🌹Introducing my 2025 novel, Love At First Sight🌹

your summer beach/pool/back garden read is HERE

👋🏼👋🏼👋🏼 Hi! I’m so happy to see you. I’m Laura Jane Williams, a UK-based romance author. How to Build a Life launched in August 2024, and now has thousands of readers in over 75 countries (!). You can expect personal stories about life’s mess and mayhem, and the search for a way of living that feels right. I’m almost 40, a solo parent by choice, and for 2025 am committed to stealing back time from my to-do list. I’m just sick of being busy with stuff that doesn’t really matter, you know?

Let’s kick off with a video I made! Mostly because it took bloody ages:

Here she is! Your summer 2025 beach read, bank holiday treat, take-me-to-the-park-on-your-lunch-break, June pick-me-up. Your dose of escapist, realistic, excitingly romantic, unexpected, joyfulness… it’s LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT. Isn’t she beautiful?!

I am so, so happy with this cover. I have a lot to say about it! Mostly, doesn’t it feel grown-up? It’s been hard this past few years to really nail the look of my books. BookTok (the bookish-corner of TikTok) has really done wonders for getting folks reading, but urgh, publishers have really started to pour their focus into ~going viral~ on there, or even trying to replicate the success of authors who have gone really “big”.

As an author, it can be a bit embarrassing to feel like you’re ripping off somebody else’s look, or worse, flattening the content of what you’ve worked really hard on so that it appeals to as many people as possible.

Maybe your book doesn’t need to appeal to as many people as possible!

Maybe your book only needs to appeal to the people who “get you”!

And I feel like my readers love aspirational, dreamy romance, but they like it with some LJW-grit. My editor says I write like Caitlin Moran and Dawn O’Porter. Who am I to disagree?! I know I don’t write out-and-out rom-com - it’s more like bookclub romance. Boy doesn’t just meet girl, and girl is always full of verve and vim and self-possession. I’m matters-of-the-heart-slash-women’s-fiction. We’re talking romance with a healthy dose of wit, heart, and realism. Holly Bourne perhaps said it best:

Laura Jane Williams writes such warm and yet realistic love stories - they're not escapism, but rather hope-ism.

- Holly Bourne

Thanks, Holly! Other authors I respect have said nice things about my work too:

I'm a big fan of Laura Jane Williams - she writes such fresh, smart, funny romances - Beth O’Leary

Laura Jane Williams’ writing combines sharp, relatable wit and bold, joyful sincerity - Dolly Alderton

Williams is a standout voice in women’s fiction - Gillian McAllister

Anyway, my point is this: this cover makes me happy.

The font! The thorns on the roses! The lack of people or figures on there, which romances almost never do!! I think it tells you a lot about who I am as an author.

Plus.

I feel like you could have this cover proudly with you on the tube, or waiting for your kids’ gymnastics class, or on your sun lounger, and you’d undoubtedly get somebody leaning across to say, is that any good? I’m seeing it everywhere.

Gah!

My behind-the-scenes of LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT is that I was inspired by Jennifer Lopez’s seminal 2000’s movie The Wedding Planner. I loved the idea of what would happen if you found your perfect match, when he is perhaps (im)perfectly matched to somebody else. This is my version of that. I loved writing it. Jessie, the protagonist, was just oh-so-very clear to me: a career nanny, a weight-lifter, a woman who has given up on love. And then along comes Cal.

The official blurb is this:

She’s found the one. He’s just not the one for her.

Jessie doesn’t believe in love at first sight. Until one sunny Saturday in London, a fire alarm in Whole Foods throws her into a stranger's arms. Cal is charming and funny: their chemistry is instant.

Quick-fire flirting turns into the most romantic day of Jessie’s life. But that evening they're forced apart before swapping numbers. Jessie is devastated – has she just lost the one?

After weeks of searching, Cal turns up on her doorstop holding two dozen red roses. It feels like fate.

The only thing is, they’re not for her…

She’s coming out in America, too. She looks a little different there, and you know what? That’s okay. That’s… fine. I sold here there as part of a six-figure deal, so hey, you go for it America, YOU DO YOU!

I hope you’re as excited for it as I am. As a thank you for your support, anyone who emails proof of pre-order to me@laurajanewilliams.com will get a one-month free subscription to How to Build a Life. If you’re already subscribed monthly, I’ll simply add on another month for free. And if you subscribe annually (and why wouldn’t you 😉) email me your proof of pre-order along with your address and I will mail you a hand-written love note, no matter where in the world you’re from.

(For context, pre-ordering is the single most helpful way to support an author. Pre-ordering signals to bookshops to stock up. It gets the “buzz” building! You shouldn’t be charged until it ships in June. As I understand it!!)

Let’s take one last look at her, shall we? What a stunner.

Le sigh. This part is so nice. The sharing part. The sharing part is where it stops being mine and becomes ours.

I hope you like it.

pssst! If you would like to invite me to speak at your literary festival or book event, or would like to interview me for a blog, Substack, magazine or podcast in 2025, please do send through your request to me@laurajanewilliams.com and I can connect you with Aoifke, my publicist!