You Need to Add Lia Louis to Your 2024 Reading List
You’ll be glad you took a chance on this author
If you like a charming romance story, and if you like a complex protagonist with a keen sense of humor, I suggest you add this author to your reading list for the new year.
Lia Louis writes clean romance, meaning romance without the steamy bedroom scenes and with limited physicality between the love interests in general. So if you’re a fan of the genre and those scenes motivate a sizeable chunk of your interest, then it’s possible Louis’ books aren’t for you. However, there’s a chance at least one of the following factors will hook you on the author’s books — and if you’re not already a romance reader, these factors just might motivate you to delve into the genre:
- Louis writes realistic portrayals of the passage of time — and of grief
The characters in Louis’ books tend to be grappling with difficult emotions pertaining to past relationships, romantic or otherwise, years down the line. These feelings/experiences affect their evolution as people over the course of the book and presumably beyond. There’s a messy beauty that goes beyond the standard grief storyline you find in romance books (for instance, The Key to My Heart highlights the healing power of music therapy), and this complex layering of emotion feels all the more real as a result of the first-person narrative.
On a related note, the relationship between love interests in each story progresses realistically over the entirety of the book; rather than falling in love in the span of a month, undergoing some conflict, and having to find their way back to one another, Louis’ love interests take a little longer to recognize their feelings and then join in romantic partnership after their initial emotional connection.
- Louis is a master of humor
Louis’ writing is filled with brilliant comparisons, banter, and rambling internal dialogue that is oh-so-relatable. She finds humor in the everyday things, and as is the British way, often weaves self-deprecating jokes into the protagonists’ narration.
For instance, Louis has come up with several ways of describing a protagonists’ disheveled appearance: From looking like Ozzy Osbourne as a result of runny, splotchy mascara (Dear Emmie Blue) to someone who’s “been found during a river dredge” (Eight Perfect Hours), these characters know how to channel humor even during moments of pain.
- Louis writes thirtysomething protagonists who are finding their way
Unlike many books featuring characters in their 30s, the protagonists in Louis’ novels aren’t pursuing lifelong career dreams or even settling into careers for which they’ve more recently developed a passion. They are generally still figuring out what they want to do / what they’re passionate about (and their interests vary from one story to the next). It takes time for a person to realize this, and then it takes time to build up the resolve to pursue it. We see this process play out in Louis’ books, rather than the focus remaining on one goal or one career from the start of the story.
- The male protagonists aren’t stereotypes either
The male protagonists in Louis’ stories are fleshed out and provided with depth of character that some romances lack due to their focus on physical description and/or on the romance itself. Moreover, the men have interests/jobs that we don’t often see represented. In one story, the love interest is a mountaineer, and not a brawny, standoffish stereotype of one, but an instantly charming, dimple-possessing man who guides climbers on summit programs. In another story, the love interest is a photographer, and the protagonist’s late husband loved to garden.
- Strong friendships are vital to each story
The first three pages of Eight Perfect Hours feature a letter from one best friend to another. It’s clear from the start that friendship is an essential part of the story, and this is true across Louis’ works.
For one, the love interests of each story are friends before they enter into a romantic relationship with one another — in Dear Emmie Blue, they’re friends for fourteen whole years beforehand! Not only this, but the author also writes healthy, platonic relationships between men and women that do not evolve into romance, in addition to same-gender friendships. Friends support the protagonist and also possess complex personal lives of their own, creating a full and interesting story.
So there you have it. Louis has published four books so far, and her fifth, Better Left Unsent, is due in May 2024. For some reason, my local library system doesn’t carry even a single copy of her debut novel, Somewhere Close to Happy, but I imagine it’s equally as tender and funny as the rest of her works.
Moreover, Eight Perfect Hours and The Key to My Heart are perfect reads for this time of year. Though their characters are navigating the cold months just like us (“us” referring to the people where I live, anyway), these stories will absolutely warm you up inside.☺
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