Guest post written by Ready or Not author Cara Bastone
Cara Bastone is a full-time writer who lives and writes in Brooklyn with her husband, sons, and an almost-goldendoodle. Her goal with her work is to find the swoon in ordinary love stories. She’s been a fan of the romance genre since she found a grocery bag filled with her grandmother’s old Harlequin Romances when she was in high school. She’s a fangirl for pretzel sticks, long walks through Prospect Park, and love stories featuring men who aren’t hobbled by their own masculinity.
Releasing on February 13th 2024, Ready or Not sees a surprise pregnancy lead to even more life-changing revelations in this heartfelt, slow-burn, friends-to-lovers romance of found family and unexpected love.
Romantic love has always felt like magic to me.
It takes an ordinary object (say, your coworker two desks down) and sprinkles it with fairy dust (aka, a new haircut) and then suddenly it can shoot sparks and fly (flirt with you over text and make you drop your taco in your haste to reply).
When you’re falling in love, all these routine and mundane situations become laced with delicious, heart-pounding tension. We’ve all seen it happen, right? Our friend is telling us a long and (I’m sorry, let’s face it) extremely boring story about the person they’re dating that, to them, is filled with punchlines and intrigue and narrative climax. They think it’s such a great story… simply because the subject matter is Matt.
This is of endless interest to me! No, sorry, Matt is not of endless interest to me (or of anyone but your friend). I mean to say that this concept is of endless interest to me. How the ordinary can become extraordinary through the lens of romantic love.
Here’s an oversimplified and nauseatingly basic formula for my (and lots of) romance novels: characters meetà they get to know one another through circumstance/hijinks/conversation-à they fall in loveàcurtains!
Well, that can’t possibly be it. Where’s the intrigue? Let’s make it more interesting! you say. Okay, sure. Let’s… curse one of them with werewolfism. Ooh! And also make him her older brother’s best friend that she’s always longed for but alas, he never gave the time of day. So, how do we get them together? Well, forced proximity, of course! How about… the coat check at the brother’s wedding. They get locked in and no one can hear their calls for help over the indomitable pound of the Cha Cha Slide. But, uh oh, it’s also the full moon… she’s finally gonna learn his terrible secret…
(This is actually sounding really good).
At first glance, the diesel fuel of the story described above is the idea of being trapped in a confined space with a werewolf. And fantasy is certainly a fundamental component of many romance novels. But, let’s be real, if the werewolf man is a total zero in the personality department, the sparks are not gonna fly no matter how confined the space is. But, if the werewolf man has to face his own demons (werewolfism) in order to let himself be vulnerable with her, if her bravery draws him inexorably to her, if their honesty breaks down those final walls between them… well, wait a second…this werewolf man is suddenly sounding a lot like our old friend Matt! Because it’s not the sensational aspects of the setup that turn out to be the heat of that story, it’s the real-world aspects. The vulnerability, the honesty, the communication, the attraction and desire. These are things that happen to plain old humans when they fall in love with other plain old humans (at the office, after a head-turning haircut).
My book Ready or Not is a friends-to-lovers romance. And (I say this with utter glee) it doesn’t get much more everyday than that! I think friends-to-lovers is eternally thrilling because it is such reliable a vessel for the sort of exhilarating and (thank god!) common falling-in-love that actually happens to people. Forming a friendship requires a patient intimacy, interest in one another’s personalities, the ability to show up in times of need (without the expectation of getting laid). In my book, Eve and Shep have such a strong foundation with one another, they already have such a deep love, that when the tropes (unexpected pregnancy, best friend’s brother) kick in and kick them in the ass there is already a lifetime’s worth of kindling for that bonfire. Which, for me, makes the flame burn impossibly high.
They are not stumbling across something brand new, they are stumbling into a brand new aspect of something very familiar. I love writing this kind of love story because I think finding freshness in the familiar and finding the sensational in the real world is a necessary skill for lasting love.
Romantic love is an extremely powerful spell that reveals the sparkle in the commonplace. This is why I never tire of writing love stories. My theory is that every character has a splash of unique and breathtaking color inside them, and romantic love is the tool I use, as a writer, to hold that character up to the window, like a prism, and cast that colorful light across the entire book.
Stories of this sort of common love are more special to me than stories of wildly unattainable romance. Because the magic of romantic love is that even when it is everywhere, all the time, it is never not special. I write love stories that celebrate this everyday magic. This glorious gift we can find in our own lives if we hold them up to the light and look for the sparkle. How many opportunities are there to get locked in a coat check with a hot werewolf? Not many in real life. But how many opportunities are there to catch a spark from someone we already love? A lot more! In fact, I might argue that it’s possible everyday.
