1 week Ago By Emma Specter
There are highs and lows to our current romance book boom: Even as titles like Tia Williams’s Seven Days in June and Casey McQuiston’s Red, White & Royal Blue enjoy mainstream attention, many of the genre’s protagonists remain white, straight, and cisgender. Yet her effort to correct that imbalance is only part of why Jasmine Guillory’s new novel, Flirting Lessons , is such a breath of fresh air. In the book, sweet, buttoned-up bisexual Avery falls hard for immensely charming Taylor when the latter offers to help her navigate the queer dating scene after a breakup (that’s where those titular flirting lessons come in)—and watching the two slowly share their innermost selves, not to mention some very hot sex scenes, against the majestic backdrop of California’s Napa Valley is a heart-soaring reminder of just how exciting literary courtship can be.
Fans of McQuiston’s most recent novel, The Pairing , or of Marley and Daphne’s sapphic energy on Season 2 of Survival of the Thickest are likely to plotz for Avery and Taylor, whose realistic rendering only makes the swoon-inducing nature of their bond all the more exciting. Vogue recently spoke to Guillory about planting the seed for Flirting Lessons in an earlier book, dressing her characters, taking inspiration from Anne of Green Gables , and more Vogue : How did you make the decision to feature a queer romance in Flirting Lessons ? Jasmine Guillory: I had known I’d wanted to write a queer romance, but I had some other things lined up in the publishing schedule and was looking for just the right characters. Avery and Taylor were both characters in my last book, Jungle Hub , and as soon as I wrote that, I kind of knew that the next story would be theirs.
From there, it was just figuring out exactly how to write that, and what their romance would be like, and building a whole cast of characters around them. Did Taylor or Avery come to you first? I had an idea for what would become Taylor a while ago. I was eavesdropping on some friends—well, they knew I was there—who were talking about someone they knew in common that I didn’t know.
They said about her, “Oh, well, she breaks a lot of hearts,” and I remember thinking Oh, that’s a really fun idea for a character . I wrote that down and was like, who would be the person to break a lot of hearts, and what would happen if she then fell in love? I had that idea percolating in the back of my mind for a while, and then she and Avery just came together perfectly. How does the release of this book feel compared to your previous projects? It’s been wonderful.
I released some books pre-pandemic and a number of books during the pandemic, and it’s been so nice to be able to get back out on the road and have actual conversations with people about it, because I missed that so much. It’s exciting and refreshing every time, and maybe it sort of always will be. Writing can be a very solitary profession, and I love the act of writing, but I also really like getting to talk to other people about books—whether it’s books that we both read and love or my books.
I love bookstore events in general: I think romance events at bookstores are so great because 95% of the people there are women, and we’re all just so excited and happy. It’s such a joyful experience. What’s the most exciting romance plot you’ve stumbled across recently, whether in a book, on TV, in a film, or somewhere else? I have a few that I return to all the time.
I think some of them are ones that I read as a kid, like in Anne of Green Gables. I love that romance, but I actually love the friendships in Anne of Green Gables even more than the romance. Those are kind of stories that I think about all the time, and actually, now that I think about it, another book I come back to is the Betsy-Tacy and Tib books.
I love the romance in those books, but their origins were about friendship. Fashion-wise, I need to know where you think Taylor would get her heartbreak-inducing outfits. I feel like the brands that Taylor’s wearing are whatever she picks up randomly and whatever shows off her biceps [ laughs ], but of course, Avery is wearing mid-scale mall brands; a lot of Banana Republic, I would say.
I do think Avery’s wardrobe gets more interesting throughout the book, which was fun for me to write. Is there anything you wish we saw more of within the romance-novel world? I mean, over the past five to 10 years, there’s definitely been a lot more of this, but I want to see more stories about women of color, stories about Black women in particular, stories about fat people. All of those people and all of those stories have always been out there, but publishers haven’t given them a push or haven’t really wanted to publish them.
I’ve seen a lot more of them over the past few years, which has been really wonderful, and I just want even more. This conversation has been edited and condensed..
