Sariah Wilson Brings Romance to the Lab in 'The Chemistry of Love'

In her twenty-fourth published novel, The Chemistry of Love, USA Today best-selling author, Sariah Wilson, writes about Anastasia “Anna” Ellis, a cosmetic chemist, who engages in a fake romance with Marco, the half brother of Anna’s boss, Craig, whose heart Anna is trying to win over. When creating this novel, Wilson said, “I knew that I was going to have a fake dating relationship and it was going to be between brothers and she would be fake dating one to make the other jealous so that was the first thought I had for this book. The second was while I was thinking about it was I thought of this lipstick that would change colors and, I don’t know where it came from, but I thought it would be such a cool way to show the audience and the hero how her feelings are changing without her saying it.” Regarding her protagonist, Anna, Wilson said that she is the character most like herself. “She thinks the most like me. She enjoys the same things that I enjoy. I just, I hadn’t really written a huge fangirl before and I am one so I had a blast doing that…”

For Wilson, switching from historical romance to contemporary romance was a natural transition of her progression as a writer. “When I looked at doing indie books, I did a couple of indie books, and they were YA and they were contemporary, and it was because, literally, this heroine showed up in my head and would not stop talking and, like, she’s so funny and I loved her and I’m like, this is hilarious, I have to write this down. I would get up and just write it down, whatever I was hearing and I really enjoyed it. I thought this was very different than what I normally do, but you know, let’s see what happens and I had a lot of writer friends who read it and I had one of them come back to me and she’s like, ‘Sariah, this is your voice. I like your other books, but this is something special. This is where you need to put your focus.'” With the encouragement of her friends and the ease she felt in writing in this particular voice, she made the switch to first person, contemporary romance, and has written twenty books in the genre since.

Concerning romance novels, Wilson explains why their characters often feel the hesitation in revealing their true emotions to the one they love or yearn for. While it can be frustrating to the reader, it’s also what makes the characters real and relatable. “It’s the push and pull in romance novels and people say that it’s very logical, but then we take it to our real lives and how often have we done that in our real lives? That we have stayed quiet because we’re embarrassed and we’re afraid of rejection and I think it’s very human and very honest to actually do that and it’s easy to step back and look at someone else and say, ‘Well, you should just tell him,’ because your heart’s not involved. You don’t have, you know, a dog in the fight so… but I think when it is you, I think it feels differently.”