I also have to thank my incredible UK team over at Viking, especially Vikki, Georgia, Rosie, and Poppy.
Immense gratitude to Taylor and the whole Root Literary team—including but not limited to Holly, Melanie, Jasmine, and Molly. You all are the more organized, more savvy, more pragmatic half of my brain, and I would be lost in this business without you. Huge thanks also to Heather and the rest of Baror International for getting my work into the hands of readers all over the world, and to my tireless film agent, Mary, as well as Orly, Nia, and the rest of the UTA team.
Publishing has a lot of fairy godparents, and I want to thank a few of mine from the past handful of years: Robin Kall, Vilma Iris, Zibby Owens, Ashley Spivey, Becca Freeman, Grace Atwood, and Sarah True.
Additionally, I wouldn’t be where I am today without Book of the Month Club and my local independent bookstore Joseph-Beth Booksellers, not to mention all the other indie shops across the US and beyond who’ve so graciously supported me and hosted virtual events over these last two strange years. You’ve worked so hard to find ways to connect authors and readers in the midst of a global pandemic, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
One of my absolute favorite things about getting to publish in this space is how many kind, generous, funny, smart, empathetic people I’ve been lucky enough to cross paths with. Some (but certainly not all) of those include Brittany Cavallaro, Jeff Zentner, Parker Peevyhouse, Riley Redgate, Kerry Kletter, David Arnold, Isabel Ibañez, Justin Reynolds, Tehlor Kay Mejia, Cam Montgomery, Jodi Picoult, Colleen Hoover, Sarah MacLean, Jennifer Niven, Lana Popović Harper, Meg Leder, Austin Siegmund-Broka, Emily Wibberley, Sophie Cousens, Laura Hankin, Kennedy Ryan, Jane L. Rosen, Evie Dunmore, Roshani Chokshi, Sally Thorne, Christina (and) Lauren, Laura Jane Williams, Jasmine Guillory, Josie Silver, Sonali Dev, Casey McQuiston, Lizzy Dent, Amy Reichert, Abby Jimenez, Debbie Macomber, Laura Zigman, Bethany Morrow, Adriana Mather, Katie Cotugno, Heather Cocks, Jessica Morgan, Victoria Schwab, Eric Smith, Adriana Trigiani, and (my absolutely perfect audiobook narrator, friend, and fellow author) Julia Whelan.
The rest of my friends and my family: You know who you are, and I love you so much. Thank you for your love, support, and patience. There’s no one I’d rather be quarantined with.
And lastly, the biggest thank-you ever to everyone who’s read, reviewed, bought, borrowed, lent, and posted about my books. You have given me an incredible gift, and I will never stop appreciating it.
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READERS GUIDE
BOOK LOVERS
EMILY HENRY
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BEHIND THE BOOK
I LOVE HALLMARK MOVIES. I love the quaint settings. I love the excessive number of sweaters and knee-high boots. I love the aspirational level of commitment to seasonal décor in every home. Most of all, I love the happy endings.
And having seen enough of these low-angst, made-for-TV delights (Hallmark and otherwise), I found myself fascinated with one particular iteration of the small-town romance. It goes like this: an uptight, joyless, career-obsessed main character gets shipped off from the big city they call home to conduct business in Middle America. They don’t want to go! They don’t even have the right shoes for this kind of setting! But once they’re there, not only do they manage to fall in love with one of the sweet, small-town locals, but they also manage to learn the true meaning of life. (Spoiler alert: it’s not a high-power career in a major metropolis.)
And everyone ends up happy. Well, everyone except for the ex. The woman (or man) left behind in the city, whose entire role is usually to call the lead character and bark at them over the phone, remind them that they went to Smalltown, USA for business—to conduct a mass layoff, or to crush the local toy emporium so Big Toy can open its 667th location in the heart of the town, while maybe bulldozing a gazebo or two on the way.
She is an obstacle to the real love story, the meant to be relationship. Or she’s a foil to the local sweetheart, there primarily to show how much better the other woman understands the lead. Or she’s the not-evil-just-out-of-touch little devil on his shoulder, trying to lead him astray from this new, better life.
Again, it has to be said, I love these movies, and plenty don’t play out exactly like this, but enough do that I found myself asking, Who is this woman?
Where does her story go from here?
Does she go on to have her own small-town life-changing experience?
Does every uptight city person have to leave the city and fall in love with a carpenter to get their happy ending?
Or does her happy ending even look like her ex’s does? What does she crave?
And, possibly most exciting to me of all: why does she so badly want her boyfriend to take care of business and do his job to begin with?
Those were the questions that created Book Lovers, a book whose working title was, in fact, City Person.
It wasn’t just an homage to all those fish-out-of-water stories I love so much, but also to the women who feel like fish out of water, the ones who aren’t sure whether they’re cued up for a happy ending.
The Devil Wears Prada’s Miranda Priestly.
The Parent Trap’s Meredith Blake.
You’ve Got Mail’s Patricia Eden.
The designer-wearing, stiletto-donning, red-pen-wielding, treadmill-using, salad-eating women with very little time for, or interest in, baking, camping, or watching sunrises.
This was my exploration of who those women really are, and what a happy ending might look like for them. Not a perfect ending, but an apt one. A happily ever after that’s as messy, complicated, and ultimately irresistible as I find Book Lovers’ city-dwelling, designer-wearing, Peloton-riding, red-pen-wielding lead characters.
So whether you’re a small-town sweetheart, an ambitious careerperson, or a different kind of character entirely, I hope you love Charlie and Nora. And I hope their story reminds you there is no one right way to be, no one-size-fits-all happy ending, and no one else on earth who can be exactly who you are.
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DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
Nora sees herself almost as the villainess in someone else’s love story. Who are some of your favorite villainesses—whom you either outright love or love to hate?
