Bestselling author, and Queen of the Romantic comedy novel, Emily Henry joins us on this week's episode to discuss her brand new book, Great Big Beautiful Life, novels full of spice, and which fictional character makes the best book boyfriend. And as ever we solve your book dilemmas with a wide range of romantic fiction recommendations.
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Episode 2 transcript
Rhianna Dhillon:
Hello, welcome back to the Penguin podcast. I'm Rhianna Dhillon, and this is another episode of Ask Penguin, the podcast that brings you inside Penguin HQ and promises to leave your bookshelves full to bursting with must-read book recommendations. Today we've packed our studio full of books that contain some of the world's most iconic couples, the cutest of meet cutes, and of course, a tale or two of heartbreak. And the covers are gleaming, pink and reds all around us, because this episode is about one of my very favourite genres, love and romance.
I probably started, as so many of you probably did, with Austin, the greatest writer of love of all time. But it was young adult writers like Kate Kann with her Sink or Swim series, and Louise Rennison, with her brilliant protagonist, Georgia, who shaped my teenage years and whose stories of first love still stay with me today. But what kind of romantic novel makes your heart beat faster? Perhaps a bodice ripping historical romp, or maybe a comedy of errors and misunderstandings with the classic enemies-to-lovers trope or the simple yet effective forbidden love.
We'll be putting your Ask Penguin requests to some of our Penguin colleagues later in the show. Before that, hold onto your hats and your heartstrings as I'm joined by the bestselling romance author and BookTok favourite, Emily Henry. Emily is the New York Times bestselling author of the brilliant romantic comedies Beach Read, You and Me on Vacation, Book Lovers, Happy Place, and Funny Story. Her latest novel, Great Big Beautiful Life, is set on the balmy Little Crescent Island, home to a reclusive heiress, where sparks fly between two rival writers who are in competition for the scoop of a lifetime.
Emily, thank you so much for speaking to us. I have loved living in your books. I really, really love the premise of Great Big Beautiful Life and the setting. It’s such a rich story. So tell us about what inspired it to begin with.
Emily Henry:
Well, first of all, thank you. That's very kind. I think every book that I have ever written starts out as like the most stereotypical serial killer board that you can picture just inside my brain, and it's just everything that I'm interested in right at that moment and everything that's exciting to me or fascinating. And so for this one, there were a few different starting points that the intersection of which is kind of like what created Great Big Beautiful Life. So, on the one hand, I knew I wanted to write something about a complicated mother-daughter relationship. I have written a lot about father-daughter relationships. I've written about sisters, but I hadn't really dug into that relationship, and I think it's one of the stickiest and most interesting and most formative relationships out there. And so I knew from the beginning that I wanted Alice, the narrating character, to have this complicated loving relationship with her mother that would be kind of explored throughout the course of the book. So that was one very sort of superficial or maybe superficial isn't the right word, but just one element that isn't the first thing that would come to mind, I don't think when you look at this book, but it was very important to me from the very beginning. That was a thread of this story.
And then, I was thinking a lot about legacy, which I think folds in very nicely with mother-daughter relationships. I was thinking about things that get passed down to us knowingly or unknowingly from the generations before us and how so much of that I think comes from whether our needs were met, whether the people who came before us, whether their needs were met, especially with regards to love. And so I knew I wanted to write this sprawling family history from the very beginning, basically, of this family, like what shaped these people, how did we get here and where did it all start? How, how does a family curse essentially come to be? What is that?
