Jodie Slaughter

Jodie Slaughter had been publishing romance independently for three years when Bet on It arrived from St. Martin's Griffin in July 2022, her first book with a large publisher. It is set in the invented South Carolina town of Greenbelt, where Aja Owens and Walker Abbott meet in a supermarket freezer aisle and again at the city bingo hall. Slaughter lives in the American South and has spoken about drawing on her own mental health in building the pair: Aja has a diagnosed anxiety disorder, Walker complex PTSD. Play to Win, which turns on a winning lottery ticket, went back to Greenbelt the following year.