Lexi Blake’s work runs the gamut of contemporary romance, from paranormal and suspense to more gently paced small-town stories. Her latest book, Bayou Baby, may be set in the small town of Papillon, Louisiana, but its family secrets, surprise inheritances and forbidden love make it just as thrilling as her previous works. We talked to Blake about her inspirations for Papillon, whose side she would pick in her main couple’s biggest disagreement and the surprising third POV character who unlocked the story for her.

Your work spans a lot of different romance subgenres. What do you like most about writing a small-town romance? Do you find that your writing changes at all when you’re working in this subgenre?
I think small-town romance fits me really well because the strongest theme in my work is about found family, and that’s super easy to do with a small town. I love the idea that the town becomes a character itself. I think I use softer language when writing a small town. Those books have a dreamier quality to them.

"I think every family has an Aunt Irene who just tells it like it is and takes no gruff from anyone."

Most romances tend to stick to the two leads’ perspectives, but Bayou Baby gives us scenes from the perspective of Celeste, Harrison’s aunt. Did you always know that you would tell part of this story from Celeste's point of view? What did that choice open up for you as a writer?
I started writing it without Celeste’s POV. She was a straight-on villain. That’s when I got stuck. When I get blocked, I’ve learned it’s almost always because I’ve skipped a step. In this case that step was Celeste having her say. I think if you don’t get in her head, it’s hard to believe that she could change. Oddly enough, Celeste was the character I felt most while writing the book. She’s gone through a lot and she’s in a fight with her past and her own grief. I think the book is richer for having Celeste’s POV.

Did you come up with more backstory for Seraphina’s great-aunt Irene than readers eventually get in the book? Were there any other hilarious bits about her that didn’t make it into the final edit?
Great Aunt Irene is the old woman I think a lot of us want to become. Maybe with fewer cats. She had a lot of cats, but she lived life on her own terms. I think every family has an Aunt Irene who just tells it like it is and takes no gruff from anyone. I think a lot of her backstory is in the letter that accompanies her will. But I certainly could see Aunt Irene wrestling a couple of gators in her younger days.

The following contains spoilers! Click to show.

Did you base Papillon, Louisiana, on any real-life small towns? Did it have any fictional inspirations?
It’s not based on any particular town, but it was inspired by my best friend’s childhood. She grew up in southeastern Texas, very close to Louisiana, and has such a love for that area. On the fictional front I think Stars Hollow, Connecticut, is always an inspiration. That’s the setting of “Gilmore Girls” for the uninitiated. It’s one of those places you just wish existed. I would absolutely live there.

What books, movies or TV shows have been getting you through the pandemic?
I’ve definitely gone to my favorite authors for comfort. I recently read Rebecca Zanetti’s Disorderly Conduct and loved it. It’s another small-town book. And Jen Armentrout’s new fantasy From Blood and Ash. I’ve watched Eurovision more times than I’m willing to admit and am willing to send stuffed lions to Netflix to get them to do a follow-up for Dan Stephens’s character. I want someone to play “Jaja Ding Dong”! As for TV, I do a lot of binge-watching old favorites right now. I’ve rewatched “Parks and Recreation” and “The Office,” and now we’re working our way through “The Big Bang Theory.”

Is there a trope or setting you haven’t explored yet in your writing that you’d love to use one day?
Oh, so many settings! I love to travel—this year has been rough on me—and I like to spend some time in the places I want to write about. I’ve spent a lot of time in New Orleans, which is probably why I set many books in that part of the country. London and New York are settings I’m super comfy with. I live in Dallas so North Texas is a big setting for me. I had trips planned for Romania and Scotland this year. Both were cancelled for obvious reasons, but I hope to get to go and potentially write about both those places. I’m super excited to announce that all of my books for the foreseeable future will be set in my backyard. I know that sucker like the back of my hand now! Also, the squirrels have real drama.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our review of Bayou Baby.

What’s next for you?
I’ve got the last book in The Forgotten series coming up in September, and I’m super excited for that. It’s called No Love Lost and it ties up a bunch of loose ends in my Masters and Mercenaries world and sets up for a new series. In December, I’ve got the third Butterfly Bayou book—Bayou Dreaming. It’s Zep and Roxie’s book and it’s a lot of fun.

Author photo by Annie Ray/Passion Pages.