On top of that, at the same time, uh, one of my closest friends was pregnant and she told me that she found herself just getting angrier and angrier as her pregnancy went on, and she's not an angry person. She found herself getting increasingly angry because she was just thinking about the world that her daughter was going to be entering. And obviously you care about that baby in a way that you can't even like love yourself. I mean, maybe not obviously, but I think, I think that's what was happening with my friend. I think the world that was good enough for her was not going to be good enough for her daughter and it was making her really, really angry. And we were talking a lot about what it is to be a woman on this planet and the sensation that you don't entirely belong to yourself, that when you're out in public, you're expected to be you know, just delighted by everything and everyone, you know, like I don't know, like there's, there's just a lot that comes with it. There's a lot of complicated…good and bad things that come with being a girl or a woman in this world and I think when you look at these families, these famous families of real life, and then, of course, of this, of the book, you know, you talk about like the British royal family and the Kennedys and, you know, the, the Presley Keoughs, there's, there's these legacy families who you watch the things that we're talking about, you watch that happen via the tabloids or the internet or whatever, you watch their family blessings and curses be passed along through time and you watch also this hyperreal version of not belonging to yourself unfold because, you know, when there's like a royal baby, that's not just those two people's baby, that's everybody's baby. Like that's, you know, and I, so I was really fascinated by that, by the way that my friend who's just a normal person who was having a baby was already wrestling with these feelings of like I want my daughter to belong like only to herself, and I don't want the world to beat her down or expect these things of her or put these things on her. And then also just being a person who's fascinated by pop culture and has always been really intrigued by these larger-than-life families thinking about that being like the very extreme version of it because, yeah, like you are like entertainment for so many people. And so that was sort of how Margaret came to be. I wanted to write about a character who was born into this world where from her very first breath, the world knew who she was, but also she does not fully belong to herself. And I just found all that really fascinating. So that's a very long answer of how this specific book came to be, but it really did start in all those different points at the same time.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's a perfect answer. And you know, it sounds quite, I don't know, it sounds like a silly thing to say, but I feel like it's quite rare to read this, but tell us why it's important that your female protagonists are so funny? They are so witty throughout. They're not the ones who are laughing at the jokes of the guys. They are the ones making the jokes, making each other laugh, which I absolutely loved.
Emily Henry:
Well, thank you. Yeah, I don't know, it's funny, I guess I've never thought so much about it being important, but I just think it is like my experience, so many of my friends are my female friends are so funny and I love their male partners too, and they're also funny in their own ways, but a lot of us want to be sort of like the star of the show.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That sounds familiar!
Emily Henry:
We're not really, yeah, you're like not necessarily looking to share the limelight, you want someone who appreciates your jokes. I don't know, I think it's mostly important to me from a story standpoint because there are things I really love that are utterly humourless, but most of my favourite things, even when they're meant to be taken seriously, have a good sense of humour. And that's what makes me really latch on to something. And so I tend to write books that have a little bit of heft, a little, sometimes a bit of a gut punch and I definitely think this is one of my more emotional books. But as a reader, I would not want that without like a sense of humour. Like that's, I don't know, it's just like a processing tool so. It's always just kind of doing one, what I know how to do and then two, what I would want as a reader.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And are you, when you're writing your books, how are you, because I guess romance is so subjective and yet it's one of the kind of the biggest, most popular genres, and we have all fallen in love with the same men, with the same book boyfriends. So how do you approach like your, the love, how do you approach the character to make them as niche, to make them as individual as possible, but also as lovable as possible?
Emily Henry:
Well, I think you just nailed it. I think for people who aren't romance readers, there's obviously a lot of stereotypes that come to mind and people I think who aren't romance readers think that they know what a romance hero is like and they think that he is, first of all, Fabio. Like this is such a dated reference, not super applicable, but they don't really, if you didn't read a lot in the genre, then you would be forgiven for assuming that we're reading and writing these books full of like perfect men. And that is not the case and I don't think that's what makes a reader fall in love with a particular love interest. I think what you said that it has to feel very niche. He has to feel very specific because then he feels like a real person. So I think writing imperfect characters who feel real are the key and part of that to me is figuring out what their imperfections are and what they're doing to get past those or how they're just like how they're trying. Like I want to read about imperfect people trying their best and I think that's why they love them and I think it's also why they love my female protagonists. I think that's just something like, most of us, I do think and hope that most of us are actually just trying our best and want to be the best versions of ourselves. It's just hard.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's so hard.
So what about Hayden then? What is kind of, what are his imperfections that you wanted to make as authentic as possible?
Emily Henry:
Well, I wanted Hayden to be a mirror or an inverse of Alice in a lot of ways. And so Alice is, she moves through the world assuming the best in people. And I think when I'm at my best, that's the way I am. It's not how I always am. But I think that's the way to try to be is when you meet someone, even if they're being like kind of an asshole, don't assume that they're always like that and leave room for the possibility that you could be misinterpreting something. I wanted her to be that way specifically because of Margaret's character, which is a character who's been so thoroughly in the limelight that she hasn't received that kind of compassionate view of herself. So because Margaret was this character who had been misconceived or misinterpreted for her whole life I really wanted Alice to be someone who goes at every interaction and every experience with this openness. And so with Hayden, I wanted him to be her foil. I wanted him to be kind of sceptical and, you know, if you are a sceptic and you meet someone like this who's total sunshine and just seems so interested in you and whatever, it can be quite jarring and you can feel like that's not real. That's like you're being fake right now. And I wanted to see what happened when this person who is so guarded collided with this person who is so open and so willing to understand. While both of them are also trying to get this story from a woman who is guarded. It's like, does the person who is the soft open sunshine beam pull it out of her, does the person who's this stone facade inspire her to speak?
