Cat Sebastian’s latest queer historical romance is a love letter to resilience and the power of bravery. Set in 1960 New York City, the same midcentury journalism milieu of Sebastian’s 2023 novel, We Could Be So Good, You Should Be So Lucky tells the story of shortstop Eddie O’Leary and journalist Mark Bailey, both of whom are in a slump.
For the last year, following the death of his longtime partner, Mark has been on sabbatical from his role as an arts and culture journalist at the Chronicle. But his break is up and his first assignment is writing a highbrow sports feature about Eddie, a struggling player on the new baseball team in town, the New York Robins.
Eddie’s dealing with the worst slump of his career and desperately misses his old team in Kansas City, Missouri, both for the friends he made and the privacy a smaller stage afforded. No professional athlete or public figure really ever has privacy, but a gay baseball player in 1960 has a reason to keep secrets. That being said, Eddie is still surprisingly open and upbeat, the sunshine to Mark’s grumpiness.
One of Sebastian’s hallmarks is excellent character development, and how she uses her characters as a window into a book’s setting. We learn about the New York Robins and the Chronicle through the actions of Mark and Eddie. It’s very enjoyable to spend time in the presence of these likable, relatable characters, but their emotions and experiences will also grab readers by the heartstrings.
Eddie needs to stay at least somewhat closeted to continue playing baseball, and Sebastian does an exceptional job of outlining the difficulties of living and loving as a gay public figure. Mark’s late partner had political aspirations that required the two of them to pretend to be platonic roommates. Mark knows how to keep the personal parts of his life private, even when the pressure of maintaining that discretion is overwhelming. As their relationship evolves, one of the central conflicts is how Mark can balance his feelings for Eddie with his desire to avoid having to hide them.
Like baseball fans throughout history, You Should Be So Lucky roots for victory—even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
A romance between a baseball player and a journalist in 1960 New York City, Cat Sebastian’s latest is as enjoyable as it is emotional.
How to End a Love Story, screenwriter Yulin Kuang’s debut novel, is a contemporary romance that succeeds on every level, from her characters’ compelling emotional journey to the unique plotline to Kuang’s fresh authorial voice.
Helen Zhang is the successful author of a young adult series that’s been optioned for television. Her work targets readers the same age she was when her sister, Michelle, died by suicide. Helen’s life, as one would expect, is split between the before and the after.
Grant Shepard’s life broke along the exact same fault line. A handsome, affable homecoming king and football star who went to the same school as the Zhang sisters, he was out driving late the night Michelle ran in front of his car. In the 13 years since the incident, Grant’s become a successful, sought-after screenwriter in Los Angeles. Imagine his surprise when he’s asked to lead the writer’s room on Helen’s new show. And then imagine her surprise when he says yes.
A romance between two people on opposite ends of the same tragic event, How to End a Love Story is a mature, compelling and relatable story of healing that resists simplifying its characters at every turn. Helen’s Chinese American heritage is richly depicted, and it shapes the relationships she has with her family (her mother, in particular), but it is not her sole defining trait. And while Grant may struggle with panic attacks and feeling worthy of love, he also works to convince Helen that it’s OK to move on with her life. Their relationship develops at an organic, realistic pace: Helen must first come to terms with the fact that she’s working with Grant at all before she can come to grips with liking him and, eventually, loving him.
Kuang’s own experiences as a screenwriter shine through on every page. Her depictions of writer’s rooms and meetings with executives are lush, smart and visual, with each sentence packed full of insightful nuances and quiet moments of reflection. These are characters who have battled their demons and come out the other side, stronger than before. Were this a movie, it would be Oscar-worthy.
How to End a Love Story is a mature, compelling and relatable romance that resists simplifying its characters at every turn.
She’s penned the upcoming film adaptation of Emily Henry’s beloved rom-com People We Meet on Vacation. She’s set to write and direct the movie version of another beloved Henry rom-com, Beach Read. But first, Yulin Kuang is going to release her own romance, How to End a Love Story, a sharp, poignant love story between Helen and Grant, two screenwriters linked by a terrible accident that happened when they were in high school.
