JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
If you're a fan of romance novels like I am, you probably have a favorite trope. There's things like enemies to lovers, forced proximity, fake dating. Well, a new book called "Tropesick" is all about those familiar storytelling techniques. Two childhood neighbors reunite to ghostwrite a love story for a withdrawn author at her Hamptons estate, and as they write and grow closer, some of those familiar tropes from the page begin to play out in their very real lives. Author Lauren Okie joins me now. Welcome to the program.
LAUREN OKIE: Thank you. I'm really excited to be here.
SUMMERS: OK so in the early pages of your book, we find ourselves meeting Katie and Tyler for the first time, and at the point when they reencounter each other, they haven't seen each other for eight years. Can you just start by telling us briefly about each of them?
OKIE: Sure. So Katie Caruso is a 25-year-old sunshine trope girl, and she is living and working in New York City as a ghostwriter for Meredith Bradford, who is sort of like the Stephen King of Romance. She is kind of the author in the romance space. And she writes about two books a year for Meredith. And she is also, in my opinion, sort of suppressing the grief of the death of her brother, which happened eight years ago. Her brother was an opioid addict. And she is paired up with Tyler McNally, who is her now-deceased brother's best friend, to write this next book, and this is a surprise. They have not seen or spoken to each other since Mikey's overdose death, when they were finishing up high school.
And so when they reunite, it is sort of this mash-up of kind of, like, a classic rivals-to-lovers rom-com setup and a very, I think, realistic and grounded kind of moment of intense tension because they have not ever dealt with the things that happened or tore them apart. So Tyler is sort of this literary fiction author. He is failing to sell his manuscripts. He has accepted this job in hopes of gaining favor with a good literary agent. And Katie is just sort of there, living her life. And all of a sudden, they are back in each other's orbit to ghostwrite this romance novel.
SUMMERS: I mean, as any romance reader knows, tropes can be incredibly divisive. Some draw readers in. Others can repel them. And yet, your book weaves together so many different types of tropes. Where did you even start?
OKIE: This is a funny question because when I realized that I was going to be writing a metafiction novel, which this certainly is, one of the things that I didn't want to do was allow the metafiction element to become more powerful than the natural story itself. Like, I didn't want to create a story that was so full of tropes that the story itself was meaningless. And I think, you know, not to, like, break the fourth wall or, you know, display how the magic happens behind the art, but I think there's a big element of leaning on all of the tropes, all of the media, all the pop culture, all the stories that I've ever consumed and then going back in and making it look like I knew what I was doing the whole time.
And I think one of the things that was so fun about this book is that more tropes showed up naturally. Like, I'd be like, oh, I definitely want to do brother's best friend, you know? And then it was like, OK, well, how do I make this work? And I'm like, well, of course, she needs to live next door so they can stare into each other's windows. And then I'm like, oh, my gosh. Well, then she's the girl next door. You know? And so it was like one trope sort of domino-effected (ph) me into the next.
SUMMERS: Part of the story is also about addiction and the ways that it changes and shapes and, frankly, breaks relationships. Can you talk about how you approached that part of the story?
OKIE: Something that I really wanted to do is I wanted to create a romance novel that balanced the dark and the light, that didn't shy away from the sharp edges of real life, but also sort of delivered on the tension and the banter and the sexiness of a beach read. And so, to me, the trope play in "Tropesick" is the light - right? - like, this kind of rom-com concept that is a bit preposterous. There's this sort of stuff that functions as comic relief because the real story here is that Katie and Tyler are both reeling from the overdose death. And so the book really necessitated exploration of addiction and grief. And we see it from so many angles. And I think it's really important, not just in romance novels or in any novel but almost especially in romance novels, to, I guess, admit that love doesn't conquer everything.
SUMMERS: I have to say the structure of this book was really interesting to me because, in a way, it almost feels like two books. There's the story of Katie and Tyler that's playing out, but there's also the literal story that the two of them are writing together as they're secluded there at Meredith's estate. How did you approach conceiving these sort of parallel stories?
OKIE: Yes, so I think that in "Tropesick" the frame story allowed me to set the stage. You know, there - every - I don't know - 20 or 30 pages, essentially, in a cool typewriter font, there is a different trope and then there's a little blip of the story that Katie and Tyler are writing. And I think this was, in a way, really, really fun because there is this idea - right? - that you always know what's going to happen next in a romance novel. And so I literally tell you. (Laughter) I literally tell you what's going to happen next, and still I hope you keep reading. And I think that is sort of an homage to the romance novel itself, where it's never about the destination. It's also about the journey. And I also think one of the joys of trope play, in my opinion, is that I tell you you're getting something, and then all of a sudden it's there for me to subvert. And I think that sort of frame story setup gives me a lot to play with.
SUMMERS: I'm going to be careful with this question because I don't want to spoil the ending of this book, but I think it's fair to say that there is a massive twist that comes, and in a romance novel that does so much playing with tropes, it was honestly pretty jarring. What led you to that twist? Was it magical realism or something else?
OKIE: So the real reason why this book gets so wild, in my opinion, is because when I read, I feel like a forager. So I feel like I'm constantly leaving my genre and gathering new information - new vegetables - and then bringing it back to the love stories that I want to write. And with this book, I really wanted to have no limitation other than I have a covenant with my reader, and it's that at the end, they have each other. And I think that once I sort of saw what was happening and saw these opportunities, I couldn't resist. Like, I just could not resist the setup.
SUMMERS: Would you say that this book is a celebration of tropes or a mocking of tropes or maybe something entirely different?
OKIE: I think that it is, like, a tongue-in-cheek love letter to them. I think that "Tropesick" is very, very self-aware. And I think that it definitely has some fun with the tropes. I think jamming hundreds of tropes into a novel is inherently playful. But I also think that the book takes the matter of love and romance so seriously. At no moment is the book putting the genre down. It's simply having fun with itself in service of a love story. That's kind of just as big as the trope play itself.
SUMMERS: That's Lauren Okie. Her latest novel, "Tropesick," is out now. Lauren, thanks so much.
OKIE: Thank you.
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