Rhianna Dhillon:
It does feel like in the past people have been very dismissive of the romance genre, but do you think that there's been a shift recently in how it's perceived?
Emily Henry:
There's definitely been a shift as far as readers, and I think, my theory is this. I think two different things happened. I think first, romance publishers started using these cute cartoony covers that were less intimidating to people who hadn't read romance before because it wasn't like the clinch cover of like a hot shirtless guy, you know, holding a woman. I think that was less intimidating to people who hadn't read romance before, it looked more like a Sophie Kinsella, which is a rom-com but it's not like romance, you know, it's not like, there's no, I don't think, I can't think of any Sophie Kinsella novels that have like on-page sex in them and I think a lot of the shaming around romance, some of it was like chick lit gets that shame too, but I think some of it is like you're reading about sex and that's for some reason bad and humiliating.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Ridiculous, what a ridiculous notion!
Emily Henry:
Yeah, I know, and it's like, well, lit fic has sex too it’s just depressing and creepy usually, so yeah, with like weird descriptions of boobs famously, but, so I think that the publisher push for that, you know, to try this new approach with a slightly less, romancey romance cover helped. And then I also think that this new generation of readers, I think they're the reason that it has broken through to the mainstream. I think they're just unapologetic and unabashed in their love for this genre and they're not ashamed to like books about women in love and they're not ashamed to like books that have sex in them. And they're not ashamed to like talk about it all over the internet and to share the books they love with each other. So I think it's been so reader driven and so to answer your question in the most long-winded way possible, which is my MO. Yes, I think there's been a shift, but I don't think that it's reached its full potential yet because I still also have all of these romance book adaptations in the works and it's really interesting seeing the attitudes toward romance in Hollywood, which I think are still really far behind the attitudes toward romance in publishing.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's really interesting though, because, you know, like rom-coms were so huge in the 90s and 00s, they were like the best films.
Emily Henry:
Well, and in the 40s, I mean it's so great.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Ah, the screwball comedies that we got!
Emily Henry:
And if you look back at like the Oscar nominations and winners in the Golden Age of Hollywood, like so much of it is like romantic comedy. I don't really know what happened. I don't really know how it became like I, I don't know what happened. We're working on it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And when you're drawing out your characters, do you sort of cast them in your head?
Emily Henry:
I don't. I really don't. Yeah, which is, I have now learned, probably for the best because you know, you're not gonna, that's not gonna be who's in it no matter even if you did. I do love to ask my readers like once a book fully exists, like who would you fan cast and that's really fun. But to me it's like I don't even, basically everything in my books except for the people just have like a couple of distinct characteristics and they're not like real people who I could… you know what, like another thing going off of that trying to name male protagonists in romance. I always thought it was so funny that a lot of them have these like uncommon names that you feel like, oh, I've never heard anyone have that name and it just got made up for this romance novel. And I used to think it was like, oh, they just wanted to make up like an edgy interesting name and now I'm like, you know, how however many books in and I’m like I'm running out of like standard boring common men's names that I don't also know someone with. That's the main issue because every time you think of a good name, you're like, oh, that's a good name and then 5 minutes later you're like, my uncle is named that. I'm not gonna like, I can't do it. I can't do it. And it's like I need to know fewer people, I think.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah, yeah, that's such a good point. But also, I do feel like Hayden is an, I don't think I've ever read a male protagonist named Hayden.
Emily Henry:
Yes, I did, you know, and in general it's like I like to do just kind of boring bland names because I don't like it to like pull someone out of the story, but eventually…
Rhianna Dhillon:
…you need to get a bit more specific.
And we sort of, I guess we automatically think of the characters when it comes to the romance aspect of a book, but how important um to your writing is the location, the sense of romance that comes from a place.