You’ve been working in Los Angeles as a screenwriter and director for years. How did you approach the shift from storytelling for the screen to storytelling for the page? I wrote this book at a time when almost everything else I was working on was an adaptation of something, and I wanted to see if I had anything original left within me. I meant to write myself an original feature script to direct, but it was October and NaNoWriMo [National Novel Writing Month] was in the air.
I used to write fan fiction (you’d have to go pretty far back to find it, two decades minimum) and I studied creative writing at Carnegie Mellon, so writing this book felt a bit like stepping into an alternate timeline where I picked books instead of TV/movies after graduation.
From a craft perspective, I approached writing this novel as if I was directing the movie in the reader’s mind. The note I kept getting from my editor, Carrie Feron, was “What does it smell like?”—which I never think about in screenwriting! I ended up giving myself a diary exercise for a month where I’d spend a few lines describing the scents of places I’d been throughout the day.
“. . . you can’t write 90K+ words without putting something of yourself on the page.”
The story starts when Helen is reunited with Grant after joining the writers room for the TV adaptation of her young adult novels. Did any real-life experiences of your own inspire those moments? I created a short film called “I Ship It,” which turned into a web series, which then turned into a TV show that the CW canceled after airing two episodes in 2019. (You can now watch the show on the CBC Gem app in Canada and nowhere else. Looking back on that experience, I think I had a lot of ideas and passion, and not a lot of control over my instrument, as my piano teacher might say.
I was an incredibly young showrunner and I definitely felt such imposter syndrome throughout the process, which Helen feels too, in the book. I hired a number two, Ann Lewis Hamilton, who was much more experienced than me: She had worked on shows I loved growing up like “One Tree Hill” and “Grey’s Anatomy,” and she taught me a lot in terms of expectations in the writers room. I also developed a 27 Dresses pilot for ABC Studios with Aline Brosh McKenna, and I learned so much from her about how to interpret notes from producers and how to pitch a project and myself to a studio.
These are just two of the many, very smart women who’ve helped me in my career; I feel like I poured every bit of good advice I’ve received since graduation into this book. It felt less like inspiration from real life and more like a feverish scribbling down of all the industry wisdom I’d managed to acquire by 2021, lest I forget it the next time someone asked.
Now that you’re an author yourself, will you approach future adaptations differently? I’m currently working on an adaptation of Emily Henry’s Beach Read, which is about two authors who decide to switch genres for a summer. I’ve been joking with my producer Karina Rahardja that I’m a method director, and I had to go write a novel so I could understand these characters better.
The main thing I’ve learned in the process is that it’s so very, very vulnerable to write a book! So if anything, I’m approaching any authors I potentially adapt in the future with the firsthand understanding that you can’t write 90K+ words without putting something of yourself on the page.
Grant tries to find a character in Helen’s book he identifies with (he thinks he’s a “Bellamy, with a Phoebe rising”). Which character in the book do you most identify with? What characters from your other projects have you found pieces of yourself in? I gave Helen all my insecurities and ambitions from when I was 18, and then asked myself how all those qualities would have aged if I’d lived the alternate timeline where I moved to New York after graduation and became a novelist instead of a screenwriter.
I didn’t particularly like myself back then, so the most compelling part of writing Helen was staring into that black mirror reflecting back the parts of me I’ve actively tried to grow away from, and to see what could have happened if I’d grown into them instead.
I gave Grant every attractive quality I’ve ever coveted as a working screenwriter; mainly, that he’s “good in a room,” which is something I really struggled with in the beginning, as an inside child who grew up extremely online and matured into a classic introvert. But my reps tell me “good in a room” is how I am described after general meetings, which is of course nice to hear!
In my other projects, I’m partial to Ella in “I Ship It” (the TV series) and the titular Irene of “Irene Lee, Girl Detective” (a short film on my YouTube channel that I’m still quite proud of). I love hungry, ambitious, obsessive women.
