HOW TO END A LOVE STORY

A bond that starts with a tragic death transforms into love.

Grant Shepard and Helen Zhang have a history—when they were in high school, he was driving the SUV her younger sister darted in front of, ending her life. When, 13 years later, they meet at a Hollywood studio that’s adapting Helen’s YA novels for television, their unresolved grief means a minefield of painful interactions. Helen has been ignoring her complex feelings of anger, sadness, and guilt, while Grant has struggled with anxiety even as he’s continued to be the popular guy in every circle. Despite her prickly armor and his polite facade in the writers’ room where they’re both working, the extended intimacy of the project forces them past the chasm of their past and into a new chemistry in the present. But Helen’s parents would never accept a relationship between them—would they? In her debut romance novel, screenwriter and director Kuang starts with high stakes. Helen’s absent sister and her family’s trauma loom over the sunny California setting, amplified by the protagonists’ individual visits to their New Jersey hometown. Though leaning slightly into commonplace images of Chinese American parents, Kuang avoids cliches about second-generation immigrants in her depiction of Helen. The potential end of Grant and Helen’s fiery sexual liaison gives the book the feel of a ticking clock, with Kuang coloring all their interactions with a sadness that signals the third-act breakup often found in the novels of Emily Henry (which Kuang is adapting for the screen).

For readers who like romances threaded with operatic sorrow.