Annabel Monaghan - IT'S A LOVE STORY

[00:10] Cindy: This is Cindy Burnett. Welcome to my award winning podcast Thoughts from a Page, a member of the Evergreen Podcast Network. On this show I chat with authors whose books I have enjoyed about their new releases and others in the book world about the books they have loved.

[00:23] With so many books coming out weekly, it can be hard to decide what to read,

[00:26] so I find the best ones and share them with you.

[00:29] Do you love to be in the know about upcoming books? Kelly Hooker of kellyhookreadsbooks and I do too. We just recently released our fourth literary lookbook which is a list of 686 titles releasing from June to October 2025, curated for our communities.

[00:46] The link to buy it is in my show Notes.

[00:49] Today, Annabel Monaghan returns, this time to chat about It's a Love Story.

[00:54] It's a Love Story is wonderful. I just devoured it in a day.

[00:59] Loved everything about it. Her characters, Jane and Dan, are fabulous. The setting is a ton of fun, and I thoroughly enjoyed the way their love story played out.

[01:08] Annabel is the USA Today best selling and Library Reads Hall of Fame author of Summer Romance, Same Time Next Summer, and Nora Goes Off Script. She lives in Connecticut with her family.

[01:18] I hope you enjoy our conversation.

[01:22] Welcome back. Annabel. How are you?

[01:24] Annabel: I am great. I'm so happy to be talking to you.

[01:27] Cindy: I'm so happy to be talking to you too. You're always so much fun to chat with. And I loved It's a Love Story. Just such a wonderful book.

[01:35] Annabel: Thank you. I'm so glad to hear that.

[01:37] Cindy: And I saw you had a starred Publisher's Weekly review. Congratulations.

[01:41] Annabel: Thank you. You know, it's so funny when you're going, you write a book and your editors read the book and you both decide it's good enough and you just don't know.

[01:49] And then you finally get a trade review and you're like, oh, people who don't know me thought this was okay. It's such a relief.

[01:58] Cindy: It has to be.

[01:59] I just love the storyline in this one and I know from reading the press papers and the back and everything where you got the ideas, but I can't wait to talk more about that.

[02:08] But before we do that, would you give me a quick synopsis of It's a Love Story?

[02:11] Annabel: So it is the story of Jane Jackson, who is a former child star and, and she was sort of the punchline in a sitcom all growing up where, you know, she would sit in a plate of nachos and then the rest of the cast would say, poor Janie.

[02:27] And the show would end. So she sat in a lot of nachos, and now she is all grown up, and she's trying to make it as a producer in Hollywood, and she really wants to just earn the respect that she never got.

[02:39] So she's about to get her first project greenlit, and it all starts to fall apart. And she spontaneously tells a huge lie.

[02:47] Annabel: And the only way she can make this lie true is with the help of the one guy she really can't stand.

[02:55] And his name is Dan Finnegan.

[02:57] And he is the worst. She hates him. But actually,

[03:01] He's my favorite guy I've ever written in a book. He's adorable.

[03:06] Cindy: He is adorable. I was just gonna say that she thinks he's the worst, but he's not. He's my favorite that you've written too. He is really wonderful. Yes. I love him and his family, which I can't wait to talk about.

[03:16] Annabel: Okay. Oh, I'm so glad. I thought maybe he was a guy who was just my type. I hope other people like him, too, but, God, I just love me some Dan Finnegan.

[03:25] Cindy: Me too. He is just wonderful, both for her and with his family, just all the way around. I loved him. But let's talk a little bit about how you came up with the ideas for this one.

[03:35] Annabel: So this one. Usually when I have an idea for a book, it's like it just comes out of something that hits me really hard that I can't stop thinking about.

[03:44] And in this one, I was on a trip and bought I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy. I don't know why I can never remember the title of that book.

[03:53] I think it's because it's a hard sentence to say.

[03:56] Anyways, I read that book cover to cover, and as soon as I finished it, I started over and I read it a second time. I was so taken by that book.

