Author Annabel Monaghan's new romance novel kicks off Club Calvi's unofficial start of summer
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The unofficial start of summer means a new book by Annabel Monaghan. Every year since 2022, she's released a new romance that would top lists for the best reads -- including Club Calvi's.
Mary Calvi talked to Monaghan about her new book "It's a Love Story."
"Jane Jackson is a former teen star," Monaghan said. "She is finally, as an adult, trying to be taken seriously in Hollywood. She is about to get her first project greenlit when the whole thing starts to fall apart and she tells a terrible lie to buy herself a little bit of time. She ends up having to rely on this one guy who she almost dated, and then it all fell apart, and who she now cannot stand, to help make it happen."
Monaghan is known for creating relatable characters with vulnerabilities. Jane grew up on television.
"I thought a lot about that, what it would be like to go through puberty on TV, and to be told where to stand and what to say," Monaghan said. "She's a person who grew up really not knowing anything about herself. She's an adult that's very disconnected. She was very fun to write. She has this sense of unworthiness that she needs to work through."
Jane must partner with Dan Finnegan, who grew up in a big, boisterous family on Long Island. Monahan describes him as the most quiet of the men she has ever written.
"He's just very self-assured," Monaghan said. "He knows who he is creatively. He knows who he is personally. And he is sort of the black sheep of his family, and he's perfectly fine with it. He's a nice foil to Jane who is not fine with anything."
Monaghan says she put elements of her own marriage, and what she has learned about love, into "It's a Love Story."
"I am married to a quiet man for almost 30 years now," Monaghan told Calvi. "I realized that when I was fantasizing about this big love, I always thought it was going to be like the end of a romcom with somebody showing up on a parade with a big ring. As it turns out, long-term love is just quiet. It's little moments. It's breakfast. It's walking the dog. It's just showing up for each other in smaller ways. I tried to work that into this story."
You can read an excerpt, and purchase the book, below.
The CBS New York Book Club focuses on books connected to the Tri-State Area in their plots and/or authors. The books may contain adult themes.
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"It's a Love Story" by Annabel Monaghan
From the publisher:
Love is a lie. Laughter is the only truth.
Jane Jackson spent her adolescence as "Poor Janey Jakes," the barbecue-sauce-in-her-braces punch line on America's fifth-favorite sitcom. Now she's trying to be taken seriously as a Hollywood studio executive by embracing a new mantra: Fake it till you make it.
Except she might have faked it too far. Desperate to get her first project greenlit and riled up by pompous cinematographer and one-time crush Dan Finnegan, she claimed that she could get mega popstar Jack Quinlan to write a song for the movie. Jack may have been her first kiss-and greatest source of shame-but she hasn't spoken to him in twenty years.
Now Jane must turn to the last man she'd ever want to owe: Dan Finnegan. Because Jack is playing a festival in Dan's hometown, and Dan has an in. A week in close quarters with Dan as she faces down her past is Jane's idea of hell, but he just might surprise her. While covering up her lie, can they find something true?
Annabel Monaghan lives in Connecticut.
"It's a Love Story" by Annabel Monaghan (ThriftBooks) $16
Excerpt: "It's A Love Story" by Annabel Monaghan
I pull out of my driveway, turn on the radio, and it's Jack Quinlan playing his number four single, "By My Side." I change the station, and it's Jack Quinlan playing his number two single, "Purple." I switch to a reliably country station and, you guessed it, Jack Quinlan. I turn off the radio. I knew Jack when we were teenagers. The whole thing was embarrassing. This wouldn't be such a big deal if we weren't two people who started our careers in the same spot and only one of us is a recently minted megastar. The other one, incidentally, is me. I have it in my head that by my age I should be doing whatever my forever is going to be. Making big career strides with a partner by my side. I should have a pet. I thought by now I'd know Spielberg and how to use my oven.
I arrive at the office before nine o'clock. The lobby is nearly empty, and I have the sense that this place is entirely mine. Pantheon Television, where I spent my adolescence on camera accidentally sitting on nachos, is a half mile away, but inside this building, I'm an executive, calling the shots. I am not told where to stand or how to act. I am a decision-maker. I check the integrity of the square knot on my dress and then say it out loud: "Decision-maker."
The elevator doors open, and no. No, no, not today. Not when I'm about to turn literally every single thing around.
"Good morning, Jane," he says.
"Don't jinx me. Just press twelve. No, I'll do it. Don't touch anything." I am supremely agitated. It's stupid Dan Finnegan, with his mop of black hair, presumably coming up from the underground parking where he's crushed his clove cigarette next to his unicycle. Of course it's freakin' Dan Finnegan. I have no proof that he travels by unicycle, but he's the kind of above-it-all, know-it-all jerk who probably pays up for cruelty-free cashew butter and then blogs about it. I've seen him around the studio, of course, since he called my last project "trash" and set in motion the events that would have it murdered, dead on the floor. He thinks I'm a little unhinged, so he puts his hands up when he sees me, in mock fear of an outburst. Oh, it's hilarious all right.
"I know not to make any sudden moves," he says, eyes straight ahead.
"Good one," I say.
"You're here early," he says. He's wearing khaki pants and a white shirt, untucked. Untucked and unbrushed are worse than unhinged, if you ask me.
"Yes, big day," I say and gesture to my dress. I don't know why I've done this. This small gesture with my hand has opened up the door for me to tell him that I have a new script. I don't want Dan anywhere near it, but I also want to rub it in his face. "I have a new project."
"Another think piece?" I refuse to look his way, but I can feel a little smile off of him.
Now I'm rolling my eyes. "It's going to be the film of the year."
"I'm sure." The elevator stops on the twelfth floor, and he steps forward and holds the door open for me. His navy blue eyes are disarming every time. All of his features are, as if a sixteenth-century sculptor with a too-sharp chisel arranged them on his face. But it's the eyes, wide under his black brows, that have the intensity to match his arrogance. "No one wants to watch two people who they don't care about fall in love for absolutely no reason."
He's just so superior with his omniscience about what everyone wants and doesn't want. He was so casual about crushing my first real project like it was a gas station receipt. So I step out of the elevator, turn back to him, and spill it. "It's funny and offbeat, with oddball characters. But more than that." I don't know why I'm selling this to him.
The elevator door starts to close and he stops it with his sneaker. "Wait. True Story?"
"No," I say. If you could throw a word at a person, I would have shot-putted this one at his chest.
"No, it's not True Story?"
"No. I mean yes. But not you." My hands ball up, all on their own accord, as Dan steps off the elevator and lets the doors close behind him.
"Yes, me," he says. "Jane, I'm meeting with Nathan about this at nine. He wants me as cinematographer, and I need it."
"You need it," I say, my voice has gone jagged. "This is about you now? Just trying to get all the facts straight."
"We both probably need it. But I don't hate this script. In fact, I can see it, in my mind, exactly how it should be." The movie I've been imagining as I fall asleep is the same one he's been imagining, but probably with weird lighting and subtitles and whatever arty stuff wins awards and sells absolutely no tickets. He presses the button and the doors open. "If you can just act like a normal person, we can make this movie."
I am a normal person. In fact, I'm so normal that I don't scream those words at him. There's nothing that makes a person act more insane than trying to prove how sane they actually are. I have a little sweat beading up on my chest now and I really need to calm down. "This cannot be happening," I say as the elevator doors close between us.
From It's a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan, published by Putnam, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House, LLC. Copyright © 2025 by Annabel Monaghan