Emily Henry:
For me, it's really important. And for this one, you know, they're on this little island off the coast of Georgia. I thought that aesthetic was like really romantic and also sort of haunted-feeling. And so it felt like the perfect place to write a romance with also kind of an element of mystery, and it gave me an excuse to like go to a little Georgian island for research.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And so you go, you scope out the place that you're writing about and like the cafes, the restaurants, do they come from your imagination or are they there?
Emily Henry:
So I always go to real places and then I make up a town because I, again, like I want people to feel like this is a familiar thing, like people who are from those areas or who've been to those areas, I want it to feel familiar and jog things in their minds, but I don't want it to pull them out of the story when I describe a cafe that is not there. So I'm always making amalgamations of various towns.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And we've been talking quite a lot about the rise of spice and also tropes in romance. So how do you approach that?
Emily Henry:
I think I've said this before in other interviews, but the way that I approach it is sort of like - You're just running down a mountain like with your eyes closed, sort of. Writing a sex scene before you've published is like fine. It's like, you know, it's a part of the story. It makes sense for the characters, you know what they would do. It's just like writing any other scene. But then after you've published, once you keep writing them and you're aware people are going to be reading these and it is so specific and it is so subjective. A lot of people are not going to like it. And it's fine. It's not your job for them to like it. It's your job to write something that makes sense for these two characters that you believe in. Most people would not want an audience while having sex! They would not want someone to be rating it and being like, I don't like that. I found that really cringe. You're like, guess what? So did I. So I tend to write them very, very quickly and then they don't get edited until later in the game and it's like I edit them kind of as quickly as I can. I don't want to touch it too much and make it weird. It's like I just want it to be accurate to what I think those characters would do and how everything would unfold for them. Yeah, I mean, I both enjoy writing them and like, you know, dread it. I enjoy it and I dread it!
Rhianna Dhillon:
And in terms of of tropes, do you have a favourite that you either like to read or that you like to write, you know, like the something to lovers?
Emily Henry:
Yeah, I love to read a good enemies-to-lovers, but I do think, I think it's just for some reason it's one of the favourites for everyone, not for everyone, but like in real life, I don't want that at all. Yeah, I think that's why I love them as a reader because I'm like in real life, this is a nightmare to me, but it's fun when fiction can pull it off and I think like for me it especially tends to work in like, yeah, fantasy or in historical because there's like more reasons for people to be enemies in a way that is believable and isn't just them like being mean to each other for no reason, which I'm like not into, yeah.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What do you think about the happily ever after then, you know, how do you think about that when you're leaving your readers with that, the sort of final taste? Do you like to leave them with what might be, or do you like to really be like, they were good, they were happy, they were fine.
Emily Henry:
Yeah. Oh, that's so, that's such an interesting point. I mean for me when I'm writing these books, like if they end up together in the book, then to me I'm like they make it as long as they, they can, and by that I mean. What's important to me about a happily ever after is that you're saying this moment of them being happy and together is the point of the story. And it's like the truth of the story. And it's, you know, like I expect those characters to stay together. The other side of that is that like, realistically, if I were to write through their entire lives, we would get to a point that's like Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy. Like one of them, eventually is going to die. Probably they're not going to both die together like in a plane crash. That happily ever after, that period at the end of the sentence right there, is to me just an indicator of where the value of the story is. And you could just as easily write a story that follows these people all the way to the end and leaves you in like a heaving mess of sobs, and that would also be true. But I think the point of life is like those moments of joy and love and happiness, and that's why I concern myself with those in what I'm writing and when I leave my readers with a happily ever after, I mean it. And I also know that a happily ever after is still gut wrenching like in the end, like we should all be so lucky to get to love someone for a long, long time and then be devastated when they're gone. Like that's like that's best-case scenario. And it's not, it's not great. It's horrible, but it's also beautiful. And like I said, I think it's the point of being here.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah. Is there a book that sort of you feel has had like the greatest impact on you as a writer? Doesn't even have to be a romance, but one's just always been with you.
Emily Henry:
I guess I would say that this had the biggest impact on me as a writer in that I think it was the book that made me want to be a writer when I was like 8 years old or something, was The Giver, which, you know, we had to read for school and I was so, like at 8 years old, I was so blown away by that book because there's like a turn at a certain point where you realise that the world that you've been reading about is more different from your world than you knew it was, and it changes everything you just read and it made me realise the power of books, honestly made me realise the power of a story that you could make people think about their worlds differently. And that, you know, I was already a big reader, but I think at that point, that was when I started wanting to like, it felt like a magic trick. It felt like I had watched someone do a magic trick and I was like, I have to learn how to do that. I have to learn how to do that magic trick.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Who do you think is like the greatest literary couple?