[04:04] The writing is just breathtaking, but also just the idea of a person who I watched grow up on TV and what that must be like for child stars to go through puberty on TV and to see their castmates make it big.

[04:22] And maybe they don't make it big. Maybe they do. And it just made me think about what that life might be like.

[04:28] And very specifically, did you ever see the show Victorious?

[04:33] Cindy: Yes. My kids loved it, so I saw it a number of times.

[04:36] Annabel: I watched it all the time, so. Or my kids did. I was always walking through the room. So that starred definitely the hottest girl that was ever on tv, Victoria Justice, and she was the frontliner and in the back they had a band and in the back was this kind of quiet,

[04:51] quirky, weird girl who happened to be Ariana Grande.

[04:55] And I was thinking about, like, I don't know what happened to the rest of the cast of that show, but what do they think about the fact that Ariana Grande is a billionaire now?

[05:05] Cindy: She really did break out. No, that has to be weird to have one person be the star of the show. Somebody else who didn't have a very large role suddenly is all over the place.

[05:12] Annabel: All over the place. And so that's where I started with the book.She feels like she's not keeping up. Jane is, you know, her co stars are making it, she's not making it.

[05:22] And I was just kind of tapping into that feeling that we have at different times in our life. Like, why is everybody doing the thing and I'm not doing the thing?

[05:31] Cindy: And I also think growing up on tv, as you mentioned, had to be so difficult. But also everybody thinks they know you, but really they know your character and they don't know you at all.

[05:41] Annabel: So weird. And also, you know, adolescence is a time where you're trying things out. You know, you're trying out your personality, you're trying out your jokes, you're trying out your style.

[05:52] What was it like to be dressed and given a script all throughout your adolescence? I mean, how weird.

[05:59] Cindy: I hadn't really thought about that till you talked about that some in your book. And that's true because everybody else is forming their own thoughts, learning about themselves and she never really has a chance to do that.

[06:09] Annabel: She doesn't. And she, I mean, I loved writing Jane. I think she's the first truly unhinged character that I've ever written. And she just absolutely is so unself aware and is a person who is just trying to get all of her self esteem from the outside.

[06:29] You know, if the hostess at the Ivy ever recognizes her, she's going to be legit.

[06:35] Cindy: And also she has a lot of personal issues too. Her dad left when she was young. She was raised by a single mom. She has a lot of feelings of abandonment as well.

[06:43] Annabel: Yeah, for sure.

[06:45] Cindy: So I adored the Finnegan family as we've touched on a little bit. I would love to participate in their family gatherings. Was there a particular inspiration for them?

[06:53] Annabel: No. You know, I love seeing big families and I love seeing big families who are not careful with each other.

[07:02] And I always wanted to write about a big Irish American family where you all show up and everybody insults each other and everybody laughs because there's such kindness there.

[07:13] There's like, there are no secrets. Nobody's talking behind anybody's back.

[07:17] Everybody's embarrassing story is a story that everybody knows and that just feels like it would be such a safe space to grow up in, like, no surprises.

[07:26] Cindy: And so much fun just to have that feeling all the time.

[07:30] Annabel: Yeah, it's just all boisterous. And then of course, Dan is an introvert and he's a quiet guy in a really loud family.

[07:38] And I think probably every family has one person that doesn't quite fit in with the family.

[07:44] He is loved by his family, he adores his family, but he absolutely doesn't fit in. So, that was fun to build up that completely bananas loud family and then stick Dan in there.

[07:56] Cindy: And he's like, I have to get away from these people. Sometimes there's just too much happening.

[08:01] Annabel: Yes. And he always did, growing up.

[08:03] Cindy: Yes. And I understand that.

[08:05] Annabel: Yeah, I do too.

[08:06] Cindy: Well, I loved Clem as well. She reminded me of my best friend. The person who tells you the truth and is always there for you, but will bury the body if you need help with that.

[08:14] Annabel: I mean, everyone needs a Clem. I'm so happy you have a friend like that. That is the best kind of friend.

