Jessie Rosen – All the Signs

Steve Thomas: Jessie Rosen, welcome back to the podcast.

Jessie Rosen: Thank you so much. As I told you just before we started, this is the first podcast I’m recording about my beloved second book, so it’s so exciting to get back out there and to get to talk about this finally. We live with them for so long without being able to really share. So thank you so much for having me back.

Steve Thomas: You’re welcome. Yeah. I enjoyed talking to you last year for The Heirloom, your first book, and when I saw you had another book out, I put you down on the list right away and said, oh, please let me talk to her again!

Jessie Rosen: Much appreciated.

Steve Thomas: And then when you were on the podcast before, you talked about your past, remembering libraries and how important they’ve been to you in your life. But I did wanna ask you then of what are some of the early authors that you discovered at the library when you were growing up, or even now that you still discover?

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, so as a child, the first author, and this is a children’s book author, so we’re talking picture book, but I remember so distinctly, a Barbara Cooney book, Miss Rumphius, and I remember it because I love the story, but I think it was the first time that it clicked in my head when I turned the book over, there was a picture of Barbara in her home in Maine on this cozy chair and like, the dots connected: she wrote this book, this woman in that room, in this picture, wrote this book and now I have it. And it just all became a big dream, I think, from right there.

So picture books were kind of the start of me understanding what an author was, but then as a little girl, we had a weekly walk to the library. I lived walking distance from a Carnegie library, a famously instituted spot in our sweet little town, central New Jersey, and we would go every week. And when it became chapter books, it was the classics. It was Secret Garden, it was Little Lord Fauntleroy. It was all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. Then I graduated to the Babysitters Club books when I was able to kind of be reading completely on my own.

So, at that time I think discovery for me was a discovery of the classics. My parents who both read to us at night, my sisters and me, were kind of introducing us to the classics. Now I go and I’m just wandering through the aisles, looking for names I haven’t seen before, imagery I haven’t seen before, and I just actually at my library, discovered an author I haven’t read before and I finished her latest book. It’s Marcy Dermansky and her latest book is Hot Air. A really interesting kind of twisty but short, in terms of its timeline, story about what happens after a hot air balloon crashes into the backyard of this man while he’s on a date.

So it just happened right just a few days ago and now I’m in the author world in a more career-focused way. So to still be discovering at my library is a really special thing.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and I think that’s a really special thing that libraries do for authors is that it makes that discovery ’cause now in the future, like, you know this author now, and maybe now when you’re at the bookstore, “Oh, I’ll get the new book by them,” and you buy it. People who use the library a lot are the ones who buy the most books. So libraries are definitely not taking sales away from publishers.

Jessie Rosen: No, and it’s a different browsing experience. Usually I go to the library because I’ve gone to do some work. I’ve set aside a couple hours that I’m gonna work for my local library, that’s the Eagle Rock Branch of the Los Angeles Public Library system, and then after I’ve sat for a while, I treat myself to a browse and a book. So it has this association of, this isn’t just a space I come to grab a book; this is a space and a safe space that I come to work, that I come for quiet and that I come because this is a place that it almost feels like a temple in a way. So we love the library.

Steve Thomas: So when you’re working in the library, are you writing in the library? Are you researching and what are you doing there?

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, yeah. Any and all. When you work from home, there’s only so much time you can spend in your office, and it’s a little bit of a brain hack to leave the room, leave the house. Get in the car, set a timeline. My library is a really friendly space for young people, and so after school hours it gets really buzzy and busy and people are coming with their kids, which is really wonderful. So I wanna make sure I finish before that, right? So it even helps me schedule my day a little bit to know when I’m gonna get there and when I’m gonna sit and I’ve got my table that I like in the back corner. And, you know, there’s just something, it’s ritual for me.

Steve Thomas: Well, and I’m sure just from being a librarian that I’m sure the people at your library know you, and you’re that writer lady that always sit in that corner over there at that table.