In their new books, Olivia Dade and Rebekah Weatherspoon take on the celebrity romance, reveling in its fizzy escapism and dissecting the perils of public image in equal measure. Much of the social commentary in Dade’s Spoiler Alert and Weatherspoon’s If the Boot Fits comes from the fact that both of their heroines are fat. Being catapulted into fame due to their famous beaus is thus far more complicated than it would be for a heroine whose body hewed closer to our society’s restrictive beauty standards. BookPage spoke to Dade and Weatherspoon about their literary inspirations, the joys of fan fiction and fighting for fat positivity in romance.

Both Spoiler Alert and If the Boot Fits complicate the celebrity dating a non-famous person trope—April and Amanda are big, beautiful and smart women dating men who are part of an industry that generally neglects or is hostile to those who don’t fit a narrow mold. Can you talk about what inspired you, and how you approached writing a new twist on this familiar story?

Dade: For me, the part of the story I conceived first involved the star of a blockbuster show anonymously writing fan fiction critical of that show and falling in love with his online, also-anonymous BFF. Since I wanted to play out that story as realistically as possible, I couldn’t pair him with another star also writing anonymous fan fiction. One was enough! So I went with a non-famous love interest. The one thing I knew about their dynamic from the beginning: I didn’t want her to be overawed or intimidated by his fame. That lack of fear—that upending of expectations—was part of what made the story fun for me to write, and it also added one less complication to an already-complex story.

Weatherspoon: If the Boot Fits is part of a fairytale retelling trilogy, so a Cinderella story was always a part of the plan. Cinderella, at its core, is a story about a woman who rises out of poverty and neglect to be with a literal prince. Since the Pleasants were already involved in the film industry, Amanda’s role as an assistant seemed obvious. I made her fat because I always include fat characters in my series.

What are some of the books you’ve read that have done the trope of a celebrity dating a non-famous person particularly well in the past?

Dade: When I read this interview question, I looked at my bookshelf for romances that paired celebrities with non-famous love interests, and I didn’t find any. This surprised me, because I instinctively felt as if I’d read that trope many, many times before. Finally, I realized why: old-school historical romances. I grew up reading countless traditional Regencies in which dukes—handsome, wealthy, well-known pillars of the ton—fell in love with spinsters, wallflowers, governesses, bluestockings and lady's companions, many of whom had little or no social standing or wealth of their own. Those stories weren’t about regular people falling in love with celebrities, exactly, but the dynamic wasn’t entirely different, either, and I suspect I unconsciously drew from that deep well when writing Spoiler Alert.

"Writing fan fiction definitely drove me toward the desire to be paid for my words and my time." —Rebekah Weatherspoon

Representation matters. But more than that, the quality and content of that representation matters as well. It’s a particularly fraught and unresolved concept when it comes to body size and image in romance. Have the discussions on this topic within the romance community influenced what you write versus your own personal experience and perspectives?

Weatherspoon: Not really. I’ve always written body diversity in my stories, including weight and will continue to do so.

Dade: Over decades of being both fat and a romance reader, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about why and how the few depictions of fat characters I was able to find hurt me. Because in most instances, they did hurt me—and once I started writing fat characters myself, I didn't want to replicate that harm. I would say that the way I write fat characters is more influenced by that decadeslong contemplation than by discussion about fat representation within Romancelandia. That said, my convictions have been sharpened by such discussion, and I’ve become more aware of my own shortcomings through the work and words of people like Corey Alexander. I haven’t always gotten my fat repesentation right, in part because I’m still working through my own history of disordered eating, but I hope none of my books currently for sale would hurt readers the way I’ve been hurt in the past. If that’s true, insightful critics of the genre like Corey should get a good chunk of the credit.

What are some of your favorite fat or plus-size characters in fiction?

Weatherspoon: Phyllis Bourne’s Taste for Temptation, If the Dress Fits by Carla de Guzman, Such a Pretty Face by Gabrielle Goldsby, His Until Midnight by Reese Ryan and basically everything by Katrina Jackson. She always includes fat Black women in her romances and those women are having the time of their fat lives.

Both of you also write fan fiction. How did that influence you as writers? Which fandoms have been important to you?

Dade: I’ve read an endless amount of fan fiction in the last year and a half, but I don’t write any. The main fandom I follow and in which I’ve immersed myself is the Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth pairing; it boasts some absolutely spectacular writers. For many of those authors, I would pay good money to buy their work in print, but it’s all free. That still amazes me, to be honest.

Weatherspoon: I mostly wrote Twilight fan fiction. I haven’t dabbled in the drabbles in years though. Writing fan fiction definitely drove me toward the desire to be paid for my words and my time.