Do you really think that second kisses are a bigger deal than the first kiss? Why? I’m pretty sure I wrote that line because of a specific plotline in “Dawson’s Creek,” season three episode 19 (one of the greatest episodes of television possibly ever???) with Joey and Pacey, where they had already kissed in an earlier episode, but the second kiss was what made it A Thing.
So maybe yes, as a viewer of How to End a Love Story’s fictional television program, second kisses are a bigger deal than first kisses!
But in real life, your mileage may vary.
“I love hungry, ambitious, obsessive women.”
Helen and Grant are linked through a tragedy that occurred when they were teenagers. Was that why you made Helen a successful YA writer? I wanted to write someone who was a little mentally stuck in her senior year of high school, but was chafing against it as she was trying to grow as a person and an artist. YA felt like a natural fit for that journey, in the context of this story.
I have a much younger sister; the age gap between us is 14 years. I definitely felt some pressure to be a good role model for my sister, and I was very consciously avoiding themes that might feel too “adult” in my work for a long time as a result.
If you watch any of my vlogs on my YouTube channel from the 2010s (haha please don’t), I think it’s very clear I’m speaking primarily to a YA audience on early BookTube, while also fully embracing the twee Tumblr culture of the era which manifested in me and my work as, how should we describe it . . . a pretty and sexless aesthetic? Does that feel accurate? I was so horny and so repressed, and the YA of it all definitely played a role: It meant I could talk about romance and fandom without worrying that my mother would die of shame or my sister couldn’t watch my vlogs or read the books I was recommending.
Anyway, I eventually got over that, and so did Helen.
Great novels don’t necessarily result in great movies. What do you think a book needs in order to translate well to the screen? A good screenwriter and a great premise.
What is it about Emily Henry’s work that you connect to? What is the easiest part of translating it to the screen, and what is the hardest part? I’ve spent so much time trying to claw my way into the mind of Emily Henry, I sometimes wonder if she senses it. Emily, can you hear me right now?!
In seriousness, I first connected with Emily’s work because we both appear to be obsessed with romance, ’90s rom-coms and art with a meta component. I told Sarah MacLean all this when we first met over lunch, and she looked at me like I had missed something obvious, then said, “And grief, clearly.” I wonder if all writers writing after the pandemic are a little obsessed with grief, though.
The easiest part: Emily’s dialogue adapts like butter. The hardest part is finding visually compelling ways to show all that lovely interiority onscreen.
What’s next for you? Do you think you’ll stick with novels or go back to the screen? I have two more novels due in this book deal, so I will be chained to my laptop trying to squeeze blood from rocks for another 200K-ish words.
In the meantime, I have a couple projects in various stages of development on the screen side—one adaptation, one original. I like to be creatively nimble.
Photo of Yulin Kuang by Sela Shiloni.
The writer and director behind the upcoming adaptations of Beach Read and People We Meet on Vacation is staking her own claim to romance greatness.
Anita Kelly dedicates their latest rom-com, How You Get the Girl, to “every queer and trans person in Tennessee. Your joy will outlive the cruelty of your government.” A teen librarian by day, Kelly knows intimately how remarkable educators can make all the difference in the world.
Julie Parker is enjoying her first season as the head coach for East Nashville High’s women’s basketball team. By day she works as a fundraiser, but after school, for a few fun months every year, she’s the coach every student dreams of having—because Coach Julie understands teenagers. She’s engaged, approachable and supportive of her team, both on the court and off. It’s beautifully evident from the very first pages, as Julie adapts to and charms a difficult new student, Vanessa Lerner.
Vanessa’s aunt and new foster mother, Elle Cochrane, is an ex-WNBA star who hasn’t played basketball in eight years and is trying to find equilibrium in her and Vanessa’s new normal. Elle doesn’t get regularly recognized by the public any more, so she finds Julie’s instant fangirling as adorable and refreshing as she does Julie herself. When Julie asks her to be the team’s new assistant coach, Elle can’t help but say yes.
