My UK publisher, HQ Stories, sent The Light We Lost to Sarah Morgan, the USA Today bestselling author of the From Manhattan With Love books, and she liked it! Here’s what she said: “Emotional and heartbreaking. I predict a global tissue shortage.” Thank you so much, Sarah! (I’ll start stockpiling tissues now.)
HQ, a imprint of HarperCollins UK, is publishing the British edition of The Light We Lost, and they have some proofs over there for early readers to check out. These are some pictures the HQ team took. I’m really loving that rose-gold foil..
The Light We Lost was included in the list of Pop Fiction Previews for May 2017 in Library Journal. This is what they had to say about it:
Santopolo, Jill. The Light We Lost. Putnam. May 2017. 336p. ISBN 9780735212756. $25; ebk. ISBN 9780735212770. CD/downloadable: Penguin Audio. WOMEN’S
The editorial director of Philomel Books, Santopolo has three children’s/YA series to her name, but here she’s going adult. Lucy and Gabe meet one fateful day as seniors at Columbia University, then meet again a year later and decide it’s meant to be. But photojournalist Gabe is assigned to the Middle East, while Lucy pursues a career in New York, and more than a decade of love, jealousy, and turmoil follow until a key decision must be made. Rights for this novel sold quickly to 25 countries, and the prepublication buzz has been big.
You can read the whole list of Pop Fiction Preview books here, if you’d like (warning: it’s dangerous–reading the descriptions made me want to buy all of them).
So excited to share that The Light We Lost is going to be available in 28 languages in way-more-than-28 countries around the world. Here’s the list of the wonderful, enthusiastic publishers who are going to be sharing Lucy, Gabe, and Darren’s story across the globe. (Huge shout out to the subsidiary rights licensing team at Penguin who has absolutely blown me away.)
I’m so, so touched and so, so grateful that writers who read early copies of The Light We Lost liked it enough to provide blurbs for the jacket and the book’s interior. I’ve read books (and/or articles) by all of the people below and am a big fan of all of their writing (so many great books to buy!).
Thank you, everyone, for your incredibly kind words and support.
“Jill Santopolo’s extraordinary debut novel is a love story–an emotional roller coaster–that follows the lives of Lucy and Gabe who meet in New York City on September 11, 2001. The event transforms and shadows their lives. How do they reconcile passion and security, dreams and reality? AsThe Light We Lost enchanted and compelled me, I found myself reconsidering my own choices, and wondering at the choices of my friends and the people around me–how did their dreams match their realities? And what if that dream can’t include the person you love the most?” —Delia Ephron, New York Times bestselling author of Siracusa
“What can be more devastating than love? In her adult debut, Santopolo explores thirteen tumultuous years in the lives of two unique lovers, the difference between what’s forever and what’s finite, and how what seems fated might not be fact. Gorgeously written and absolutely unforgettable, Santopolo’s novel has a beating heart all its own.” —Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling author of Pictures of You, Is This Tomorrow, and Cruel Beautiful World
“In this intense, deeply moving novel, Jill Santopolo vividly illuminates how our personal lives and loves are changed by the common—and uncommon—events of our troubled world.” —Nancy Thayer, New York Times bestselling author of The Island House
“Santopolo nailed the thrill and devastation that love can cause. I was gutted from the start and didn’t put the book down until I was sobbing at the end. Witty, romantic and intensely moving, this book made me feel everything!” —Renée Carlino, USA Today bestselling author of Before We Were Strangers
“Evocative, raw and at times breathlessly heartbreaking, Jill Santopolo’sThe Light We Lost is a page-turner that explores the intersection of fate and choice in our relationships. In this honest portrayal of love and loss, Santopolo leaves us wondering about serendipity and the existence of that one, true love. An emotional rollercoaster of a story that won’t let you go even after the last page is turned.” —Karma Brown, bestselling author of Come Away with Me
“We couldn’t stop turning the pages of The Light We Lost. Santopolo took us on a journey of missed chances, regret and uncertainty that left us pondering our own choices. The love story of Lucy and Gabe is one that will stay with you long after you finish.” —Liz Fenton & Lisa Steinke, authors of The Status of All Things
