Two high school best friends are mistaken for a couple, and end up going along with the charade, only to both realize that they want to be a couple, for real. It’s the perfect sweet high school romance.

It was one of the books instrumental in me realizing that I was queer, and I still get flutters in my chest when I think about reading it for the first time. It was one of the first f/f romances I read, and I’ve since read it probably four or five times. Who doesn’t want to be plucked from a mundane life and dive headfirst into a world of mystical and beautiful creatures? In hindsight, there are many problematic elements to the books, but I still remember the way they made me feel when I first read them.Īnother book that laid the groundwork for who I am as a writer is Dating Sarah Cooper by Siera Maley. I don’t think I’m alone in that sentiment. I hadn’t read something that so completely captured me in a long time, and that opened up a door to so many other books, and to entire career. I finished the first book in about five hours and ran out to buy the rest of the series.

Somehow, I had missed the entire Twilight craze, but when my mom saw a segment on the Today Show, I bought a copy of the first book, completely intending to hate it. I dove headfirst into young adult novels when I was in college, which just happened to be the time when Breaking Dawn by Stephenie Meyer came out. My mom is more of an Agatha Christie reader, so I wasn’t introduced to romance as a genre until much later.

I didn’t grow up smuggling my mom’s romances and reading them under the covers.

Dating sarah cooper by siera maley