[08:20] Cindy: It really is. And somebody that, you know when you're saying, okay, what do you think about this? They're not going to just be like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're actually going to tell you what they think, which is so invaluable.

[08:29] Annabel: It is invaluable. And it's also the value of long term friends. You know, friends that you've had for so long that they know your origin story and 

[08:40] they're not just trying out for your friendship.

[08:42] Annabel: They're not afraid to say the thing they need to say.

[08:45] Cindy: I agree. My best friend and I had so much fun when we realized we'd known each other longer than we hadn't in terms of our lives. And that was so nice because I'm like, okay, this is somebody who has truly known me for a very long time.

[08:56] Annabel: That is amazing.

[08:57] Cindy: Yeah.

[08:57] Annabel: I think I've known my husband longer than I've been alive or half. I've known him for longer than I did not know him.

[09:05] Cindy: And that's how Amy and I are. So whether I said that correctly or not, but I don't think I'm to that stage with my husband yet. Just my friends from high school and then Amy and my friends from college.

[09:12] So I guess there are a number of them.

[09:14] Annabel: No, it's a very special thing.

[09:16] Cindy: It really is.

[09:17] So we already talked a little bit about Jane, but she really struggles with her past and her self worth. I totally felt for her. You said you really enjoyed writing her.

[09:25] Let's talk about that.

[09:27] Annabel: Well, first of all, I loved writing somebody who was having such, Everything that came out of her mouth was totally different than what she was thinking.

[09:37] And she's funny and she doesn't want men to know she's funny because men are not attracted to funny women. This is her closely held belief.

[09:45] So she's constantly pretending to be something that she's not. And this comes from her basic sense of unworthiness. I thought she was a really far out character to write. But what's been really surprising is I've been getting messages for months now from women saying I feel exactly the way Jane does.

[10:05] And I related to this so much. I think there is something that people are connecting to this idea that somebody told you along the line that you are not valuable, that you're not worthy, that you're not good at math or pretty or whatever.

[10:19] The thing that they told you, that you grew up believing about yourself.

[10:22] And Jane has to take a moment and say, are any of these things true? These stories I've been telling my entire life.

[10:29] So that was really fun to just like wind her up and then unravel her.

[10:34] Cindy: I love Jane and I did not feel like she was that far out there at all. And it was really engaging to see her learn more about herself and realize sometimes she wasn't saying what she was really thinking, but other times she totally was.

[10:46] She would just say without thinking whatever was in her head.

[10:49] Annabel: Yes. You know, that's actually what the fun part to write was, is that she's a person who goes out of the house with scripts, you know, and she knows what she's going to wear.

[10:58] She has it practiced what she's going to say and then invariably she just flies off the handle and says, especially if she's around Dan, and then says whatever she thinks and it feels like an explosion.

[11:09] Cindy: I really liked that. I thought she was wonderful and I'm glad that she's resonating with people.

[11:13] Annabel: Yeah, I am too. I'm actually really touched by it. Because I think it is really important to.

[11:19] Look, if we have negative beliefs about ourselves, to just take five minutes and think about where those beliefs came from,

[11:27] like, who had the right to tell us that we weren't worthy or good enough or whatever.

[11:33] Cindy: Or as Jane experiences when someone is telling her that, she finally realizes, why would someone say that to me? Like, what a terrible person. They're so wrapped up in themselves that they're not even aware of how ugly and awful they sound.

[11:47] Annabel: Well, that's right. And, you know, most of the things that people say to us are about them and not us.

[11:53] So, I mean, this book is not therapy. But these are things that I was thinking about while I was writing. I was like, how dare people tell us we're not good enough?

[12:01] Cindy: I agree with that. And it definitely didn't read like therapy. It's just such a wonderful story. Well, what surprised you the most when you were writing this one?

[12:08] Annabel: You know what. What surprised me about writing this is I just set off to have, you know, a couple of enemies fall in love. It was all sort of simple what I was gonna write.

