Tropesick
On sale
18th June 2026
Price: £24.99
Genre
Katie Caruso is a completely normal twenty-five-year-old girl. At least, for the past eight years, since the worst happened, she’s tried to be. She likes glitter and sequins and flirting with cute boys at bars. She’s also a proud ghostwriter for Meredith Bradford, the bestselling romance novelist of all time.
Tyler McNally is a sleeve-tattooed, Ivy League-educated aspiring literary fiction novelist who literally can’t think of anything worse than romance novels… but whose agent forces him to agree to ghostwrite one.
When the pair meet to begin work, each is as stunned as the other to see who their writing partner is meant to be. Connected by a shared tragedy, the pair are ex’s, who haven’t seen or spoken to each other since the overdose death of Katie’s older brother. Tyler was her brother’s best friend, and Katie – naturally – was the girl next door.
As the summer unfolds they soon discover that dozens of classic romance tropes, including the ones they’re crafting on page, are mysteriously playing out in their real lives… and in their relationship to each other.
Tyler McNally is a sleeve-tattooed, Ivy League-educated aspiring literary fiction novelist who literally can’t think of anything worse than romance novels… but whose agent forces him to agree to ghostwrite one.
When the pair meet to begin work, each is as stunned as the other to see who their writing partner is meant to be. Connected by a shared tragedy, the pair are ex’s, who haven’t seen or spoken to each other since the overdose death of Katie’s older brother. Tyler was her brother’s best friend, and Katie – naturally – was the girl next door.
As the summer unfolds they soon discover that dozens of classic romance tropes, including the ones they’re crafting on page, are mysteriously playing out in their real lives… and in their relationship to each other.
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Reviews
Lauren Okie is one of my favorite new voices in romance. She writes sweeping, tender, emotional love stories topped with a dollop of scrumptious yearning. Prepare to be swept off your feet.
This book will break your heart. It will also take an incredible amount of care to put it back together. Tropesick is unflinching in its exploration of grief and the complexities of love while being deeply and indomitably hopeful. This one is special, and I'm going to think about it forever, probably.
Lauren Okie blends banter and chemistry with grief and heartache to create an instant classic
Tropesick is both an homage and an unspooling of the romance genre, and a love story so layered it demands a second, third, fourth reading. An absolute achievement.