Spoiler Alert has been called a love letter to fandom; it goes deep into that world, from fan fiction to cosplay and more. Olivia, what made you want to delve into this topic?

Dade: During that year and a half when I essentially read nothing but Braime fan fiction, the vast creativity of that fandom stunned me—how they take a story and a set of characters and harness their talents and dedication toward that story and those characters to create something entirely new within a cradle of familiarity. They’ve filled in canon with stories that enrich the text and bring greater depth to the characters. They’ve formed online communities bursting with camaraderie and enthusiasm and support. They’ve worked on their craft, and they’ve made each other laugh and cry, and—and they’re incredible. Just incredible.

They love Jaime and Brienne, and that love has bloomed in a million creative ways, for the enjoyment of all. Like any community, there are issues and problems, because of course there are, and I tried to address that too. But their work has brought me such joy, and so Spoiler Alert is a tribute to them. I hope it reads that way.

Olivia, my sources (Twitter) show that you have some things in common with April: 1) You love fanfic; 2) you have a rock collection, and April studies rock formation. Is April’s story a particularly personal one for you? Tell us about her and why you decided to make her a soil scientist/geologist.

Dade: The fandom elements in this book were definitely inspired by my total immersion in Braime fan fiction over the past year and a half. In my previous books, I mostly gave my characters jobs I’d previously held myself (teacher, librarian, etc.). But for Spoiler Alert, I was trying to be more ambitious, as I said, so I gave my main characters professions that would involve much more research on my part. April is a geologist because one of my good friends is a geologist, and I knew my friend would willingly and patiently walk me through what her work entails. I’m sure my love of rocks played a role, but my inherent desire to avoid unnecessary extra work played a larger one.

How does writing for a major traditional publisher differ from writing independently in terms of content or the process? How do you decide what you want to work on independently and which stories you want to tell within the traditional publishing world?

Dade: When conceiving of stories I want to shop to publishers, I try to come up with higher-concept premises featuring more inherent drama or conflict, or ones where the stakes are higher. Otherwise, I have a tendency to tell quieter stories, and those are the ones I usually self-publish. I think readers appreciate both types of books, and they both have a place in our genre, but publishers tend to acquire one and not the other.

Weatherspoon: [It comes down to] bills mostly, they need to be paid and on time. The story depends on the publisher I’m trying to work with. Working independently gives me certain kinds of freedoms, like setting my own release dates, but you take on more pressure because everything is on you, from hiring an editor to scheduling all promo.

Dade: Traditional publishing offers me resources and reach I simply don’t have on my own. Optimally, I’d love to keep publishing both ways, at least for now.

Rebekah, cowboys are a staple of romance, but that niche has been a bit more segregated than some others. What kind of reception have you had for the Cowboys of California series?

Weatherspoon: I am definitely not an author you should be reading if the idea of Black cowboys bothers you, so I haven’t bothered myself with the segregated portions of publishing. I’ve seen a lot of new readers who enjoy cowboy romances pick up A Cowboy to Remember and that’s wonderful.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of If the Boot Fits.

Olivia, you’re juggling multiple types of storytelling and also managing dark and light elements with April and Marcus’ relationship and their pasts in Spoiler Alert. What process did you use to work them out and were there any big changes along the way?

Dade: The interstitials between chapters—where I introduced elements like fan fiction snippets, script excerpts, fandom direct messages, etc., and accordingly varied my writing style, verb tense and so on, depending on the ostensible “author”—were mostly written after the main story was drafted, which I think helped me keep my voice consistent within the actual chapters. I had a blast writing those interstitials, because I got to play the authorial version of dress-up.

Making certain the book remained light enough to be honestly called a rom-com took a little thought. I tried to counterbalance the more serious elements of the story through those interstitials, which provide some straightforward comedy, and also through the secondary characters in the story. Alex (Marcus’s BFF) and the cast chats especially helped in that regard. 

Rebekah, you did quite a bit of research about Black Hollywood for If the Boot Fits. How did that come to play in the story?

Weatherspoon: I worked in film and television production for 10 years, so most of my additional research informed how I crafted the Pleasants’ matriarch, Leona Lovell, who has been in the industry for decades.

Sam and Amanda in If the Boot Fits are coming from pretty different places in their careers. She’s a struggling writer/assistant; he’s a star. She’s middle class, and he’s Hollywood royalty. What makes them work so well?

Weatherspoon: They are both kind, caring people with a similar sense of humor. They like to make each other laugh and they both bloom when they are honest with each other in tough conversations.