[12:18] I was surprised by how deeply they fell in love with,

[12:22] and I was surprised by how Dan turned out to be exactly the kind of person that Jane needed to help her overcome all this stuff. So I guess 

[12:33] I was surprised by how their relationship grew into something much bigger than I had intended.

[12:38] Cindy: Well, that actually leads me right into my next question, which is, since this is a romance novel, obviously it's going to have a happy ending. So, you know, you're ending, but did it take you a while to see how that ending would be reached?

[12:50] Annabel: Yes. I mean, I was almost finished with the book.

[12:52] You know, people think it's really easy to write a romance novel because people are gonna meet and they're gonna fall in love, and then something's gonna happen, and they're gonna get back together.

[13:02] So you have your whole plot there.

[13:04] What's very difficult in a romance novel is breaking them up or having something happen in a way that is forgivable. Because if they're gonna have a happy ending, he can't go and have sex with her sister.

[13:18] Exactly.

[13:19] Cindy: Right.

[13:19] Annabel: We don't bounce back from stuff like that.

[13:22] So it has to be a problem that they have that is emotionally resonant with the whole beginning of the novel that they can somehow recover from in a way that feels believable.

[13:34] And that, to me, is the hardest part of writing every single one of the books I've written, and it did not come together until I was almost completely finished with this book.

[13:43] Cindy: I agree with everything you're saying, that you don't want the reason they break up to be so horrible that the reader can't forgive one of them. But on the other side of it, you also want it to be realistic.

[13:54] And that is where I sometimes get hung up in romance, because I'll read it, I'm like, oh, that doesn't really make sense that they would have broken up for that or whatever.

[14:00] So I think that's where you do such a great job of tearing them apart and bringing them back together in a way that everybody is good with, that makes sense and that you still really like both characters and the book.

[14:12] Annabel: Yeah, honestly, it's the hardest part. I have this fantasy that one day I'm going to write a book where I already know why they break up.

[14:21] Cindy: That's what you're going to start with?

[14:22] Annabel: Yeah. I mean, if I knew that, it's like having.

[14:25] Because, I mean, this may not be hard for other writers, it's so hard for me. So if I knew what the issue was going to be, I could just write straight to it.

[14:34] But that's not how it happens for me.

[14:36] Cindy: I can see that. Well, how do you choose your character names?

[14:40] Annabel: It's funny. Process of elimination. It's hard to find names of people that I don't know and people who are not my children or my children's friends or men I haven't dated.

[14:51] I mean, we're running out of names. And Jane,

[14:54] So Jane, I had her as Janie. Janie was her name in the TV show. And they say poor Janie.

[15:01] So I was stuck with that name. And then Dan, I wanted him to have a name where when he went home, they would call him Danny.

[15:08] You know, it's sort of like Tommy or Tom, but my child is Tommy, so I couldn't use that name. So I wrote this book about Jane and Dan, and then I quickly found out that Colleen Oakley was publishing Jane and Dan at the end of the world.

[15:22] And I was like, is this a freaking joke?

[15:25] Cindy: I was just thinking about that. I'm like, two books with Jane and Dan's within months of each other.

[15:30] Annabel: It doesn't make any sense. And I messaged her and I was like, Colleen,

[15:35] I just wrote a book about Jane and Dan. This is insane. I have to change their names. And so I went back to my manuscript, and the whole book falls apart, I'm not kidding.

[15:45] There's one dumb joke about Dan's name that I was not willing to give up and I tried to change her name and I couldn't. And so finally I just said, I'm just sticking with Jane and Dan.

[15:55] Cindy: I don't think it matters at all. I mean, they're vastly different books. It's just funny. What are the odds?

[15:59] Annabel: What are the odds? Yeah. No, it's very funny.

[16:01] Cindy: Do you have a favorite of your books? I know everybody always says it's like picking a child and the most recent, but I'm always curious because every once in a while somebody will say, well, yes, book number two.

[16:11] For whatever reason.

[16:13] Annabel: I think it’s okay to have a favorite child. I don't know. I don't know where people are getting so hung up. Yes, it's usually the most recent, the one that you're talking about.