How You Get the Girl is fun, flirty and full of heart, a story of two people falling for each other despite the chaos around them. Julie wrestles with defining her love for a woman, since she’s always considered her sexuality label-less. Elle struggles with the overwhelming responsibility of suddenly becoming a parent, to a teenager no less. While these challenges and more affect Julie and Elle’s burgeoning relationship, their bond motivates and unites them. Love is big and scary and exciting, and Kelly proves that the biggest win is being brave enough to open your heart to another person.
Anita Kelly’s How You Get the Girl is fun, flirty and full of heart, a story of two people falling for each other despite the chaos around them.
Megan Frampton has once again brought history to vivid, technicolor life with the third installment of her School for Scoundrels series, Her Adventures in Temptation. This bold foray into the world of Regency damsels and the scoundrels who drive them crazy is spirited and scandalous, and Frampton’s refreshing voice gives the popular fake-relationship trope new wings.
Simeon Jones was raised by a single mother who taught him that art comes before everything . . . even love. It’s a hard mantra to shake, but he’s not a vain, cruel player. Rather, Simeon is the sensitive hunk of his group of friends, the Bastard Five. Despite the white lies and tiny manipulations he employs to navigate high society as an illegitimate artist, he’s earnest and sweet under it all.
He’s drawn to Lady Myrtle Allen, a well-to-do yet unconventional woman. Confident, independent and intelligent with a head for numbers, Myrtle enjoys eating cake and helping other women manage their finances, and she intends to make her way to London to establish a home away from her interfering, controlling family. But as upper-class Regency women cannot travel alone, Myrtle navigates her first business negotiation, paying Simeon to journey with her while posing as her husband.
Many Regency novels are super chatty, full of double-entendre and doublespeak. Frampton’s style follows suit, but her writing is as smart as her characters. Simeon and Myrtle don’t lob banter back and forth; rather, they volley information at each other with precision and speed. The characters’ different communication styles perfectly fill in the blanks for their other half: Myrtle is frank and practical, telling the truth when nobody else will; Simeon protects his soft heart with studied, elegant courtesy.
As Simeon and Myrtle fall in love, they realize that they can not only have love and their careers, but also the joy of respecting and elevating their partner’s work. It’s so easy to pull for them both, because they so clearly pull for each other.
Megan Frampton’s refreshing voice gives the fake-engagement trope new wings in Her Adventures in Temptation.
If you’ve ever had a beef with your homeowners association, you’re going to relate to Alexa Martin’s newest rom-com, Next-Door Nemesis. Because in the world of suburbia, the HOA is everybody’s enemy.
When Collins Carter moves back to her childhood home in the wake of a professional meltdown and bad breakup, she’s not expecting to run into Nathaniel Adams. They were friends once, until Nate opted for the greener pastures of teenage popularity and morphed from her best friend to nemesis nearly overnight.
Unfortunately, time has been good to Nate. He’s a hotshot realtor living his best, most successful life right next door to Collins’ parents. He’s also the current vice president of the local HOA, and struts around like he’s the king of his own little fiefdom. Martin uses Nate and Collins’ yearslong derision for each other to set up one fun disaster after another. Nate insists on being in control of everything concerning the neighborhood, while Collins creates roadblocks left and right to throw him off course. She soon has the brilliant idea to dethrone Nate on the next vote for HOA president, which for him would be tantamount to full, total failure. Collins’ embrace of chaos makes her the perfect foil for Nate’s perfection: It’s fun to see her chip away at his levelheaded facade, and it’s just as fun to see him lose his cool.
Martin uses the seemingly lighthearted HOA battle to reveal the deeper emotions both characters are trying to navigate. Winning the presidency isn’t the true goal of either character—rather, the election becomes an outlet for each to fight for control over their own destinies. It doesn’t take long for the cracks in their supposed antagonism to appear, and for the reader to realize that Collins and Nate actually love each other. Both are equally worthy of redemption, and equally capable of giving each other a second chance.