Emily Henry:
Oh my gosh. Well, what's funny is the first, not quite couple that comes to mind are just so toxic, but I love them and they also were quite formative to me, which is Heathcliff and Cathy from Wuthering Heights. I'm like they're not even a couple per se, but if a man cries over your corpse after digging it out of the ground, is he not your soul mate? After driving you to, death, essentially, yeah.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And also I was wondering, as a romance writer, do people come to you for advice about love?
Emily Henry:
No, I think people come to me to tell me their stories and, and that like when, you know, when people read You And Me On Vacation, I feel like I got a lot of messages from people who wanted to tell their story that was similar, either like a longtime friend who they fell in love with and wound up with or a longtime friend who they fell in love with but didn't end up with and how it makes people just feel seen and then they want to share their story. But as far as advice, I think most people don't actually want it, and especially not about their love lives. Because it's like you know what advice your friends are gonna give you, you don't ask.
Rhianna Dhillon:
You don't know the answer!
So is there one essential romance novel that you think everyone should read regardless of their romance experience?
Emily Henry:
Oh man!
Rhianna Dhillon:
Like if you could press one book into somebody's hand as they're leaving your house, what would it be?
Emily Henry:
OK, well, when it's, if this is a person who has made it into my house. Then I am probably pressing Sherry Thomas's Luckiest Lady in London into their hand, which is a historical romance, and it was the, well, it was the first historical romance I ever read, and it was because my friend who is also a writer, Brittany Cavallaro, told me I had to read it and she basically pressed it into my hand and it is these very morally complex characters where it's like, basically the premise is there's this woman, Louisa, whose family is very poor. She needs to secure a husband, obviously, so that they can go on existing. So she is pulling out all the stops and basically gives herself a makeover, is wearing like a padded corset to give herself boobs. Like she has, I think, she has like a funny front tooth. Like she's just like a very normal person who's sexing herself up to get a rich husband. And meanwhile, there's Felix who's known as the ideal gentleman of, I think this is Victorian era maybe, and so he just has like perfect manners and he's wealthy and he's handsome and obviously he has no interest in getting married and so all the mamas want him to marry their daughter. And he is also like, he's not really the perfect man he pretends to be. And so he recognises in Louisa that she is like this cunning woman and he sees the strings that she's pulling and the way that she's manipulating these men and he's just sort of fascinated by it because he can tell she's like full of shit essentially and he is also full of shit, you know, it is sort of like the Darcy thing in a way where it's like eventually, his fascination turns to admiration and then he's very in lust with her, but she's like, well, I'm not going to be your mistress because I need to get married and you know, I'm not doing that. I need to marry a rich man so this will not be happening. And it's just really fun and like I said, the characters are really morally complex and they do kind of bad things to each other, but because it's historical, you're like, I don't know, like it doesn't feel as, like it's OK. I guess it's OK. It is.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It’s more forgivable somehow.
Emily Henry:
It really is, I don't know, it was different back then. It was hard. She does such a good job getting you into the characters' heads that when they're doing these bad things to each other, you're kind of like, but I get it. Which is just good writing. It's just good writing.
Rhianna Dhillon:
That's fair. Emily, it's been so lovely to chat to you. Thank you so much for speaking to us and Great Big Beautiful Life and all of Emily's other novels are available now, anywhere that you buy books or you can do it via the link in our show notes, and we'll also put all of Emily's other recommendations as well. Thank you so much.
Emily Henry:
Thank you. This was great.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Our series is called Ask Penguin because we're the place to find answers to all your questions about books and publishing. Every episode we take a selection of listener questions and put them to our experts here at the Penguin offices. So if you've got a question for our team, you can submit it via Instagram @PenguinUKBooks or email it to us at PenguinPodcast@PenguinRandomhouse.co.uk.
I've got an absolute stack of requests this week from listeners seeking their next romantic read. And here to help you with some suggestions are Katie Russell and Rosie Grant. Thank you so much for being with us. I'm very excited to hear some of your recommendations. I feel like you two are the real experts in love and romance. So before I dive into the listener questions, can I just find out a little bit more about both of you? What you do, which areas you work in? Katie, let's start with you.