[16:21] I would say the most personal book to me is Summer Romance, which came out last summer.

[16:26] It's very much a love letter to my mom and to mothers and daughters and fighting the good fight. So I think if I had to pick one, I would say that because it just

[16:37] It feels very personal.

[16:38] Cindy: And I really enjoyed that one as well, because I had lost my mom a couple of years before reading your book, and there was so much of it that resonated with me about not having my mom anymore, wanting to talk to her in the car,

[16:49] just all those different things that you portrayed in that book.

[16:53] Annabel: Thank you. I was in Cleveland yesterday, and I was doing a talk about Summer Romance, and I was trying to convince the audience that it's not sad, because as I was talking about how, you know, she moves through her grief.

[17:05] It does start to sound like it's a sad book, but it's not a sad book.

[17:09] Cindy: It's definitely not a sad book. What I think happens with your books is that.

[17:13] And this is no knock on other romances, but a lot of romances are really light, and I think you have depth in all of yours. So you have this wonderful love story, but there's also other things going on,

[17:23] points you're making, things that are going to resonate with the reader.

[17:26] Annabel: Well, thank you. I mean, that's such a nice compliment, but I think that falling in love is so much more than going out to dinner and jumping into bed and then getting married and having a baby.

[17:39] There's so much more that changes in your life because you've fallen in love with somebody and you bring all of your garbage into the relationship and so does your partner.

[17:51] So I think that all of that stuff is even more fun than the going out to dinner and jumping in bed.

[17:57] Cindy: There's a great quote in your book about that. I think it's Rini who talks about falling in love over breakfast.

[18:04] Annabel: Yes. Love happens over breakfast. And as I've gotten older, I totally believe this to be true. It's romance happens in the candlelight, you know, and everybody's dressed.

[18:14] And maybe you're wearing lipstick and you're at dinner,

[18:17] but breakfast is where you're not wearing any makeup and you're talking about your day and you just bring your actual self to breakfast. I have breakfast with my husband and then we walk our dog.

[18:29] And it's the nicest, most connected part of our day.

[18:33] Cindy: My husband and I walk our dog at the end of the day. But I do love that time we have together, just out walking, just the two of us, no phones.

[18:40] Everybody is just focused on how nice it is outside the dog and walking together.

[18:44] Annabel: And you know what else is nice? It's a chance to talk about those incidental things that aren't important enough to be their own conversation.

[18:53] I feel like on those walks I download my 30 nonsense things I always wanted to tell him.

[18:58] Cindy: I agree with that.

[19:00] Current romance seems to have a lot of spice, but you don't often have very much, which I actually am so appreciative of because I'm not a huge fan of spice.

[19:08] I just use the kind of page forward over it. How have you approached that?

[19:12] Annabel: So it wasn't really a decision. It was just. I think it may be just 

[19:18] How I am and the story that I want to tell. Because I don't mind reading the spice. Like I think all the spicy books are great. I'm just not writing that kind of a book.

[19:29] So when Nora Goes Off Script was coming out, my editor pointed out to me that there was no sex scene. She asked me to write one.

[19:38] It took me three weeks to write a paragraph of sex. And it is really, You almost would miss it. It's such a lame paragraph. But what I realized in just reading other books and seeing what I was comfortable writing.

[19:50] There are two ways to write a sex scene. You either show the body parts doing things, or you just see how the people are together.

[19:58] And I feel just more comfortable writing about the way they are in bed together. What they're saying to each other,

[20:06] how it changes their relationship, than the actual mechanics of it. I don't know. It's just a matter of choice.

[20:14] Cindy: Absolutely. And I don't mind the spice either. It's not something I look for in a book, and often if it gets really spicy, I just kind of keep going.

[20:21] But it's not something that will keep me from reading a book. But I don't know. I like the way you do it.

[20:26] Annabel: Well, thank you. Sometimes if I'm reading a spicy book, I'm saying out loud, oh. Oh, come on. That doesn't happen.

[20:34] Cindy: Exactly. Or, like, who came up with this idea? So. Yeah.

