A Q&A WITH SHARON IBBOTSON

What made you choose to give this story the enemies-to-lovers trope? Or did the characters become enemies-to-lovers before you even realised?

I didn’t realise I was writing enemies-to-lovers until a friend read my manuscript and told me! I was actually writing the forced-proximity trope, and tried to imagine what Bo and Max’s natural reaction would be to their situation when Geoffrey’s will split his inheritance between them. Given that they’ve already slept together once, they kind of went from lovers to enemies and then back to lovers again, all while sharing their living space!  

What impression do you hope to leave with our readers?

I always tell people who ask about my writing that I want to make readers both laugh and cry. However, with this book, I want them to fall in love with Max as much as I did when writing him! There’s just something about a musician that appeals to me, and Max’s ways of telling Bo how much she means to him towards the end of the book made me love him even more than I did when I first started writing him.

If you could pick a favourite line from Bo and Max, what would they be?

My favourite line from Bo, hands down, is where she finally admits how she feels about Max: ‘He's exactly my type,’ she says, after spending most of the novel denying that fact. 

My favourite line from Max happens earlier in the novel. After a steamy encounter, Bo is uncertain how to act, so offers Max her hand to shake. Max gently says ‘We haven’t just made a deal on a long-term Volvo lease. We had sex. I’m not shaking your hand.’ It made me laugh when I was writing it, and it still makes me laugh now (and he kisses her instead of shaking her hand too, which was just the icing on the cake).

What are you currently reading?

I just inhaled Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus series (my favourite was The Score). Now I’m reading Between the Pages and the Rink by Meadow Thompson, keeping to a theme! I’m loving it so far.