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A Highlight Reel
Sugar Sand Land is a romance novel in which a famous influencer and a scandal-shadowed country star fall in love and must choose between the stories the world tells about them and their private truths. What drew you to writing a romance about people whose lives are shaped by public image?
I’m both a sociologist and a romance novelist, and I think that dual perspective shapes the stories I tell. In the age of social media, just about everyone has a public image, whether you’re famous or not—a curated image—and I’m fascinated with how that impacts our lives. I’ve always been interested in the gap between appearance and reality. That gap is heightened in a world ruled by Instagram images, TikTok reels, mass media stories, and the whims of “influencers.” But how do you get at the gap between appearance and reality, and identity more broadly? I’m obsessed with romance, and so a love story was my way into the topic. By creating a love story between celebrities, I was able to show the reality of their lives and include media stories and public commentary in the form of social media posts. That allowed me to explore the gap between what people think is true and what actually is true. At the end of the day, relationships are always central to my novels, so I very much see this as a romance first and foremost. But it’s also about identity in today’s society.
How did you balance the glamorous, high-profile elements of celebrity culture with the deeper themes of grief, loneliness, and emotional healing?
I’ve always thought about writing a romance novel like baking a soufflé. You want the light, airy bits, but when you dig your spoon in further, it’s rich and decadent. So in this novel I really tried to create balance between the fun celebrity elements and the deeper themes. I was able to do this by keeping the love story at the center. The romance between Emerson and Renn is genuine and deep. They spark. It’s sexy, but it’s also tender. By staying focused on their relationship, I was able to balance the different elements and emotions in the book.
Emerson and Renn feel like opposites in their relationship to fame. Was that contrast the starting point for the novel, or did it emerge as you wrote?
It was the starting point. I always begin with characters. I created Emerson Blue first—reality star, influencer, and basically the most famous person on the planet who has used social media masterfully to create her persona. The world thinks she’s an open book, but Emerson has secrets. As a counterpoint, I created Renn Walker, a fallen star who lives in seclusion and is so uninterested in social media he doesn’t even own a computer. The whole world has made assumptions about him despite his silence, but assumptions aren’t always right. To me, the contrast felt integral to both their love story and how they change each other, but also to exploring the larger topic of identity and what’s public and what’s private in contemporary culture.
What did you hope readers would take away from this story about love surviving both public myth and private pain?
We all need to think about what to make public and what to keep private in our lives. We should never compare ourselves to people on social media. It’s a highlight reel. It’s like comparing your insides to someone’s airbrushed outsides. People don’t always share their pain publicly. Many people carry invisible scars. There’s no number of “likes” on social media that serves as a substitute for real love. Above all, it’s a story about authenticity and love. Love helps us become more of ourselves, not less. Our real selves.
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Twenty-eight-year-old beauty Emerson Blue is the second most followed celebrity on social media. A self-proclaimed “living piece of art” who rose to fame as a reality star and then parlayed her celebrity into a megabucks career as an influencer, she seems to have everything.
Forty-eight-year-old Grammy winner Renn Walker is a fallen country music star. Years ago, he was canceled following allegations of sexual misconduct, and he has lived in seclusion ever since. Once a beloved figure, he seems to have lost it all.
When Emerson and Renn meet, sparks fly. Against all odds, a star obsessed with popularity and a recluse shunned by the world fall in love. Everyone in the public and media has an opinion and thinks they know Emerson and Renn. But in a world dominated by social media—a world that blurs the lines between what’s public and private, what’s real and what’s illusion—do we ever really know anyone?
Sugar Sand Land
Sugar Sand Land is a contemporary celebrity romance, but it also feels like a story about performance, reputation, and the cost of being watched all the time. It follows Emerson, the most famous influencer in the world, and Renn, a country music star whose career collapsed under scandal, as they fall for each other under an ugly, noisy public spotlight. What begins as a glamorous, high-heat romance opens into something heavier and more tender, especially once the book moves beyond fame and into grief, family pain, and the question of whether love can survive both public myth and private hurt.
I liked how much the book leans into contrast. Emerson is all curation, sparkle, flash, and instinctive media fluency, while Renn feels weathered, withdrawn, and almost allergic to the modern machine of attention. That setup could have turned cartoonish in less careful hands, but author Patricia Leavy gives it enough emotional weight to keep it grounded. I liked that the novel does not treat celebrity as pure fantasy. It keeps reminding us that image is labor, and that being adored can still leave a person lonely. Emerson’s belief that social media is an artful illusion and Renn’s fear of public life give the romance a real push-pull. Their chemistry is immediate, but what held my attention was the way they slowly become mirrors for each other. She helps him step back toward art. He helps her step away from performance.
I also liked the author’s choices around tone and structure. The dialogue is doing a lot of work here. Sometimes it is playful and knowingly glamorous, and sometimes it turns raw very fast. That shift mostly works. In fact, I think it is part of the book’s point. Beneath the glossy surface, there is a bruise. The novel is most convincing when it lets the glitz crack open and shows the fear, damage, and longing underneath. The later sections, especially the material around the meaning of Sugar Sand Land itself, gave the book a deeper emotional center than I expected at the start. It gives the title a softness and ache that the early Hollywood scenes only hint at. The book isn’t trying to be cynical, and I appreciated that. It believes in love, but it doesn’t pretend love arrives untouched by history.
I came away thinking this is a romance for readers who want both swoon and reflection. I would recommend it most to people who enjoy contemporary romance with celebrity culture, emotional healing, and a slightly more thoughtful edge than a pure beach read. Fans of stories about fame, reinvention, and complicated public women will probably find a lot to like here, and readers who want a love story that stays hopeful without feeling completely weightless should feel at home in it.
Pages: 256 | ASIN: B0GPDKB31P