A lot of romances focus on found family, but in If the Boot Fits, Sam’s tight-knit biological family plays a central role. Why was that particularly important here? Is there any chance we’ll get to see his grandparents’ love story?

Weatherspoon: When I sold the trilogy, the plan was to write three brothers and not just three friends or co-workers, so the family aspect was built in and I filled out the supporting characters from there. I have no plans to write Miss Leona and Gerald Sr.’s story. If the series continues, Lilah Pleasant would be the next main character.

Olivia, you've made presentations for chapters of RWA and YouTube videos on the subject of fat representation in romance. What are some of your chief concerns?

Dade: My primary concern, always, is that vulnerable readers—who may be struggling with disordered eating or body-image issues—not be hurt. Like it or not, our words have power, and they can both harm and hearten people. Depictions of fatness that equate it with ugliness, greed, laziness or evil cause harm, and so does dehumanizing language (“blubber,” “elephantine,” etc.) used to describe that fatness. An endless parade of self-loathing fat characters, or fat characters determined to lose weight, drives home the same message: If you’re fat, you should feel shame about it. There is something wrong with you, and you should try to fix it. Which isn’t to say that there aren’t evil or self-loathing fat people, or that fat people on diets don’t exist or shouldn’t be in books, but they also shouldn’t be almost the only fat people we see on the page.

Spoiler Alert is more explicit in dealing with the issue of fat shaming in our culture than your previous books. Why was that important to tackle that in this book?

Dade: I chose to make fatness a more critical element in Spoiler Alert, as you say. I did so because, first, fat people have a wide range of experiences. For some, their body size really is a minor part of their lives. For others, though, fatness will inform their experiences in the world in major, unavoidable ways. I wanted at least one of my books to acknowledge the latter group, but in a way that still didn’t harm readers. Hopefully I succeeded. Second, I’ve read too many books where characters were fat-shamed by family members and loved ones, and no pushback against that ever occurred in the story. To me, the implicit message seemed to be: If you want a family and loved ones, you just have to accept that this sort of behavior will happen, however painful it may be. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. In fact, I think that’s a harmful message when repeated often enough.

So one of my goals in Spoiler Alert was to show April setting boundaries on page with a loved one in response to fat-shaming. She doesn’t have to learn to love herself as she is. She already does. What she does need to do is find the courage to say, in service to her own mental health and well-being: “You’re hurting me, and it’s harming our relationship. If you don’t stop, that relationship may not survive.”

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Spoiler Alert.

What’s next for Marcus’ “Gods of the Gates” crew, and for Olivia Dade beyond that?

Dade: My next book for Avon, Slow Burn, features Alex, Marcus’s reckless, loyal, chatty, charming and highly annoying co-star and best friend. In short, he’s a delightful asshole. Because of his perceived misbehavior, the “Gods of the Gates” showrunners have assigned him a minder to keep him out of trouble: Lauren Clegg, who’s serious, steady, working on her BHE (Big Hag Energy) and—according to Alex—“improbably short.” Even apart from her fatness, she’s considered unattractive by conventional beauty standards. And that was important to me—April is fat and gorgeous; Lauren is fat and not-so-gorgeous; both women can and will be loved.

Slow Burn has some of the best dialogue I’ve ever written, and I think—I hope—readers will fall in love with both Lauren and Alex. I certainly did.

Rebekah, what fairy tale are you taking on for Sam’s brother Jesse’s story? And can you talk a little about his love interest?

Weatherspoon: Jesse’s story will be a "Beauty and the Beast" retelling. His love interest is Lily-Grace, a former classmate he hasn’t seen since the eighth grade. She gives him a run for his money.

Talia Hibbert has a finely tuned sense of how to balance social observation and swoon. With Act Your Age, Eve Brown, she outdoes herself with a hilarious slow-burn romance between Eve, a chaotic ray of sunshine, and orderly grump Jacob, both of whom are on the autism spectrum.

The Brown sisters come from a close-knit family and have a lot in common: All three are attractive, witty and smart. What distinguishes Eve from her sisters? What was different about writing from her perspective?
Chloe and Dani Brown are successful, professional women. Their insecurities are mainly social—can they have richer lives, can they deal with romance? They never doubt their ability to take the world by storm in other ways.