[20:38] Annabel: And also, you know, it's okay to have sex in a bed.

[20:42] You do not need to be standing up against a bookcase or in the bathtub. Yeah, in the bathtub. I mean,

[20:50] come on.

[20:51] Cindy: I agree. Well, tell me about the title and the cover

[20:55] Annabel: God, this is my favorite cover. I just reached for it. Like, I could show it to you. I love this cover. Sanni Chu is the cover designer for all my books, and I just think she gets better with every one.

[21:06] The original title for this book was going to be True Story, which is the name of the movie they're trying to make.

[21:12] And then I think it was my publisher that came up with It's a Love Story. I don't think it was my idea, but it just feels more fun. I think.

[21:20] I think that True Story was gonna sound like a true crime book.

[21:25] Cindy: Right.

[21:25] Annabel: Maybe it was going to sound a little bit too serious. So. Yeah. No, I like this one.

[21:30] Cindy: I do, too. Well, before we wrap up, Annabel, what have you read recently that you really liked?

[21:34] Annabel: Oh, I've read so many things that I've really liked.

[21:37] I just finished Abby Jimenez's book, Say You'll Remember Me, that just came out. I absolutely adored it. There are two books coming out on June 10 that everybody needs to watch out for because they are unbelievable.

[21:52] Karen Dukess has Welcome to Murder Week, which is about a woman whose mother passes away and she finds in her things two tickets to a fake murder mystery week in the countryside in England.

[22:07] And she goes and she meets all these crazy people, and she ends up, you know, unraveling, really, the mystery of what happened with her mother. It is so good. And then Amy Poeppel has a new book coming out, thank God,

[22:19] called Far and Away,

[22:21] about two families that swap houses between Europe and Texas and kind of fall into each other's lives. And it's perfect in the way an Amy Poeppel book always is.

[22:33] Cindy: I'm a huge fan of Amy Poeppel, and I still need to read that when I have it. It's on my list. There's just so much coming out. I feel like they're coming faster than I can read.

[22:41] And I'm so glad that you mentioned Karen Dukess, because I saw her in your author's note, and I loved Welcome to Murder Week. I'm actually interviewing her next week. I thought that book was delightful.

[22:51] Annabel: You know what? It's delightful, and I don't want to overuse that word, but there is something about her humor that is so light. It's like she just dips it in on the page without making it feel self conscious.

[23:04] I don't know. I adore her writing, and I think that book is just perfect.

[23:08] Cindy: And I like the direction that the story went. I liked the Murder Week that they were there to solve this fake crime, that the villagers were participating, but obviously with no spoilers.

[23:17] I loved the way the story went and ended and all that. 

[23:22] Annabel: So well done. So satisfying.

[23:24] Cindy: Yes. And I've never read Abby Jimenez, but people rave about her all the time.

[23:27] Annabel: Yeah. I mean, there's nothing not to like. The most romantic thing I've ever read is in that book.

[23:33] Cindy: In her latest.

[23:34] Annabel: Yes.

[23:34] Cindy: Oh, okay. I may have to check it out.

[23:36] Annabel: You read it and then we'll discuss it. It's so romantic. I thought. Wow.

[23:41] Cindy: Okay. I keep hearing wonderful things about it, so.

[23:44] Annabel: Yeah.

[23:45] Cindy: Good. Well, Annabel, thank you as always for coming on my show. It's so wonderful to chat with you.

[23:50] Annabel: Oh, I'm so happy to talk to you. Thank you for having me.

[23:54] Cindy: Thank you so much for listening to my podcast. I would love to connect with you on Instagram or Facebook where you can find me at @thoughtsfromapage. If you enjoy the show and have a moment to rate it or subscribe to it, wherever you listen to your podcasts,

[24:07] I would really appreciate it. It makes a huge difference. And please tell all of your friends about Thoughts from a Page. Word of mouth does wonders to help the show grow.

[24:16] The book discussed in this episode can be purchased at my bookshop storefront and the link is in the show notes.

[24:21] I hope you'll tune in next time.