Jessie Rosen: Yeah. It’s so charming, and of course, for years I had been going and working on my debut novel, and that’s not something I’m gonna tell them, right? But then when the book came out and I was able to share that, it felt like we were celebrating it together. And then when they stocked it on their shelves, it just felt like this homecoming and this celebration of, they watched me, very few people watch me write. It’s kind of a funny thing. I’m in my office. My husband, even if he’s working from home for the day, I hope he’s not standing outside this door watching me, but I’m more public when I’m writing at the library, so it’s kind of a funny thing.

Steve Thomas: Well, I’ve put The Heirloom up as my staff pick many times.

Jessie Rosen: Thank you. Love to hear it.

Steve Thomas: Well, All the Signs is your new book. Can you tell listeners what it’s about?

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, so All the Signs is about skeptic Leah Lockhart, and she’s a doctor, so she’s got that science brained mind, but when she falls into an unexpected medical issue, a case of vertigo, it’s suggested to her that this might be because she’s living out of alignment with her astrology.

Of course, this is the last thing she believes and wants to hear, and so she sets off on a mission to prove that wrong, to gain control of her life back by suggesting that there is no such thing, of course, as astrology having any influence over our lives. And to do so, she finds her exact astrological matches in the world, and I call those her Star Twins. And of course, wouldn’t you know, there’s a little bit more to life than just science and the answers that science predicts and there’s a little bit of magic to what unfolds for Leah on her journey.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and I think that, we will talk more detail about that stuff, but I think that ties a little bit in with The Heirloom as well. There’s a little bit of magic to the air….

Jessie Rosen: Well, it was really a challenge for me. I went into this book wanting to write the opposite character of my Heirloom heroine. She was a believer, and she needed to be talked out of her staunch adherence to this superstition, so I thought it would be really fun to write a skeptic and to start from a premise of someone that does not believe in, will not be convinced otherwise, and how do you talk that person into the idea that there may be more?

And you know, the conversation I’m really trying to have is not one about whether we can prove or disprove astrology ever, but how does this journey allow her to finally see herself in a way that she hasn’t been willing to look at before? And that is something that’s the same for both my characters, and I kind of feel like it’s gonna be a similar theme in any character I ever write.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. Well, I mean, finding yourself is a very human quality, so…

Jessie Rosen: It is. Yeah, it is. And I’m really fascinated by when and why people decide to go on that journey. When we think about like the hero’s quest or the heroin’s quest, what tips it off, and in both circumstances I’ve kind of put my characters in these tricky boxes to get out of. So I think stakes are really such a big part of stories like this where you’re going to make a character change and change quickly.

Steve Thomas: What inspired you to write this book, and where did you fall on the astrology scale of skeptic to true believer?

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, so I did this; I looked for my own Star Twins and I did it, gosh, at this point, four or five years ago at a really challenging, honestly, low point in my writing career. I was really lost. I was trying to navigate whether I should be focusing on books, film and tv, where I had been, I was going through questioning motherhood, life in Los Angeles, should I be living here? So many questions! And I just have always been very curious about astrology. I’ve had some interesting experiences with astrology, some astrology readings. You kind of can’t live in Los Angeles and avoid it entirely.

And so I just kind of, in a moment of creative desperation, I thought, I wonder if anyone born on my same day, at my same time, with my same map of the stars, is experiencing what I’m experiencing. And I tried to find some people and I did find some people and I found the experience of talking to them so fascinating that that was always up here as like something to play with and explore.

I was really fortunate after The Heirloom to have a second book opportunity with Putnam books and this idea just, even though it had been nonfiction, it kind of started as memoir. I just thought, this is too fascinating to me. Maybe it will be to others. I should pursue this as a fiction project, and that’s how it began. So there is a little bit of auto fiction to this only in that to understand the character best, I gave her my exact same birth details. I just thought, “How can I know this character well? Oh, I guess I should bravely make her me!” All of her life circumstances are completely different because I’m not a skeptic, I was allowed to pursue a path that was natural to me by family, and I had the support. So what if I didn’t? What would that have looked like? And it was fascinating to go on that journey with her.