Eve, unlike her sisters, did poorly at school, and it’s always made her feel like a failure. Her talents don’t lie in traditionally respected areas, so she feels silly and useless. She questions her worth in every way possible. Of course, she’d never admit that, not even to herself. Her sisters are grumpy and cynical, but Eve keeps things light—because she’s the baby of the family, and because she doesn’t see herself as a “proper adult.” I had to balance her determinedly upbeat attitude with her inner monsters, and that’s a very vulnerable thing to write. 

"He’s the kind of man who will judge you for your choice in curtains but not for your mental health. . ."

Can you tell us a bit about Eve's love interest, Jacob? What draws Eve to him, and why will readers love him?
Jacob is used to being rejected for his differences. He knows people will read him as cold or alien no matter what he does or how he feels, so he’s learned to reject them first. And possibly my favorite thing about him: He refuses to soften. He’s proud. That’s an important shield for someone moving through a world that devalues them—but it bites him in the butt when he meets someone who’s willing to see him as he really is.

He’s also very bitchy and sarcastic as hell, so his perspective was hilarious to write. He’s the kind of man who will judge you for your choice in curtains but not for your mental health, and I think readers will enjoy that. For her part, Eve reluctantly appreciates his humor. Even when they clash, she likes his rigidity because it’s true to who he is. So she kind of admires him against her will.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Act Your Age, Eve Brown.

If you think about it, Eve and Jacob are the embodiment of chaos and order. What brings Eve and Jacob together, and what makes them work?
Jacob is uncompromising because he’s very high-strung. His thoughts won’t slow down. He notices everything. He physically cannot stop caring. Eve, on the other hand, knows how to be flexible, how to relax, how to forgive. That makes her someone Jacob can learn from, and at the same time, she learns how to stand up for herself by watching him refuse to bend. 

But beneath those differences, they’re actually quite similar. They’re both respectful and sensitive where it matters; they’ll piss each other off, but they won’t cross certain lines. They both try really hard at everything they do. They both know the value of a home and a family, even if they learned those values in very different ways. 

Most of all, they fascinate each other. Eve could never be as subtly cutting as Jacob. Jacob doesn’t know how Eve can bear to be so bold. Neither of them can look away.

There’s an interesting duality between Eve’s confidence and her awareness that the world doesn’t value her as she does herself. As a fat, dark-skinned Black woman, Eve doesn’t fit society’s preconceptions about beauty and was pigeonholed in villainous or comedic side-character roles when she attended a performing arts school. Why did you choose to confront these issues more directly than you have in other books?
The Brown sisters have a really loving, supportive family, so they’ve been raised in this microenvironment of absolute acceptance. (Also, they have a lot of money, which helps.) But obviously, they also live in the real world, so they’re very aware of all the ways they’re marginalized. Chloe and Dani find it relatively easy to ignore because, whenever they’re hurting, they can remember that loving world they have back home. It’s like a thin layer of insulation that makes all the difference. But Eve doesn’t have the same experience of home that they do. She knows her family loves her, but she also knows that she confuses and exasperates and sometimes disappoints them. Her insulation has holes. 

On top of that, her life goals were, at one point, built around an industry that’s very image-conscious. When I was a kid, I was involved in performing arts, and they will tell you to your face, “You’re too fat for this, you’re too ugly for that.” So Eve’s hyperaware of how she’s perceived in a way her sisters aren’t. It makes sense that she’d think and talk about those issues more directly.

You’ve been open about the fact that, like Eve and Jacob, you are on the autism spectrum, but you’re representing different variations and aspects of autism with these two characters. Did you prepare in any special way to write this book?
Alongside my own experience of ASD, most of my friends are autistic or they have ADHD. (I personally believe there’s a lot of overlap.) And then there’s the fact that my mother is a teacher who specializes in behavioral needs. So when I was preparing to write this book and I was mentally building these characters, I sat down and wrote everything I already knew about being autistic and about the ways autistic people are treated. Then I tried to ask myself questions that kind of . . . exposed the things I didn’t know, the things I’d never had to think about.

After that, I spoke with my friends about the characters. It was great getting insight from other people, because I knew I wanted my main characters to be different from each other—or rather, to experience autism differently. And once the book was done, I worked with a sensitivity reader, too. Because like I said, autism is different for everyone, and I’d written characters who weren’t necessarily like me, so I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being a dick about it.

"The characters don’t instantly understand each other just because they’re both autistic. They do have similarities, but they have to discover those similarities the same way they’d discover anything else about each other."

