Author Sarah MacLean on how “Tuck Everlasting,” mass-market romance, and “The Da Vinci Code” shaped her as a reader

Here are books that shaped romance writer MacLean, who finds a new audience with her latest novel, "These Summer Storms."

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

Romance readers have known the beauty of Sarah MacLean's prose for years now.

Beginning with 2010's Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake, MacLean declared herself a fierce and intoxicating voice in the genre, writing swoony books that deliver on the promise of the genre's feminism and happy endings. All of her romance novels have hit the New York Times bestseller list.

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

Both in her fiction and with her former gig as a romance reviewer for The Washington Post, MacLean championed the genre and all it had to offer. Since 2018, she and critic Jen Prokop have done the same, going deep into the genre's history on podcast Fated Mates.

But this summer, MacLean is stepping (slightly) outside romance with her These Summer Storms, out now, an inheritance drama about the secrets of a wealthy family on the coast of Rhode Island and the fallout following the death of their patriarch (think Succession). MacLean has always been a wide reader, and here she shares the books that have shaped her life.

My favorite book as a child

"That is an easy one," she says. "It was Tuck Everlasting. I must've read that book hundreds of times. It's a book about immortality. The main character is a girl who stumbles upon a spring, and a family near that spring, the Tucks, is immortal. There's this mysterious situation going on where the government is trying to find the spring, and the Tucks have to run and what will happen. It really has all the hallmarks of books that I love: big plots, high stakes, scary stuff happening, and a romance running right through it. I haven't read it as a grownup, but in my head it feels like that romance looms really large. And I just want Tuck Everlasting to live in my head the way I imagine it."

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

A book I read in secret as a teenager

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

The book I enjoyed most in school

"I feel like I'm very basic, but when I read The Great Gatsby in junior year of high school, that was the book for me. I loved every second of that book. It felt like all the characters were just so big and bright, and the writing is so perfect for somebody of that age. We all say it's an American classic, and it is in a lot of ways. But it's partially a classic because it's the book that we all latch onto at a very, very particular time in our childhood when we're starting to think about disillusionment."

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

A book that changed my life

"There are so many. I can remember where I was when I was reading so many romances, and I've been reading romance novels since I was very young. I'm going to rapid-fire a bunch of books that I can remember exactly where I was when I read them: Lisa Kleypas's Devil in Winter, Loretta Chase's Lord of Scoundrels, Beverly Jenkins' Indigo, Judith McNaught's A Kingdom of Dreams. Even now there are books that have taught me a new way of thinking about romance novels as a writer of genre fiction. I think about Milla Vane's A Heart of Blood and Ashes or Angelina M. Lopez's After Hours on Milagro Street. Adriana Herrera's A Caribbean Heiress in Paris. Sometimes you read a book and it imprints itself on you, and it rewires the way you think about your own craft."

A book that cemented me as a writer

"When you write in genre, there is always a keen sense that you are standing on the shoulders of a million people who came before you. I think about somebody like Lorraine Heath, who is a lesser known longtime romance novelist. Lorraine is always really interested in telling a story and thinking through what she wants a reader to take away from a book. We talk all the time about genre fiction being a mirror for the world. There is something so powerful about writers who can hold that mirror up to the world and really show us who we are as people and ask us these deep, important questions of 'What does love look like? What does joy look like? What is the work that we are doing in the world?'"

A classic I've never read

"There are a million classics I've never read. Never read Moby Dick. Why would I read that? That sounds terrible. I was assigned The Scarlet Letter four separate times over eight years of high school and college, and I cannot finish that book. I happily pretended to finish that book a bunch and then punted on an exam."

A book people would be surprised to learn I love

"The Da Vinci Code is an absolute banger. I'll fight anybody about Dan Brown. Talk about a book that really taught me about craft. That book came out when I was in college. I remember thinking to myself, How clever to be able to write a mystery where the reader figures it out one page before the protagonist figures it out. There's a constant sense of surprise, but you also feel deeply superior and intelligent as a reader because you're like, 'I figured it out before he did.' But of course you didn't. You figured it out exactly when Dan Brown wanted you to figure it out. There's something so joyful about that kind of reading."

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

A book I wish I'd written

"Circe by Madeline Miller. If I could pick her brain up and put it directly into mine. She is so incredibly talented, and Circe is a masterpiece. I know a lot of people would argue with me about that and say it's Song of Achilles, but man, Circe's a great character and it's such a beautifully done book. I love a book with a plot. I love a book with big feelings. The Odyssey was a major turning point in my life as a young person in high school when we had to read it. I loved every ounce of that story, every bit of that myth, and coming to it as an adult through the lens of Circe, through the brilliant writing of Madeline Miller, wow. I've written a ton of books that have that dialogue with a myth or tell a story of a myth. And part of what I really love about mythology is that the retelling of the myth is part of carrying that myth through our society. Circe is just as valuable as The Odyssey."

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

The first thriller I ever read

"It had to be a Dean Koontz book. He's written 12 million books, so I'm not sure which one. I had a friend who was a huge, huge thriller and horror reader, and I remember her giving this book to me and being like, 'I will read a romance novel if you read this.' The bones of thrillers feel very familiar to me as a romance writer. I love the comfort of the structure of thrillers, but I'm also incredibly bad at figuring things out, so I'm just here for the ride when they come together. I love a book with a question mark."

The last book that made me laugh out loud

"I read the Fran Lebowitz book, The Fran Lebowitz Reader. And that was real fun. I'm getting to a point where I really support a cranky New Yorker."

My favorite book as a child, A book I read in secret as a teenager, The book I enjoyed most in school, A book that changed my life, A book that cemented me as a writer, A classic I've never read, A book people would be surprised to learn I love, A book I wish I'd written, The first thriller I ever read, The last book that made me laugh out loud, The last book that made me cry, The last book I gave as a gift, The book I'm reading now

The last book that made me cry

That has to be Kennedy Ryan's Can't Get Enough. She's so good at tapping into what is raw in us and what is beautiful in us. There's something so full about her characters and the way they face the world, walk through the world, and change it in their small ways. Sometimes small, sometimes big ways. There's something so inspirational in it. Anytime I finish a Kennedy book, I think, I am made better by this book. If genre drives us to be our best selves, then Kennedy is one of the best of us and Can't Get Enough is a book that felt so powerful and transformational for me. Also extraordinarily sexy, by the way. But that part didn't make me cry."

The last book I gave as a gift

On Tyranny by Timothy D. Snyder. It's tiny, a 40-page pamphlet. I have a box of them by my door in Brooklyn, and we have a little free library in front of our house. Whenever we put a copy of On Tyranny into that little free library, every time one disappears from it, we replace it. It's not technically a gift to people that I know, but it's a gift to my neighbors and to New York City. We've been doing that since November, putting copies of On Tyranny into the little free library, and we inscribe them all with, 'Please return this to another little free library, pay it forward.'"

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The book I'm reading now

"My friend, Maris Kreizman, just came out with a book called, I Want to Burn This Place Down. It's a collection of essays that are sharp and funny and everything that I need right now in 2025. I'm also reading S.A. Cosby's King of Ashes because thrillers and mysteries are a thing that I always come to in the summer. And I'm always reading romance. Last night, I started Elizabeth Stephens' All Superheroes Need PR. Oh, nice. It's so much fun. A villain looking for a hero rebrand, and I instantly was in it.

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