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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
In Flora Wilder's How to Write a Life, Willow Carter writes historical romance in Haven under the pen name Arabella Wynn, but her newest book stalls when she cannot imagine the man at its center. Her friends push her toward dating-app research, hoping real dates will help her understand desire beyond the books she has written. The experiment brings dating-app meetings alongside some public small-town opinions, but also a quiet bond with an Air Force officer whose teasing messages from Australia become part of Willow’s daily life. When one date learns her pen name, leaves gifts at her cottage, and turns her online success into a private threat, Willow must protect her home while deciding what kind of love story belongs to her life in the present day, not only to her heroine.
How to Write a Life by Flora Wilder breathes life into Willow Carter, a witty and intelligent novelist whose Arabella Wynn manuscript impinges on the life she has kept at a distance. The author makes Willow’s writing inseparable from her private need to have a life outside the novels she has already written. The book club scenes show the author's skill with women’s friendships, especially when Willow’s heroine becomes part of a frank conversation about desire. The Haven setting feels personal through the MayDay Plunge, where a town ritual exposes Willow’s public embarrassment in a way only this story could. A romance forms as well as a situation that shows the dangers of contemporary dating, but to me this book is about women, by a woman, and it is excellent. Very highly recommended.