More broadly, are there any particular considerations—good, bad or neutral—that are unique to telling a romance between two characters on the spectrum?
I think my autism informs everything I write. It takes genuine effort to write characters who don’t come off as autistic. My first explicitly autistic character was Ruth in A Girl Like Her, but actually, Ruth’s entire family has ASD—she’s just the only one who’s diagnosed. The characters don’t know that; I know that. (Then I got comments from autistic readers asking if that was the case, which made me very happy.) It’s kind of the same thing with the Brown Sisters series.

This book is the first time I’ve written both leads as autistic, and it was very satisfying because it’s a pairing that makes sense to me. It also reflects the relationship I’m in personally. However, I don’t think it was necessarily a unique romance writing experience. The characters don’t instantly understand each other just because they’re both autistic. They do have similarities, but they have to discover those similarities the same way they’d discover anything else about each other.

The one thing I’d say was unique was writing their similar experience of the world. They’re not treated the same: Jacob is a white man with a diagnosis, while Eve is a Black woman, and that’s a large part of why she isn’t diagnosed. That’s also why Eve has been forced to mask more and is better at socially masking than Jacob. 

But they both have this feeling of being out of step, of being purposefully misunderstood (it does feel purposeful, even if it’s not!) and of consistently misunderstanding. That experience has shaped them in different ways, and it was fun to show those different ways while acknowledging they shared a root.

How do the books you want to read differ from the books you want to write? Or is there no difference for you?
It’s 50-50. I do try to write the kinds of books I love to read. Warm and funny and hot, that’s my goal, so I feel inspired when I read authors like Danielle Allen or Mia Sosa. But I also enjoy super complicated stories with very high stakes. I love mysteries like the ones K.J. Charles weaves into her books, or adventures like the ones in a lot of Beverly Jenkins’ novels. 

With “Virgin River” and “Bridgerton” on Netflix, there’s been a lot of buzz about taking romance from the page to the screen. Is there a novel or series of yours that you’d most like to see adapted?
I think the Brown Sisters series would work very well on screen because they’re so . . .  rom-com-y, for want of a better word. The Princess Trap would probably make a good adaptation, too. There’s a fake engagement and an evil royal family and so on. Very soapy. (I love soapy.) 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Act Your Age, Eve Brown is great on audiobook! Narrator Ione Butler goes straight for the heart but never loses the humor.

Did the COVID-19 pandemic change your reading habits? What were some of the books that helped get you through this incredibly challenging year?
Before the pandemic, I would read whenever I had free time and a good book. These days, I read in gluts of please-help-me-escape desperation, interspersed with lengthy periods of listless, bookless apathy. I’m also much slower now, and I struggle to remember what I’ve read. But I definitely remember Courtney Milan’s The Duke Who Didn’t, which came out last year. It was a cozy historical rom-com delight, and I felt like it woke me up. 

Get a Life, Chloe Brown was many readers’ first introduction to your writing, but you have a whole body of work you self-published. How does this work compare to the Brown Sisters trilogy, and where do you recommend readers start who want to dive into your backlist?
The Brown Sisters series was the first time I consciously set out to write a rom-com, so I suppose the main difference is that my other books aren’t as hooky or light. There’s still a ton of banter and sarcasm, but the stories don’t have those classic rom-com tropes. They do, however, have tons of classic romance tropes, like friends-to-lovers or only-one-bed. They also have a lot of mental health representation, a lot of family dynamics and a lot of sex. For readers who like more domestic, cozy stories, I would recommend starting with the Ravenswood series. For readers who like a bit more angst, try Work for It. 

Author photo by Ed Chappell UK.

Author Uzma Jalaluddin deploys romance tropes to expand the boundaries of the genre.

After updating Pride and Prejudice with her debut romance, author Uzma Jalaluddin turns to a more modern but no less beloved classic: You’ve Got Mail. Her sophomore novel, Hana Khan Carries On, is a retelling of the beloved Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks rom-com that swaps the film’s duelling bookstores for halal restaurants. The titular Hana helps run Three Sisters Biryani Poutine, a community staple that’s owned and operated by her family. Unfortunately, sales are down, and an upscale halal eatery opening nearby could put them out of business for good. 

But Hana’s heart is not in the restaurant business. She launched her own podcast while interning at a local radio station and recently formed a flirtation with an anonymous caller. Add in a fearsome, scene-stealing aunt and a cousin so compelling he seems destined for his own spinoff novel, and Hana has her hands full. 