Katie Russell:
Sure, so I'm a digital editor, so I write the articles that go on penguin.co.uk. Lots of those are roundups of best books to make you cry, best books to fall in love with, that sort of thing. But I love writing about romance, so that's why I'm here, I think.
Rhianna Dhillon:
What does particularly well with those, is it the kind of more sad romantic articles or is it the more joyful ones?
Katie Russell:
I think it's books that elicit some sort of feeling, so books to make you laugh, but also books to make you cry. They seem to do really well.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And Rosie, what about you? What do you do here at Penguin?
Rosie Grant:
So I lead our Evermore imprint, which is part of Cornerstone, which is a publishing house here at Penguin, and Evermore is all things love, spice, and sleepless nights. We work with book talkers, we work with influencers, and we work with self-published authors who are looking to move into this sort of traditional publishing, but we have everything from cowboy romance to dark romance, to sports romance, you name it, we have it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Amazing. So we are obviously talking about romantic novels on today's episode. Do you have one that is just like your go to, your favourite, the one that is dog-eared and you've reread a million times?
Katie Russell:
That's a good question. I'm not usually a big re-reader. I'm quite existential. I know, I'm quite like there's only so much time we have to read. So, I do love, I Capture the Castle, that’s a classic, but yeah, that's the one that comes to mind.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And what about you?
Rosie Grant:
I'm definitely a mood reader. So maybe I'll have a summer favourite or an autumn favourite. So at the moment I've just read the Sparrow Falls series by Catherine Cowles, and it's incredible, it has that sort of spring feel.
Rhianna Dhillon:
But do you have a favourite romantic hero or heroine?
Rosie Grant:
Or a book boyfriend as it's called? Do I have a favourite?
Katie Russell:
Oh, mine used to be Mr. Darcy. Classic.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I think everyone would like, everyone in the world who I know, Mr. Darcy was their book boyfriend, would just come to blows, like who would be the winner?
Katie Russell:
Yeah, and then when you see them in real life, you're like, you actually don't want to date Mr. Darcy
Rhianna Dhillon:
Incredibly toxic.
Rosie Grant:
I think actually I love an enemies-to-lovers and I feel like if someone was that rude to me in real life, I'd probably end up crying and then falling in love, so…
Rhianna Dhillon:
And you can't come up with that witty banter straight off the bat. That's what I have to remind myself when I'm reading. I'm like, oh God, I wish that I just had that come back, but it never, it comes like 3 days later when you're in the shower.
Katie Russell:
100%.
Rosie Grant:
But that's the beauty of reading because you can be whoever you want.
Rhianna Dhillon:
It's true, so true.
OK, I wanna start off with a genre that I have never quite managed to get into, but I sort of feel like if anyone's gonna introduce me to it, it's gonna be you two. It's romantasy. And we've had a question from someone who's looking for a fantasy romance that has the story of a tragedy, but the ending of a fairy tale, I guess like a happily ever after. So, do you have any recommendations for that, Rosie?
Rosie Grant:
I definitely have one, yes, yes, A Fate Inked in Blood, by Danielle L Jensen. It's great. It follows a character, she's so fierce, called Freya, who's in this sort of this at the start, a brutal, loveless marriage and to make things worse, she guts fish on the daily. Yeah, so quite a tragedy. And what makes her different is that she has a drop of goddess blood, which makes her sort of extremely powerful and because of that she gets sort of swept up in the forbidden romance with someone called Bjorn. And it's almost at the start you're like, oh no, she shouldn't be with him, but actually he grows on you and he's just such a better fit for her, and by the end of the book, it wraps up so wonderfully that you are practically begging for the next one, which is coming out in May, which is great. So, if you are looking for a new series…
Katie Russell:
…and just to say I've not really read much romantasy, but I've started reading A Fate Inked in Blood, and I am obsessed. Like, so I started reading it because I loved the show Vikings, so it's like very like Norse. Like inspired like all this talk about Odin and the actor's names Bjorn. I was like, yeah, I'm in. And like the dialogue is so quick and witty, like lots of sexual tension. So I'm in and I'm like, this could convert me.
Rhianna Dhilon:
You've absolutely convinced me. Thank you.