Steve Thomas: So, and you kinda mentioned the Star Twins a couple of times, the people who have the same chart as you. Is that a term that you made up or is that something that’s in astrology circles already?

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, it’s in astrology circles, and I was really lucky to have the help of a number of different A) astrologers B) astronomers to make sure I was getting the orientation of the dates and times and meridians and all of that correct. Star Twins is the language I landed on to accurately describe it, I think the appropriate astrological language would be birth chart match because of course the birth chart contains the stars and the planets and some nodes and yada yada. So when I say Star Twins, it’s the marketing way to explain what I’m talking about. But it is a point of fascination in astrology and in a couple different really interesting books I read, there have been people that have also wondered what kind of mass study could you do if you had all the life data, the anecdotal data, of a bunch of twins that had precise scientific data. So, I don’t know. Book three, we go further.

Steve Thomas: Your first sequel.

Jessie Rosen: Exactly. All the Signs and All the Stars and All the Planets. It’s a long title, but we’ll work it out.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. Like in your previous book, The Heirloom, international travel is a big part of this book. Have you been to Venice or any of the other places that Leah travels to in this book?

Jessie Rosen: Yes. So she goes to Venice, she goes to Istanbul, she travels to New Orleans, through New York City, which is close to her hometown, but a place that she’s never really experienced like a tourist might, and then she heads to Los Angeles, which is the place of her birth, but another place she has not spent much time at all. I’m really fortunate to say I have been to all these locations. Istanbul is a place I visited many years ago and had always sat as this like wondrous place of sensorial everything to eventually use in something I wrote.

I grew up close to Manhattan and lived there. I’ve had amazing trips to New Orleans. The location where I went for research for this book was Venice, so I hadn’t been in a really focused way since I was in my twenties, and it’s hard to focus on anything when you’re in your twenties. So I did. I went back. It actually kind of serendipitously ended up being part of a birthday trip for me. So I was doing this astrological birth chart research and going there at the time of my birthday, and I knew Venice was a really significant city to astrology. I also knew from some research I had done that it was this significant city to my personal astrology. So my chart and the way that my sign Leo presents and the connection to Venice is significant. So it just all kind of came together and that was a place that was a part of this research.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, and it’s not just about travel, there’s a lot of family business in her self-discovery journey. She’s having to make some hard choices and some healing choices ultimately for her, but that requires her to do some hard things especially with her father of having to make some breaks there. I don’t wanna go too much detail into what happens there. Mm-hmm. But having to make a break from the past or feeling like she needs to take a break from the past. How do you balance that kind of stuff with the outward adventure that’s also happening at the same time?

Jessie Rosen: I know. It’s the hardest part and I’m always trying to create both an aspirational, inspirational, I wanna be in this woman’s life, I want to go on these trips with her, and also give us the depth that inspires a real connection. It’s a really tricky thing to balance and it was one of the hardest parts about writing this book because there were certain places where I would really look at the manuscript and look at how much time I was spending in certain emotional states with the character and just feel like, ” This is a bummer!” How can I lighten this and lighten the character and give her… you know, for me, a lot of the answer to that is always in action: fun, dynamic, busy action, even if the action is dramatic and a little bit tense. And then secondary characters that just give us those pops of joy and personality.

So there are a few characters in this book that I love maybe more than any I’ve ever written, Imani in particular is the name of a life coach that Leah comes across, and Leah’s the straight man, especially as a science-minded person, she is not trying to be silly or goofy or fun in the beginning.

So how do I make sure that I’m infusing the book with that, using secondary characters and other things to help that along. But I will say, I think the further I go in my writing career, the more comfortable I get with high highs of fun and dynamism and not being afraid to go low low when it’s time to show how the character is hurting and then, you know, we’re gonna patch it up. She’s going to be okay. I hope that readers that are on journeys in my books know, I’ve got you. You’re safe here. I’m gonna deliver you to a point where we’re all gonna feel okay, even if it isn’t easy and even if it isn’t perfect. So that’s really a tone I’m trying to evoke throughout.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, I remember even in the Heirloom and then this one, there were several moments where you’re like, “No, no, no, don’t do that! Don’t do that!” to the character. You’re kind of wanting to yell at them sometimes ’cause you know they’re doing something that’s not right.