Hana Khan Carries On was dozens of drafts in the making, and Jalaluddin freely admits to reworking the story several times over. “The book itself took me many, many years to write. Like a lot of people, I wear a lot of hats,” she says with a laugh during a call to her home outside Toronto. Not only is she a mom, but she also writes a column for the Toronto Star and teaches high school English. Her love of language is evident in every sentence of Hana Khan, as is her gift for precise plotting and clearly defined, immediately lovable characters.

“You don’t usually see a woman in a hijab having agency and being the star of her own love story.”

A lengthy crafting process isn’t new for Jalaluddin. Her first novel, Ayesha at Last, also took a long time to write, beginning in 2010. “I wasn’t writing every day, but it did take me around seven years to reach a final draft,” she says. She describes that story’s Jane Austen connection as a “happy accident,” as it was some time before she noticed Lizzie and Darcy reflected in the novel’s characters. 

“I know that sounds ridiculous looking back on it,” Jalaluddin says, “but I also feel like I was writing in a vacuum.” Jalaluddin’s parents immigrated to Canada from India, and she seldom saw an experience like hers represented in the type of books she wanted to write. “In the early 2010s, there was so little South Asian representation in romance or comedies, especially South Asian Muslim representation,” she says. “Part of the reason why I decided to turn my head toward Jane Austen in my first book was because I was a little bit scared that people wouldn’t know how to deal with my story.”

Jalaluddin’s concerns were justified. Even with the Austen hook, Ayesha at Last was rejected countless times by publishers who didn’t know how to sell a novel that featured characters and storylines outside of the industry’s narrowly defined expectations for a Muslim romance.

“You don’t usually see a woman in a hijab having agency and being the star of her own love story,” she says. “You expect a story about her arranged marriage where she runs away, takes off her hijab and dates a white boy. That’s the story we usually hear—not one where she falls in love with a conservative Muslim man who changes a bit but still has his beard at the end of it.” 

By adopting familiar frameworks, like the beats of a rom-com or the slow burn of an Austen novel, Jalaluddin artfully deploys classic tropes to give happy endings to characters from backgrounds that are rarely represented in the works she is referencing. And those happy endings aren’t just about romantic love. Jalaluddin also addresses other aspects of her heroines’ experiences such as community, identity and honoring your faith in a secular society. 

Though both of Jalaluddin’s novels contain similar pleasures, the author sees differences between her debut and Hana Khan Carries On, which was written during a time of political and social upheaval. “In the past few years, I was more aware of the storm clouds gathering, and I think that comes through in Hana Khan Carries On.” she says. Within the course of the book, Hana and her community must deal with microaggressions and hate crimes while pursuing their dreams. 

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of Hana Khan Carries On.

But passion flows through it all, from the devotion of Hana’s family to keeping their halal restaurant afloat to Hana’s excitement and ambition in launching a podcast. It’s similar to the passion in Jalaluddin’s voice when she’s discussing her path from reader to writer. 

“When I was growing up, I wondered, where is the Muslim Bridget Jones? Where is the Muslim Meg Cabot?” Jalaluddin says. She has become what she sought as a young reader, and if another young girl has those same questions now, hopefully she’ll discover that the answer is Uzma Jalaluddin.

Author photo by Andrea Stenson.

Some occupations are more rom-com friendly than others, sometimes even to the point of cliché (Why do so many male love interests work as architects? How on earth do writer or journalist characters earn enough to live in such enormous apartments?). But Sophie Breeze, the heroine of Katy Birchall’s The Secret Bridesmaid, has a job that is both refreshingly unique and perfectly suited for the genre: She’s a wedding planner who goes incognito as a bridesmaid on the big day (and sometimes before), allowing the happy couple to maintain a facade to their guests that all the festivities have been put together with no professional assistance. We talked to Birchall about her favorite wedding traditions, the real-life inspirations for her rom-com and why she’s anti-canapé.

Where did you get the idea for a professional wedding planner going incognito as a bridesmaid?
A few years ago, I read online that professional bridesmaids genuinely exist and I remember being amazed at the idea. The more I thought about it, the more I considered how it must be both fun and incredibly stressful to go undercover at someone’s wedding. You’d meet so many interesting people and find yourself in the most bizarre and joyful scenarios—there’s nothing quite like a wedding—but also have to learn everything there is to know about someone in a short amount of time to pass yourself off as their close friend. I mulled over the idea for a couple of years before I had the courage to start writing the book!

"I could definitely live without the first dance. The idea of everyone watching me attempt to dance is a genuine nightmare."