“The Light We Lost is a beautiful, moving meditation on the choices we make in pursuit of love and a meaningful life, and the consequences that shape our futures.” —Bethany Chase, author of The One That Got Away
“Jill Santopolo’s debut is a breathless, sexy, sweeping love story set against the backdrop of the defining moment of this century. Filled with light and hope, this is the romance we’re all looking for.” —Brenda Bowen, author of Enchanted August
“This is such a heart-felt story about both the bliss and torment of love. It’s clear that Jill has tremendous affection for her characters and so did I. It was fascinating to me that Gabe is a photographer, because Jill herself has an amazingly sharp eye, zooming in on emotions and the small ways in which they change while also pulling back for a wide-angle view of Lucy and Gabe’s relationship during the course of a tumultuous decade. I am not a weeper but dammit if I wasn’t crying at the end.” —Jane O’Connor, New York Times bestselling author
“A beautiful, powerful and sexy novel, The Light We Lost grabbed me from the beginning and just refused to let go. Santopolo has given us a remarkable love story that enthralled me, surprised me, and ultimately, moved me. I couldn’t put it down.” —Thomas Christopher Greene, author of If I Forget You
“The scale of this book’s ambition is matched only by Santopolo’s flawless execution. 9/11, love, sex, war, Shakespeare, American foreign policy—The Light We Lost has it all, illuminating so much of what our generation and what we in the media have lived through for fifteen years. The arc of this book, from the fall of the Twin Towers to a love letter written from the Middle East, gracefully and tragically charts the course not only of a genuine and deep love, but also that of our country and of our collective identities. It is memorable and haunting, because it is authentic and so close to home.” —Nick Schifrin, PBS NewsHour Special Correspondent, NPR Correspondent
Christmas (and Chanukah) came early this year at my house. The wonderful team at Putnam sent me the jacket for The Light We Lost and I just adore it. (I also adore the quote from Delia Ephron right under my name–and if you haven’t read her book Siracusa, it’s a perfect holiday gift to buy for yourself or a loved one.) Here’s the jacket!
And if you’re looking for some more information on the book, you can find it right here.
It was so lovely to see The Bookseller announce the deal for The Light We Lost in the UK. (HQ, an imprint of HarperCollins, will be publishing it there, releasing it in August 2017, just like Putnam will be doing in the US.)
Here’s the article, if you’d like to click for more info.
Thanks to Google Alerts, I found out that there was an article written about me and The Light We Lost in Dutch! And thanks to Google Translate, I sort of found out what it said. Here’s the article. And here’s the translation:
Prometheus, following an auction acquired the rights to “The Light We Lost,” a novel about love written by the American author Jill Santopolo Book Journal reports.The novel has been sold to eight countries in three weeks, including Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Norway and Brazil. Remarkable, this international attention. It is not often that a major title is auctioned everywhere so quickly during the holiday season. The Light We Lost is the story of a love triangle, about a woman who must choose between two lovers: her great childhood sweetheart Gabriel, who left her as a war photographer to travel around the world but with whom she has always maintained a passionate relationship, and her husband Darren, with whom she now has two children. Jill Santopolo, according to her website, has twelve children’s books and two books for teens to her name. With The Light We Lost she focuses for the first time on adults as a target group. Source: Boekblad
There’s something especially exciting about being written about in a language I don’t know…
So thrilled to be announce that The Light We Lost will also be published in Germany, Denmark, China, and the U.K.! This is a screen grab of the announcement in Publisher’s Marketplace.
Since 2012, I’ve had a secret. While I was writing the Sparkle Spa series and the Follow Your Heart books, I very slowly, very tentatively, was writing a novel for adults as well. And I’m so thrilled to announce that the novel I was working on sold to Putnam and will be published in the summer of 2017! Here’s a screen grab of the announcement as well as a link to its location on the internet. (!!!)