Jessie Rosen: Yeah. Yeah. And it gets messy. It’s hard for me for things to get messy. It was harder with this book because I wrote a character that has all of my similar traits. So it was tricky. And I am sure throughout my writing career, that’s a note I’m always gonna get. Don’t be afraid to make it messier. It’s okay if we’re mad at the heroine; we’ll earn it back. And earning it back is that satisfying, gratifying journey that readers love and that’s the journey I love as a reader.

Steve Thomas: And you said growing up, you didn’t have a father like her father that was a very good father, but sort of putting her in a box almost of like, “This is what you’re gonna do” and giving her much stricter guidelines of what she’s gonna do with her life, and you didn’t have that part growing up, but are there other parts of her family or, I’m blanking on his name, the boy next door from when she was young.

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, David, the boy next door.

Steve Thomas: Does any of that come from real life that you were able to pluck?

Jessie Rosen: Tons of it. Yeah. And I should say I’ve been really careful to not inappropriately include any of the lives of the Star Twins of my own that I met in my journey, but there was a pattern among some of them in terms of being held back by the love of family, by the challenges of family, all those things. So I was really taken by that and infused a lot of that into the story.

David is a piece of the puzzle that was a really huge inspiration for me. And it’s actually so funny. He had a different name for a lot of the writing of the book, and as I was struggling to find the character and the relationship between him and Leah, this idea that they know each other when they’re very young and then they spend many years apart, and then of course he’s back in her life and getting to the heart of that, I had to rename him after a real man in my life.

It was the only way, and I thought, I’ll just do this for the writing so I can get to the heart of this person. And then once it was done, I thought, this person deserves to be named after this character. This character deserves to have this link, and there were two people, there was a young boy when I was little, who I didn’t live across the creek from him as my two in the book do. That creek imagery is so Dawson’s Creek to me, which I love. He was this, you know, he paid attention to me, he looked at me, he listened to me. He saw me as a young person in a way that is how I wanted to be seen. That was very powerful for me. And then his name was David and another person named David in my young twenties when I was living in New York City also did that for me very early in my writing career. I was writing a blog at the time, and this David said, “Make sure you’re writing every week, you’ve got something here. Create an audience. I really see something here,” and I was just stunned by that and really felt supported by that.

So yeah, I’ve never had to do that before. The character was called Benny before. And it just wasn’t working. I couldn’t see this Benny, and then when I changed his name to David, it all was very clear to me based on those two people who I hope if they ever find this book are really honored by it. David’s a good guy.

Steve Thomas: They did good things for your life, even if they don’t know it.

Jessie Rosen: They really did. They really did.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. Sometimes you have people in your life that you realize, I don’t even know if they ever think about me, but I think about them.

Jessie Rosen: It’s so true and it’s kind of magical. I think that’s a little bit why in both of my books, there are characters that we come across that we don’t spend a ton of time with. Couple magical days , couple magical hours in some cases, but a huge impact is left and I have found that in life. And so I’ve really tried to use that as something that is, I don’t know if I can call it signature yet, we’re only on book two, but it’s something I believe in and so it’s something that I have peppered both books with.

Steve Thomas: The Istanbul trip definitely has that, where it’s just somebody she spends a little bit of time with and then who knows if she’ll ever see those people again.

Jessie Rosen: Yeah. Yeah. But it ends up being really formative and he kind of imprints on her in a big way and, I do think, I think one of the reasons I love to put travel in the books is some of those magical encounters: there’s something about travel that brings them on and allows them to imprint on us. I don’t know. I have certainly had encounters like that in my hometown. But when you’re traveling, I don’t know. You’re so outside your comfort zone, I think you’re willing to see things and listen to things in a different way.