How long do you think you would survive if you had to do Sophie's job? Or do you think you would be great at it?
I’m not sure I could be nearly so levelheaded and efficient as Sophie in such high-stress situations, especially as a wedding is one of the most important days of someone’s life. It’s a lot of pressure to get it right!

Having said that, I absolutely LOVE being a bridesmaid and have been lucky enough to be one a few times. All those bridesmaid experiences made me so passionate about weddings that I wanted to write a book that revolved around them.

What is your favorite wedding tradition? Which one could you live without?
My favorite wedding tradition is the speeches. I love the personal anecdotes that are revealed in speeches, especially the comedy ones. Also, a lot of people I know don’t declare their love for one another openly—maybe that’s down to the classic British stiff upper lip—so I think it’s quite sweet that it’s a rare opportunity in life to stand up and say how you feel about that one person.

I could definitely live without the first dance. The idea of everyone watching me attempt to dance is a genuine nightmare. I will certainly be scrapping that tradition when I get married!

All of the weddings Sophie works on are so unique and fun! Which one would you most like to attend as a guest? Are there any that sound like a nightmare to you?
I would love to attend Nisha and Luke’s. I had so much fun writing that chapter! I love how many days the celebrations run over and the fusion of the two cultures. I also would happily attend Cordelia’s as I’d say that would be rather spectacular.

None sound like a nightmare to me. That’s honestly the best thing about weddings, they are all so different, but always fun, because the happy nature of the day means that everyone there can just let go, celebrate and have a day off from life.

Was Cordelia inspired by any real-life celebrities or socialites?
When I was at school in the 1990s, there was a huge obsession at the time with “It Girls,” British socialites who were rich, fashionable and always photographed at celebrity parties. I’ve always loved glossy magazines and those It Girls were constantly on the front of them. I think Cordelia was influenced by a mix of those women, and also by modern, reality TV stars—specifically the ones who end up surprising you.

Are you Team Sophie or Team Tom when it comes to the subject of canapés? If you are Team Sophie, what is your ideal appetizer situation?
I am Team Tom on this one. I genuinely panic at the thought of eating one. Do you attempt to eat half and risk a mess? Or do you throw caution to the wind and eat it in one, risking an awkward pause in conversation because your mouth is too full to speak? What if you’re holding your clutch and a glass of champagne and you’re offered a canapé? What then? How do you hold everything? And, on top of all that, sometimes you’re offered a napkin too. How can you hold a napkin in one hand under the canapé in the other, as well as holding a glass?!

Canapés boggle my brain. They have to be teeny tiny for me to handle the situation or I completely avoid them.

One of my favorite things about this book is that Sophie so clearly, clearly is her parents' daughter. How did you develop their characters? Did they spring more or less fully formed once you had Sophie down? Or did it take a few drafts for their personalities to come into focus?
Once I’d worked Sophie out, I could imagine her parents quite vividly. They’re so different, but their personalities complement each other, a dynamic that is a lot of fun to write. Sophie is efficient and determined like her mother—I knew right from the start that her mum was much more preoccupied by Sophie’s unique career path than her romantic relationships—but has the gentle nature of her father.

Your website says you are "mildly obsessed with Jane Austen." Who is your favorite Austen heroine, who is your favorite hero and do you have a firmly held but unpopular opinion about any of the books or characters?
My favorite Austen heroine is Emma Woodhouse. She’s smart, elegant and sure of herself, but is also snobbish, self-centered and stubborn. She makes so many mistakes and ends up acknowledging that and doing her best to learn from them. She’s not a perfect heroine in the slightest, which is why I love her. I aspire to be more Lizzy Bennet, but Emma’s story has my heart!

My favorite hero is a toss-up between Mr. Darcy (too obvious?) and Henry Tilney from Northanger Abbey. Mr. Darcy has that attractive broody-but-secretly-nice-guy vibe, but Tilney wins by a long way when it comes to excellent chat and a corking sense of humor.

I’m not sure if it’s that unpopular an opinion, but I root for Mary Crawford in Mansfield Park. Her materialistic flaws aside, she’s brilliant, fun, charismatic and a lot more interesting than our irritating protagonist, Fanny. I’m not convinced Mary is a villain at all.

ALSO IN BOOKPAGE: Read our starred review of The Secret Bridesmaid.

What's next for you?
I’m currently having a ball writing my next wedding-themed romantic comedy, which will be hitting shelves in 2022, as well as working on a few children’s and young adult novels. It’s very busy, but in the best way.

Author photo by Imogen Forte.