Jasmine Guillory on Why Rom-Coms Are Exactly What We Need Right Now

This week on The Maris Review, Jasmine Guillory joins Maris Kreizman to discuss her latest novel, Drunk on Love, out now from Berkley Books.

Subscribe and download the episode, wherever you get your podcasts.

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On why rom-coms are exactly what we need right now:

Maris Kreizman: I feel like since you got started there’s been a real explosion in the rom-com [market].

Jasmine Guillory: I think that part of it is we as a nation have gone through a lot as a world in the past two years, but even six years before that. So I feel like people started reading romances and romantic comedies and feeling like, oh this makes me feel good. The rest of the world, that makes me feel bad. Let’s read more books that make me feel good.

And I think publishing realized there’s a market for this and has done a better job both in marketing books like that and getting them out into the world. And in taking on more books. And readers have been excited for them. There was a huge bump in March of 2020. That week when we all disappeared into our apartments, my sales doubled. And I thought, oh okay, these are the books that we all want to read right now. I certainly was not reading any book that would scare me.

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On why the book title is one letter short of Beyoncé:

Jasmine Guillory: I didn’t want this book to be about people who were getting actually drunk all the time. I want people to be able to think about and explore wine without being like, oh we’re just constantly drinking to make ourselves feel better.

Maris Kreizman: The title of the book is just one letter short of Beyoncé, but it changes the whole meaning.

Jasmine Guillory: My publishing team and I took a very long time to come up with a title for this book, and once we landed on this it was like yes, this is perfect.

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On the secret language of wine:

I talked to people who work in the wine business and there is definitely a different language that you have to know. The wine business is different from working in consulting or whatever. So Margot feels like she needs to work to learn the language, when a lot of other people know it right off the bat. It honestly made me think of when I first started in publishing.

I went to my first meeting with my publisher and there were people there who were saying things and I was like I understand the words that you’re saying are English, but I don’t know what any of this means. I’m just nodding and smiling. “This sounds good.” And after I talked to my agent, and said, “That was good, right?” But I don’t know. So every business has their own special language and Margot feels like she’s behind.

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Recommended Reading:

On the Rooftop by Margaret Wilkerson Sexton • Partners In Crime by Alisha Rae • Thank You For Listening by Julia Whelan

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Jasmine Guillory is a New York Times bestselling author; her novels include The Wedding Date, the Reese’s Book Club selection The Proposal, and By The Book. She is a frequent book contributor on The Today Show. She lives in Oakland, California. Her latest is called Drunk On Love.