What is the title of your latest release?
AXE AND GRIND
What’s the “elevator pitch” for your new book?
When Josie Hart signs on to test billionaire Axe Mackenzie “perfect match” algorithm, their chemistry plunges them deep into an addictive tangle of obsession, desire, and deceit that threatens to drag their darkest secrets into the light.
How did you decide where your book was going to take place?
We both went to school in PA (same school, different years) which might be why we chose it.
Would you hang out with your heroine in real life?
In a heartbeat. Josie is a girl’s girl. We built her with love and we wept at all her bad decisions.
What are three words that describe your hero?
Secretive, Sexy and Scottish
What’s something you learned while writing this book?
AG: I learned that Julie still makes me laugh so hard sometimes that’s my daily cardio.
JB: I learned that Adele still finds my stupid jokes funny and also that she tells everyone I wrote all of our sex scenes.
Do you edit as you draft or wait until you are totally done?
We edit as we go. There are two of us, so one goes out front and the other Zambonis from the back, and we switch places. Nerd relay!
What’s your favorite foodie indulgence?
AG: I will eat anything with word souffle. Like eating a warm pillow.
JB: I’m a sucker for good coffee and good chocolate. Also, I get fed so well at Adele’s house, so whatever she serves me might be my favorite foodie indulgence.
Describe your writing space/office!
AG: I can write anywhere but I love at my desk in my home when kids are at school.
JB: I have a teeny tiny office in my house that I love. It has pink wallpaper, a ridiculously comfy chair, a foot massager, a good blanket, a big monitor, and multiple coasters for all my beverages. It’s one of my happy places.
Who is an author you admire?
AG: I admire anyone who can finish a revised draft. Also Donna Tartt.
JB: I second Adele on this one. Also Zadie Smith.
Is there a book that changed your life?
AG: I read The Secret History the summer I graduated school, I was waitressing at TGIF and living at home, and that book was the only great part of my bleak day. It showed me how a good book can be a spell.
JB: I’ve been obsessed with The Secret Garden since I was a little kid, and it’s one of those books that when I reread it, it always finds a way to adapt to whatever I need at the time. Basically, it’s magic and way cheaper than therapy. (Note: maybe Adele and I need to write a book called The Secret Insert noun here.)
Tell us about when you got “the call.” (when you found out your book was going to be published). Or, for indie authors, when you decided to self-publish.
AXE AND GRIND is our second contract book in the dark romance world, but we always go back to the moment we shared pages with other readers—and our agents. We had kept the fact that we had been writing together secret from all of our friends. More terrifying and thrilling than where the book would land, we had to tell everyone that we made this wild, twisty, sexy thing together.
What’s your favorite genre to read?
AG: I love People with Problems books and mysteries.
JB: I love romance and literary fiction, but I will read anything.
What’s your favorite movie?
AG: I just saw Hamnet, that might be a new fave.
JB: This is an old one, and I can’t swear it holds up, but I think about Defending Your Life with Meryl Streep and Albert Brooks more than I should admit.
What is your favorite season?
AG: Winter, probably because of the snacks.
JB: I live in Los Angeles, but I love a true east coast fall.
How do you like to celebrate your birthday?
AG: With chocolate.
JB: I like to carve out some real alone time and then relax with my family.
What’s a recent tv show/movie/book/podcast you highly recommend?
AG: Shameless plug alert, my mom and I have been doing a podcast called “So, Mom” for the past couple of years. I will listen to any pod with Kara Swisher.
JB: This is not a shameless plug because I have nothing to do with “So, Mom,” but I LOVE it. It’s a delight and I highly recommend it.
What’s your favorite type of cuisine?
AG: DoorDash
JB: Anything Adele feeds me.
What do you do when you have free time?
AG: Invent reasons not to go to yoga
JB: Bump into Adele at yoga, though she goes way more than I do. Also, read.
What can readers expect from you next?
AG: We have many tricks up our sleeves! We just wrote a cozy apocalypse romance retelling of Pride and Prejudice.
JB: What Adele said! We have so much fun putting our weird minds together and seeing what happens.
AXE AND GRIND by Taylor Hutton
In this decadently dark romance, a virtual dating experiment spins into a deadly web of obsession, greed, love, and passion.
Josie Greene has always been a glass half-full kind of girl. But after a messy breakup, she’s broke, betrayed, and barely getting by. Even her trusted tarot cards point to chaos in her future. And they’re right: Axe MacKenzie needs her help.
As part of the tech CEO’s latest covert mission, Axe has been developing a simulator to create any user’s “Perfect Match,” and bubbly Josie is the ideal woman to test his product. When the gorgeous, reclusive billionaire makes her an offer—fake date him so he can launch his groundbreaking AI dating app—Josie’s in no position to refuse.
But Axe’s two worlds collide as the criminal underworld corrupts their experimental fling. What started as steamy role-play quickly spirals into a very real threat, leaving both Josie and Axe no choice but to uncover their well-buried pasts. With her life on the line, Josie will have to trust the man who has created the ultimate virtual illusion—and who might be hiding the most sinister truths of all…
Suspense | Romance Dark [ Berkley, On Sale: January 6, 2026, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9780593817773 / eISBN: 9780593817780 ]
Buy AXE AND GRIND: Amazon.com | Kindle | BN.com | Apple Books | Kobo | Google Play | Books-A-Million | Indie BookShops | Ripped Bodice | Walmart.com | Amazon CA | Amazon UK | Amazon DE | Amazon FR
About Taylor Hutton
Taylor Hutton is the pseudonym of a pair of writer friends, one of whom has twice been a finalist for the National Book Award and the other who is a New York Times bestselling author and Edgar Award finalist. Between the two of them, they have written over forty books. When they are not passing their latest sexy thriller back and forth on Google Doc, they are browsing bookstores, sending each other ridiculous memes, walking their dogs Trudy and Potato around their Los Angeles neighborhood, and making their children cringe with their TikTok videos.
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