have ever expected, because the murders follow a pattern. Their pattern. With every case discussed in the podcast comes a new imitation of the circumstances surrounding the victim’s death, and Bryce and Thea find themselves trapped in a dangerous game of cat and mouse with the killer, as their friendship — and feelings that they’ve always left hidden until now — is pushed to its breaking point.
When the evidence begins to pile up, conflicting suspicions of the killer’s identity begin to rise, and friends and acquaintances of the duo become victims; things seem to get closer to them with each death. Can they survive the dark shadow following them around town, and remain the strong-willed, closely connected partners in crime they’ve always been? Or will their obsession with murder prove their undoing in a final, emotional showdown as the killer is revealed?
Check out the above books in her Pride sale through the month of June!
Saving the Star, a romantic bodyguard suspense with a Hollywood actress who is facing a threat more dangerous than she can grasp; Holding on to Bluebell Lodge, for fans of soft contemporary, small-town, Hallmark-esque rom-coms; and The Fate of Us, which has a hint of magical realism and fantasy as it explores soul mates and past lives. All of these books are 99p/99c!
Click on the covers to learn more!
Connect with Rachel
I have playlists for each book I write. I usually listen to a few songs from them before writing or between, but never during because I can’t focus with background noise, unfortunately. Here’s the one I made for Partners in Crime, which was fun because it’s much moodier and darker than my usual works.
Spotify Playlist for Partners in Crime