Today’s Peace Love & Books post comes from Sara’s client Maggie Wells, author of Going Deep, the first in the Coastal Heat series, available now from Kensington. Book Two in the series, Flip This Love, comes out in April! Read on to learn about Maggie’s writer crush!
Much like its romantic counterpart, there’s a bittersweet quality to falling hard for an author. I think Jim Baker said it best in the classic John Hughes film Sixteen Candles: “That’s why they call them crushes. If they were easy, they’d call ’em something else.”
I could go one and on about all the writers I love, but for the sake of brevity, I’ll pick just one.
I fell head over heels for Sarah Addison Allen the moment I started The Girl Who Chased the Moon. I sat down one summer day, pulled it up on my Kindle, and read the entire book on my patio in one afternoon.
All I could think the whole time was, “I wish I could write like this.”
Not only are descriptions dead-on, but they are vivid in ways one can imagine perfectly:
“Everything was quiet, a strange sort of quiet that felt like an unfinished sentence.”
She doles out wonderful bits of wisdom tinged with just a touch of cynicism:
“Men of thoughtless actions are always surprised by consequences.”
And there’s just something so engaging about whimsy she instills in her characters:
“There was a mood of magic and frenzy to the room. Crystalline swirls of sugar and flour still lingered in the air like kite tails. And then there was the smell-the smell of hope, the kind of smell that brought people home.”
And let’s not forget the romance:
“I spent so much time telling myself that this wasn’t home that I started to believe it,” she said carefully. “Belonging has always been tough for me.”
“I can be your home,” he said quietly. “Belong to me.”
And that’s me waxing poetic about just one of her books. Don’t even get me started on Garden Spells. Or The Sugar Queen. Or The Peach Keeper, Lost Lake, or First Frost… I’ll just embarrass myself.
How about you? Is there an author that makes you just say, “Guh,” when you read their work?