Alisa is curious about how books are labelled between YA and Adult, particularly in the romance genres, because they usually read both, as do I. Some of my favourite romance novels are YA. I think because it's that nostalgia of when you start kind of falling in love with pretty much everybody that you meet, like, you know, with really hormonal teenagers, exactly, yeah, so that's always one of my favourite subgenres.
Katie Russell”
Yeah, mine too, like I love YA and it's like the intensity of the emotion. I don't know. Yeah, what do you think?
Rosie Grant:
I think the biggest difference is YA, the characters are usually a lot younger, so maybe like early teens, growing up into that little sort of later teenhood and then it covers not as mature themes as maybe you would get with adult books. So it's like you said, it's first love, it's crushes, it's maybe some family problems. But then with adults, I think you get that spice element to it where, you know, in YA they might kiss by the end, whereas in an adult they kiss by Chapter 4 and it progresses quite quickly from there and the characters are older and they will deal with much more complex things, you know, it's not so hard hitting which sometimes you want, you don't need something so…
Katie Russell:
…although sometimes they can be, like anyone who's read The Fault In Our Stars will know what it's like to sob over a book.
Rhianna Dhillon:
Yeah. I cried so much on a plane reading that. You know, when people look at you when they walk past. What's happened?
We've got someone, @thebookbutterfly is looking for romance books about couples or situationships in their mid to late twenties as they navigate their lives as a unit as well as individuals. I love that question.
Katie Russell:
Good question. I think for me, the one that really answers that is Consider Yourself Kissed by Jessica Stanley coming out in May. So it's…
Rhianna Dhillon:
it's got a pigeon on the front!
Katie Russell:
It does! Such a good cover. Yeah, it's beautiful. It's like two people who meet, so Coralie and Adam, and it's their relationship over 10 years and it's just, it's really beautifully done. Like you really feel like you're in her head, and it's just kind of about everyday life and how a relationship can change you and in some ways it can hold you back from what you want to get out of life and in some ways those things like change. It was just really beautiful. I felt like I had lived 10 years by reading it.
Rhianna Dhillon:
And finally, we have a question from Rob who is after recommendations for if you like, oh God, it's gonna make me cry just saying the question, if you like heartbreaking romances like Wuthering Heights.
Katie Russell:
So I feel like if it's very specific to Wuthering Heights, there's a book that's coming out called The Favourites by Layne Fargo, and that is kind of like a re-telling of Wuthering Heights, but in the elite world of ice skating.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I did not know where you were going with that.
Katie Russell:
Sorry, I got that wrong. It's the world of elite figure skating. Sorry, it's slightly different, but it's these two characters, Katarina and Heath, come from very different backgrounds, like very different people, but have this electric chemistry on and off the ice, but everything kind of goes wrong at the Olympics and yeah, and then it's decades later, they're doing this big documentary and Katarina's kind of sharing her side of what happened. So it's kind of like Daisy Jones and the Six vibes, but with this really intense love story at its centre.
Rhianna Dhillon:
My goodness, I'm hooked already. I was hooked from skating. What about you?
Rosie Grant:
I guess I have sort of more modern-day sort of heart-wrenching romance which is Paige Toon’s Seven Summers. And it follows Liv and Finn who one summer, they have a great passionate, romantic night together which ends in tragedy. Keep the spoilers close to me. And they agree to get through this, they'll spend every summer with each other if they're single. So they go through six summers and it's now onto the seventh and Liv actually meets someone, a mysterious man called Tom, and she's starting to realise maybe I can get through life without this heartbreak that I've been keeping on to for seven years. And it's, you know, you've got that sort of element of, we have Liv and Finn to Liv and Tom, and it's just a really lovely. Like if you're looking for a book that will break your heart and then stitch it right back up again at the end, it's perfect. There'll be tears, there'll be laughter, and it's a really lovely book.
Rhianna Dhillon:
I need the happily ever after again, personally. Those were all brilliant. Thank you so much. Really, really great recommendations. And thank you to everyone who sent in a question, I hope that we've been able to help you find your next great love story. You can find links to all of the books that we've mentioned today in our show notes. I'll be back in a fortnight, and if you're looking for any non-romantic book suggestions, then check out some of our older episodes. We've got loads of suggestions for you. Why not subscribe so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening, and I'll see you next time.