Steve Thomas: How did writing the Heirloom influence how you approached writing your second book?

Jessie Rosen: You know, I wish it had influenced my approach more because, second books, they warn you. Everybody warns you about second books. My editor warned me and my agent warned me, you know, kindly. I just had so much more freedom writing the first draft of Heirloom. I had of course a little bit more freedom of time so I give myself grace in terms of that category, but I tried so hard to get it right on the first shot with the first draft of All the Signs, and I kept writing myself into corners. I had this outline. I was gonna stick to it. You know, I know how to do this. I was using the final draft of the Heirloom as my indication of what it should be and how it should feel like for the first draft of All the Signs.

And finally as I was really struggling, I went back and read some of the first draft of the Heirloom. And that is what helped me get into the spirit of what this needed to be. This is ink on the page, spaghetti on the wall, like, I really needed to offer myself some freedom and going back to the original draft of Heirloom and remembering how far it came and that that was the journey I was gonna be on, that was what influenced the writing of the first draft, at least of this book, the most.

Steve Thomas: You’re two books in now. Do you feel like you should not be an outliner then, that you should be more of a, whatever they call that?

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, what did they say? A plotter and pantser. Yeah. And then plotser is like this thing in the middle.

I’m never gonna be comfortable without some form of outline, but I was looking to have it really complete and I was almost requiring myself to follow it. So if I had laid some groundwork and had some sketches and then let it flow as it was going and adjusted along the way, I think it would’ve been a much different experience. I need to outline, I think, especially because I write classic plot-driven arcs. An outline is my friend, but I do really think that less is more for a first draft when it comes to how much you would require yourself to adhere to that outline along the way.

Steve Thomas: Yeah, let let the characters tell you what to do sometimes.

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Steve Thomas: Well, you’ve written for your blog, you’ve written for television, your live storytelling show. What’s different about writing a novel in your mind?

Jessie Rosen: They are all different. And I think the thing about a novel, which is a blessing and a curse, is you’re responsible for creating the world. You’re really responsible for creating everything on the page and allowing your reader to see, hear, smell, taste, touch, get to know every element of the world.

So it’s been my learning curve. I feel like in my first drafts, I’m still writing a bit like a screenplay writer, where I’m not showing and telling enough of all the detail. Dialogue comes to me really quickly, setup comes to me quickly, where we are, little bit of an explanation of the scene, but immersing the reader in every element of that and making sure you give it enough.

I’ll be totally honest. Sometimes I read my work, my finished work, and I say, I could have done with three more sentences. I’m always so eager to get to the next scene because I still a little bit think in scenes as in terms of visual scenes like television and film, and I do think that that’s the biggest difference is you’re responsible for so much more and offering so much more in a novel.

The beauty is, you don’t have to think about how much it’s gonna cost to shoot this scene. You don’t have to have any kind of time requirement for an episode of television. Even with storytelling on stage, there is a requirement of time and of self. You’re showing up in that way. I can kind of hide in these chapters and expand in them, and there’s so, so much freedom. So I love it.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. You can’t just say “they’re in a park” and the production team will take care of that.

Jessie Rosen: “You know what it looks like!” That’s exactly right.

Steve Thomas: Well, one of the ways that Leah has this project that she’s trying to find all the Star Twins and she goes on a podcast because she wants to get the word out and it’s a super popular podcast, and so I thought it would be fun to sabotage you with the same questions that she gets sabotaged with.

Jessie Rosen: I did not anticipate anyone doing this. Steve, you’re an evil genius. I’m ready.

I don’t remember the questions.

Here we go. This is gonna be interesting.

Steve Thomas: Okay, so the first one is, what’s your favorite thing to do for a really good time?

Jessie Rosen: Karaoke. And it’s funny to say that because I’m actually, I’m not a singer, and I always get so scared before I go to karaoke. Like every time I think about it, I’m like, oh God, that’s gonna be so embarrassing. And every time I’m there, I’m having the time of my life and singing the most and the loudest. And here in LA we’ve got some really fun spots downtown and we have a great Koreatown here, which has amazing karaoke.