All the hallmarks of Martin’s appeal (as seen in contemporary romance gems such as Intercepted and Better Than Fiction), are present: an enviable, robust friend squad; snappy dialogue; and a slow, but very hot romantic buildup. It’s sexy. It’s steamy. And it sure is fun.
Two former best friends go to war over their local homeowners association in Alexa Martin’s steamy and extremely fun rom-com Next-Door Nemesis.
Falon Ballard’s sophomore novel, Just My Type, is a clever, upbeat rom-com that will leave a smile on readers’ faces and joy in their hearts.
Lana Parker is an expert dating and relationships columnist, but she’s also a serial monogamist who’s uninterested in (and perhaps incapable of) being single. Lana gets dumped by her latest boyfriend, rather than engaged to him, as Just My Type begins, but that’s not even the worst thing to happen to her that week. That honor belongs to the moment when Seth Carson, her high school boyfriend who is now a big-shot freelance journalist, takes an assignment from the website that publishes Lana’s column. Lana’s boss soon instructs the pair to write a dueling series of relationship articles in which Lana records her attempts to stay and enjoy being single and Seth tries to stop being a serial dater and instead become boyfriend material.
Since Seth is the one who got away, the assignment immediately proves difficult—in a delicious way—for Lana. Just My Type might have felt a bit less predictable if Ballard had flipped the gender stereotype, making Seth the one who needed to stop jumping into relationships and Lana the one who needed to learn to settle down. However, Just My Type is still a great showcase for Ballard’s talents: Her voice is fresh and flirty, her characters well developed (Lana’s unfailingly loyal, foulmouthed friend May is the kind of person we all need in our lives), and her pacing brisk and never boring. Romance readers—of all types—will be immensely entertained.
This second-chance romance between two journalists is an immensely fun showcase of author Falon Ballard’s talents.
Katee Robert returns with Radiant Sin, the fourth installment of her popular Dark Olympus series, which gives sexy updates to the classic love stories of Greek mythology. This time around, Robert uses the tale of Apollo and Cassandra as inspiration for a modern workplace romance.
In the original myth, Apollo was the god of prophecy (among many other things) and Cassandra was one of his priestesses whom he cursed: She would be able to predict the future, but no one would ever believe her. In Robert’s version of the story, Apollo is the spymaster of the isolated city of Olympus, as well as Cassandra’s boss. The pair go undercover as a couple to attend a weeklong house party in order to figure out what Minos, a mysterious new arrival in the city and the host of the gathering, is up to.
A deliciously twisted plot of fake dating, sneaky intrigue and forced proximity unfolds. Cassandra and Apollo realize just how much their quirks (and kinks) complement each other, all while unpacking the class issues within their relationship that arise from their disparate backgrounds. While Radiant Sin is lighter on the love scenes than the preceding three books in the series, there’s still plenty of steam. And Robert cleverly peppers in details that anchor the myth-inspired story in the real world, such as broken elevators, traffic delays and office politics.
While fans of Greek mythology will be tickled by Robert’s reinterpretation of Apollo and Cassandra, you need not be a classics expert to enjoy this sultry romance.
In her latest Dark Olympus romance, Katee Robert gives the myth of Apollo and Cassandra a sultry, modern spin.
Tessa Bailey, queen of the steamy rom-com, kicks off a new series set in Napa Valley with Secretly Yours. Grab a glass and settle in for an opposites-attract, grumpy-sunshine love story that’s as smooth and enjoyable as a good Pinot Noir.
As Secretly Yours begins, gardener Hallie Welch is feeling nostalgic, ruminating on Uncorked, the new wine shop in her small town that’s taking business away from the oldie but goody across the street, Corked. Hallie embarks on a one-woman attempt to save Corked but soon learns the hard way that day drinking should be done in moderation. Because in a wine-fueled haze, she writes a love letter to the object of her teenage self’s obsession, Julian Vos, who she happens to be working for over the summer.
