Broken Harbor

"I love everything that Catherine Cowles writes. She could write a menu, and I’d love it. I don’t understand how she does it. It’s crazy. I actually can’t read her books or any ice hockey romance when I’m actively writing, because I end up comparing my work and thinking, ‘Why am I even bothering? There’s no point.’ So I read Broken Harbor during one of my off breaks between writing the first book in the series, Melting for You, and editing the second. He is an ice hockey player, but it’s more about him being a coach for a youth ice hockey team during the summer. I really like seeing that connection between adults and children in books. Some people hate it, but I love it as long as the kid is written well. With Luca, the little boy in Broken Harbor, I love seeing that relationship between the child and the grown-up. It’s something that’s in my book as well, with Jack and Liam developing a stepparent relationship. I have a stepmother, she passed away a few years ago. It’s that balance of how much can you overstep? How much can you parent? I love young people connecting and being brought together, the family as a unit. I think it’s just beautiful. I love it so much. Not everyone is perfectly poised to be in a relationship. Sometimes you need to meet people halfway. If you’ve got a child, you’ve got to meet them halfway. If you’ve got a disability, you’ve got to meet them halfway. I love seeing that compromise and how the building blocks come into place for a very strong and steady foundation for a relationship. Life isn’t perfect. A perfect person doesn’t exist. Someone is always going to be anxious or scared of something, or they might have a kid, or they might have student debt. It’s more realistic because that perfect, ‘I just happened to fall in love with someone when I was 16, and now we’re 25 and getting married’ doesn’t always happen. My best friend and her partner have been together since they were 15, and we turned 26 this year. It does happen, but it is more the anomaly these days. I like reading books about real people, living real lives that are hard and rocky."