So yeah, that’s my answer.

Steve Thomas: Go-to thing you put on to feel so good about yourself.

Jessie Rosen: Gold. Gold. I have, I own a lot of things that are gold. I own a gold blazer. I own kind of like funky, chunky gold jewelry, and there’s just something about kind of that metal that I don’t know. Now we’re going back to the Heirloom, right, in terms of like the energy of a metal. I like it when I’m feeling bold and when I wanna feel bold. I do like a little sparkle and gold is my metal of choice.

Steve Thomas: Fill in the blank for what you want people to say about you in your eulogy. “Jessie Rosen was_________.”

Jessie Rosen: I know, I remember putting this question in the book and now I’m thinking what a cool thing for a podcaster to have scripted.

Jessie Rosen was brave. I like that and it’s something I’ve been thinking a lot about. I am newly writing a Substack that’s called Bravery by Jessie Rosen, and I’m just aware of what that word means and how much it can afford us. It came about because I was asked to define the characters I write in one word by a friend, just a random, sweet question from a friend. And I finally was able to figure out that I think my characters are all finding their way to bravery and realizing that they are brave.

Steve Thomas: Yeah. That’s actually a really good insight. I agree with that. I had thought before that they’re definitely finding themselves, but it does take some bravery to take that step sometimes.

Jessie Rosen: Yeah, go on the mission, take the challenge to say yes to those things. It is not easy. And I think a little bit of what I’m trying to do with all of these books is to really show the process step by step by step, so that people can access and imagine walking through those steps themselves.

Steve Thomas: And then the final question that Leah had to answer is, what’s something upcoming in your life that you’re incredibly excited about?

Jessie Rosen: Oh, book tour. I’m so excited about book tour, not only because I get to go back east and see my family and celebrate this, it’s a homecoming for me in a way, but I love to talk about the book with people who have challenges to it. I love to hear how people experienced it and get to talk about it. Writing, especially novels, is such a solitary job that you just long to be able to get out there and talk about anything but it’s extra special to get to talk about books, and when you’re talking about your own book, you’re talking about other people’s books, the world of literature, what are people reading? Every time I go out on the road, I get book recommendations for my own summer reads to fill myself up when tour is over and it’s time to hunker down and write the next thing.

Steve Thomas: The last question I wanted to ask is what are you reading right now?

Jessie Rosen: It’s interesting. When I am not writing, I can read my genre, and when I am writing, I find it really hard to read inside my genre. So I’m kind of delighting in reading things that are a little closer to what I write. So I just finally read Expiration Dates by Rebecca Searl. I just finally read Chicken Sisters, which I hadn’t. And now I’m kind of morphing a little bit into a little bit of mystery. So I just got to go to a reading, my Putnam sibling, Putnam brother, Ron Curry has a new book out, so I just went to a reading to hear him talk about his heroine, Babs Dion and her book. So that’s what I’m gonna pick up very next.

Steve Thomas: Very cool. Well, Jessie, this has been such a fun conversation and I appreciate you coming back on the podcast again. Do you have another book coming in the future that we can look forward to?

Jessie Rosen: I have a very big, exciting new idea that I am starting to research and play with, and I’ll be taking a little trip soon to do even more dedicated research to it, and we shall see if that book very hopefully comes to life in the next year or so.

Steve Thomas: Great. Well, I hope you’re able to come back on the podcast to talk about it whenever it materializes.

Jessie Rosen: Thank you so, so much. It’s so special to be part of this podcast in particular in a time where I want to be able to throw all the support we possibly can at our precious libraries. It is so important that you create content outside of the physical space of the library just to show how important these spaces are in our lives and in every way. So thank you.

Steve Thomas: And thank you for coming on and adding to that content, so I appreciate it. Where can listeners go to find you online?