Now a professor at Stanford, Julian is supposedly on sabbatical, but he actually just traded his rigid school schedule for a rigid novel-writing schedule. He has no idea how to relax, but the beautiful gardener his mother hired is proving to be a distraction he didn’t anticipate.
Julian’s planning tendencies are the perfect foil to Hallie’s spontaneous ones, and Bailey peppers the story with funny demonstrations of their personalities. He irons his socks; she gardens from the heart. He’s all about order; she can’t avoid chaos. He’s buttoned up; she’s wide open. Bailey’s humor and optimism shine through her characters, making both Hallie and Julian compelling and interesting figures. And fans of epistolary romances will be particularly tickled by Bailey’s modern nod to the format. Hallie’s letter is brave and cathartic, and in the good-hearted world of a Tessa Bailey rom-com, such an action deserves to be rewarded with a happily ever after.
Tessa Bailey’s Secretly Yours is a good-hearted rom-com that sparkles with humor and optimism.
Lana Ferguson makes her debut with The Nanny, a heartfelt, mature and thoughtful contemporary romance between the titular nanny and the single father she works for.
Cassie Evans thought she’d moved on from her OnlyFans days, but with a pending eviction following the loss of her job at a children’s hospital, it seems like her only option is to fall back on what she knows will pay the bills. So she’s thrilled when she lands a position as a live-in nanny instead—not because she’s ashamed of her former work, but because she closed her OnlyFans account after falling for a client who got cold feet before they met up in person.
That client is none other than Cassie’s new boss, sexy executive chef and single dad Aiden Reid, who has no idea who Cassie is when he hires her as a nanny for his 9-year-old daughter, Sophie. Cassie and Aiden have an immediate and increasingly distracting attraction to each other, but they don’t put two and two together right away. However, as they spend time together and get to know each other, they begin to suspect the other’s identity. Their chemistry sizzles hotter than a kitchen flash fire, but Aiden’s and Cassie’s statuses as employer and employee (living under the same roof, no less) obviously complicate the decision to potentially act on their feelings. Plus, once Cassie realizes who Aiden really is, she must sort through her lingering feelings of rejection and insecurity.
Everything about The Nanny is enjoyable: the plot, the pacing, the compelling characters and especially Ferguson’s wise and funny voice. It’s also extremely refreshing to see sex-positive characters who approach intimacy with maturity. Aiden doesn’t shame Cassie for her work on OnlyFans, and she doesn’t shame him for engaging with it. If you’re a fan of dirty talk and slow-burning chemistry, you’ll love The Nanny.
Fans of slow-burning chemistry and dirty talk will love The Nanny, a thoughtful romance between the titular nanny and the single father she works for.
Flirty and modern, Just as You Are by Camille Kellogg is a sapphic retelling of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Liz Baker is an occasionally impulsive yet organized Leo who loves her friends, enjoys her job and sees the bright side of almost any situation. She’s even got a positive outlook on the news that the queer magazine where she works, TheNether Fields, is about to shut down. After four years of writing sex and relationship advice articles, she’s looking forward to starting the novel she’s always wanted to write. But there’s a big downside, too: Liz and her three roommates face is that they all work at The Nether Fields, and the possibility of all four of them finding new employment and paying their bills is slim, to say the least. Fortunately, a pair of wealthy lesbians swoop in at the eleventh hour to save the day.
Daria Fitzgerald is a reserved, no-nonsense businessperson with a keen mind to match her sharp suits. She’s the complete opposite of her fellow investor in TheNether Fields, Bailey Cox, whose open, friendly personality and enthusiastic outlook put many of the staffers at ease. But Daria is unimpressed by Liz’s laundry-day get-up of cargo pants and a cardigan, confident that Liz’s personal style reflects a lazy professional ethic. Oh, how wrong she is.
