“Quando m’en vo” from La bohème by Giacomo Puccini
I’ve been in love with this opera since seeing it for the first time at age twelve, so it shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise that I ended up writing a book about artsy people living in garrets in a cold European winter! I played this aria in particular a lot - the bantering voices and the flirtation were a big inspiration for the first half of the book.
“The London Suite Pt. 2 - Chelsea” by Fats Waller
This piece is winter in London to me. It has all the warmth and coziness of a crackling old record, and it just makes me want to go for a long evening walk, looking up at all the windows lit golden, and then go home and curl up under a blanket with a book and some hot chocolate. I also love that it’s an American’s impression of the city - Waller wrote and recorded it while he was touring here.
“Turtle Blues” by Big Brother & The Holding Company
I think this is the most underrated Janis Joplin song, and it doubles as a theme song for my female main character Mari. It’s about how a certain kind of ballsy swagger can mask a lot of insecurity and vulnerability, and Mari’s journey throughout the book is about climbing out of her turtle shell and risking getting hurt. And the line “but if you want to go out drinking, honey / won’t you invite me along, please?” gets me every time.
“Starlings” by Elbow
My male main character Leo Ross appears to be cynical and prickly on the surface, but when he starts falling for Mari, his true romantic comes out. I listened to this ecstatically vulnerable song a lot when I wrote his scenes later in the book, where he’s self-doubting and uncertain but utterly in love. The orchestral explosion of the music is just gorgeous.
“Oxygen” by Emeli Sandé
If anything captures the headiness of the moment when Mari and Leo first get really physically and emotionally intimate with each other, it’s this incredibly passionate song. All their barriers are down, all the bickering and confusion and complications are forgotten, and they just want to get as close to each other as possible. Delicious!
A sunshine American bookstore whisperer clashes with the grumpy British owner of the shop she’s trying to save in this winning opposites-attract romance for book lovers.
He has a struggling bookshop. She has a knack for bringing bookstores back to life. As soon as she walks into his store, all bets are off…
Mari Cole’s whole life is her dream job: rescuing and revitalizing indie bookstores. Friendship? Love? No thanks. After a hard childhood, she doesn’t want to get too close to anyone. Besides, books have never let Mari down the way people have. Then she gets the offer of a lifetime: rescuing Ross&Co. Once the most prestigious independent booksellers in London, the store is a shadow of its former self and needs an expert outsider to turn things around. But the offer turns out to be a double-edged sword: Leo Ross, the store's new owner, is as cold and hostile as the British winter.
For as long as he can remember, Leo Ross has known his future is becoming the next generation to run Ross and Co. He’s sacrificed almost everything he cares about, but the bookshop is still failing on his watch, and now there's an obnoxiously cheerful American woman convinced that she's going to magically make everything better. Leo’s life is difficult and messy enough as it is, and he doesn’t want her help.
When Mari and Leo are forced to work closely together to bring the store back to life, Leo's icy surface thaws to reveal the passionate man underneath. As winter gives way to the possibility of new beginnings, Mari begins to see that true love could be even better in real life than in the pages of a book. Can they put their pasts aside and learn to let love in?
Women's Fiction | Romance Contemporary [St. Martin's Griffin, On Sale: September 2, 2025, Trade Paperback / e-Book, ISBN: 9781250894748 / eISBN: 9781250894755]
Sarah Chamberlain is a writer, editor, and cookbook translator whose articles have appeared in VICE, The Guardian (UK), Food52, and McSweeney's Internet Tendency. When she’s not writing witty, sexy contemporary romance, she enjoys making dinner for her friends and family, watching Cary Grant movies, and setting records as an amateur competitive powerlifter. Originally from Northern California, she lives in London.
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