Jessie Rosen: The best place is jessierosen.com. I’m J-E-S-S-I-E and that’s where you can find links to download from all of your favorite places. My favorite place outside of the library to get books is bookshop.org and you’ll find a link there to grab that book if you can’t find it at your local.

Steve Thomas: Great. I’m sure everyone will enjoy the book. I got the advanced copy and very much enjoyed it, so I’m sure everyone else will as well.

Jessie Rosen: Thank you so, so much.

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Rebecca Vnuk: Hello and welcome to the Circ Desk. I’m Rebecca Vnuk, the Executive Director of Library Reads.

Yaika Sabat: I’m Yaika Sabat, a librarian who works at Novelist, and I do wanna say, make sure you stay tuned for a special offer for listeners of this podcast after the Circ Desk.

Rebecca Vnuk: Today’s book that we’re offering read alikes for is All the Signs by Jessie Rosen. Now, you just heard this great interview with Jessie all about the book, so we are here to offer you a couple of read alikes while you’re checking that one out, maybe you’ll like these as well. Now I was struck, looking at this book, three things kind of stood out to me: the astrology factor, of course. We got the woowoo going. I love me a little bit of woowoo. I’m a science person, too, but I think that there’s a healthy balance, right? The travel setting, the jumping from place to place to sort of find things and really the theme of finding yourself. So those were the takeaways that I took from this book to find some read alikes for, so my first read alike for this one is Written in the Stars by Alexandria Bellefleur, and this came out in November of 2020 from Avon. This is a romance. It hit the Library Reads list in the November 2020 list and the annotation we have for it is, “Darcy, a buttoned up actuary, convinces quirky astrologer Elle to fake a relationship for a couple of months to get her brother, and Elle’s new business partner, off her back. For fans of the Kiss Quotient, and You Had Me at Hola,” and that’s annotation was provided by Beth Gabriel, one of our Library Reads ambassadors from the Milwaukee Public Library, and I chose that one based on, it’s not quite the same, we don’t have that kind of like finding yourself or taking trips, but we do have the astrology in there, which I thought would just kind of be like a fun offshoot to go off of.

Then my second choice as a read alike is the Two Lives of Lydia Bird: a Novel, and that’s by Josie Silver. That came out in March of 2020 and hit the March 2020 Library Reads list. And the annotation we have for that is, ” The Two Lives of Lydia Bird is a beautifully written exploration of heartbreak and grief that takes place over the course of 18 months after Lydia loses her fiance, Freddie, in a tragic accident. For fans of Me Before You and I Almost Forgot About You,” and that comes from Ashley Giangregorio from the Virginia Beach Public Library, and I chose this one, so there’s no astrology in it, and it’s different than than this, but I think the similarities were the sort of bouncing back and finding yourself and coping with changes in your life. And one of the other things I thought was interesting about this is in the Two Lives of Lydia Bird, we have her going back and forth in between parallel lives. So we don’t have that same mysticism in All the Signs, but I thought they were a nice pairing because there’s just enough of that woo woo mysticism in All the Signs that people might be, if you like that and you could believe in that and you enjoyed it, then I thought that would be kind of an interesting read alike fit.

But Yaika, what did you come up with for read alikes?

Yaika Sabat: So I’ve got a couple, and one thing I like is that you picked up on different aspects of the book that the reader might connect with, which is what I always like to do as well. I always, I do start off in NoveList, which I promise I did before I worked for NoveList, I was a big user at the desk, but I like to go in because NoveList does break down the book by story elements, so things like the mood and the characters and if you’re looking at All the Signs, it is relationship fiction, it’s feel good, it’s moving, it’s atmospheric, so sort of captures the places she’s going on her journey. And like you said, a big focus is self-discovery.

And then of course astrology and I did think that was really fun, that astrology angle, ’cause people tend to have heated feelings one way or the other , but I also think another focus is the focus on her relationships, with her mother or her father, former boy next door who might become more than the boy next door, so I think that’s also what is probably really appealing to a lot of people is the relationships to herself and others. So I did wanna have at least one that had the astrology angle because it is fun and you know…

Rebecca Vnuk: It is fun, right?