Like Austen, Kellogg makes astute observations about social class, bias and the strength to be found in friendships. She cannily updates the biological Bennet sisters into the found family of Liz and her roommates but maintains the classic opposites-attract dynamic of the original novel: Reserved and clearly wealthy, Daria immediately butts heads with bold, practical and working-class Liz. Their journey to understanding is worth the chatty and introspective ride, and Austen fans will appreciate Kellogg’s clever changes to the beloved source material.
Camille Kellogg’s Just as You Are is a chatty and introspective queer spin on Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.
Funny You Should Askauthor Elissa Sussman returns with another second-chance celebrity romance, Once More With Feeling. It’s an angsty enemies-to-lovers tale about former teen pop idols who blame each other for the implosion of their careers.
Told in dual timelines, just like Funny You Should Ask, the story rotates between the pop star heyday and later, more dignified Broadway periods of Kathleen Rosenberg and Cal Kirby. Cal was once a member of America’s hottest boy band, CrushZone, and Kathleen was Katee Rose, a dazzling pop superstar. They were glittery gods at the top of their field, until they had a one-night stand that changed the trajectory of their lives. More than a decade later, Kathleen has found comfort in the relative obscurity of New York City, but she can’t turn down the opportunity to star in a show directed by Cal, who traded stadium tours for a life backstage.
Most people face first loves, cheating and breakups at some point, but only a small cadre of people have to deal with them as publicly as Cal and Kathleen did, and Sussman cleverly shows how news cycles and the glare of the spotlight amplified their experiences. Kathleen wears her anger about her fall from grace like a shroud, and the story and romance resolve before she can really get out of her own way. Her willingness to mire in self-pity may test the patience of some readers. However, Kathleen and Cal’s evolution as a couple is refreshingly complex. The chemistry that has always bubbled under the surface during their interactions is more present than ever when they’re reunited, but they’re older and have even more at stake now. This is a story of reckoning, of revisiting the mistakes and knee-jerk reactions of youth and facing them with the help of time and maturity.
Elissa Sussman returns with another dual timeline celebrity romance that explores the pressure cooker of fame and the gift of growing older and wise.
The second book in Lucy Parker’s Palace Insiders series, Codename Charming, is a light-hearted rom-com that perfectly deploys the grumpy-sunshine and fake dating tropes. Unbelievably fun on every page, it’s another all-around winner from Parker.
Petunia “Pet” De Vere is the personal assistant of Johnny Marchmont, a goofy, lovable British royal who stops just shy of being a himbo. He’s the perfect boss for Pet, who is very proficient at her job and happy to adapt to whatever Johnny throws at her. But when a blundering moment between them goes public, the tabloids assume there’s more to their relationship than duty. Johnny is a happily married man, so the palace higher-ups ask Pet to fake a relationship with Johnny’s stoic bodyguard, Matthias Vaughn, in order to immediately quash rumors of an affair.
Matthias is the opposite of his charge. Johnny goes with the flow, affably making his way through life and duty, and Matthias is there to pick up the pieces and provide a stalwart wall of support. He grew up in the foster system, and always felt like he was merely tolerated in the places he lived, rather than accepted. His history, however painful, has made him well-suited for his profession, where his serious reserve is a major asset. Having proved his indispensability time and again, Matthias agrees to the fake relationship with the very perky Petunia.
Matthias and Pet are enjoyable characters with rich backstories. They’re refreshingly mature, understanding how they fit into the narrative of the royal institution and Johnny’s life. When they gamble on a real relationship, they not only have to face the normal fears that come when you let love in, but also balance them with their individual duties. No matter what happens between them, they must maintain their professional focus given that their lives unfold, at least partially, in the public eye.
As usual, Parker surrounds her couple with a robust cast of fun supporting characters who never overshadow the two central figures. Even if you aren’t a professed Anglophile, Codename Charming is a breezy read that’ll have you smiling and dreaming of fish and chips—and maybe a quiet bodyguard who’s over the moon for you.
Lucy Parker’s breezy and winning new rom-com, Codename Charming, follows a reserved royal bodyguard and the perky personal assistant of the prince he protects.
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