Yaika Sabat: It’s fun to throw in and I found Miranda in Retrograde by Lauren Layne from 2024. Now, this is a contemporary romantic comedy, so it’s relationship fiction focused on relationships, but romances have that central love story and the happily ever after. So they’re similar but a little different. In Miranda in Retrograde, there is a physics professor. Again, science woman, like in All the Signs, who basically gets passed over for tenure and decides that, okay, well my life has been thrown totally off course. She’s going to live her life by her horoscope for a year by her horoscope predictions. So she sort of goes the opposite way that Leah does, but it has that same sort of bouncing back theme. She is getting her footing again, still discovering new things, discovering things about herself, and it is upbeat. While All the Signs is feel good, this one is upbeat, so they’re gonna be kind of lighter reads. So I think that would be great for anyone who wants another upbeat read, who wants that astrology angle, who wants a woman who’s very science focused, sort of exploring something else.

Then for my second read alike, I wanted to focus more on the discovery, the journey, the travel, the self-acceptance part of it, and so I stumbled on Half-Blown Rose by Leesa Cross-Smith. This has the same moving mood that All the Signs has, but it’s about a woman who is betrayed by her husband and she decides to take a year of travel, of enjoying art, of pursuing her passions in Paris. And so, like Leah, in All the Signs, she is traveling and journeying and going through her own self and finding herself again after a very difficult experience. So I think if someone wants more of that focus, that more character focus on that internal journey then Half-Blown Rose by  Leesa Cross-Smith could be a good pick.

Rebecca Vnuk: Oh, and I love  Leesa Cross-Smith too. I’ll just gonna put that plug in there. We had her on a panel at an ALA one year for her collection of essays, and I just immediately fell in love with her. So I’m gonna heartily, heartily, endorse anything that you have to say about her. She’s really a fantastic writer and seems like a wonderful human being as well.

So that’s a good pick.

Yaika Sabat: I will say, this made me think of a recommendation tip that I like to tell people. One is obviously don’t try and exactly replicate the book. So look for the different parts someone might like.

Rebecca Vnuk: Yes.

Yaika Sabat: But the other one is look for cross genres. Look for linked genres. Relationship fiction tends to be more upbeat, but again, it’s focused on relationships, so don’t feel like, “Okay, well, this book sounds perfect, but it’s historical fiction.” Don’t be afraid to suggest that if it’s still character driven, it’s still relationship driven. So I think when you’re recommending books, don’t be afraid to veer off a little bit when you’re having that conversation.

Rebecca Vnuk: That is an excellent point. I think oftentimes when we are talking about looking for read alikes, and you and I, we’ve worked so long together on read likes that we know, I think everybody, this is probably universal, your immediate reaction is, “Oh my gosh, we have to have the same exact plot, or it has to take place in the same city!” like something has to be exact. And we have to like remember to give ourselves a little bit of freedom and think, “Okay, maybe this has nothing to do with astrology at all, but this is this woman who’s going on this journey to kind of find herself and that maybe that’s what’s gonna be appealing.”

Whenever I give talks, lectures, workshops, whatever, on appeal factors like that, we have to remember that what you immediately think of as an appeal factor might not be what the reader is thinking of as an appeal factor. And frankly, that’s what I love about choosing read alikes, is you can veer off in all different directions. You’re not limited to saying, “Oh, I must find you another astrology-based romance. Maybe some of these are gonna be good or not, but here at least it has astrology in it.” And that is why I feel like readers’ advisors never stop training themselves, with every book that we read, whether it’s for ourselves or it’s for work, or it’s for putting together a list, something drops into our brain saying, “Oh, remember this point! This might be good, think about that!” And I love that that’s kind of the woo woo about reader’s advisory.

Yaika Sabat: It’s both a science and an art.

Rebecca Vnuk: It’s both a science and an art. I love it. I love it. All right. Well, I think that is it then for us, for the Circ Desk, and we will check you out next time.