Latest news with #Powerless
Otago Daily Times
29-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
Escaping into romantasy
The huge popularity of romantasy fiction's handsome princes and horny dragons tells us something about what women want, writes Sophie Heawood. Newspaper headlines on our collective mental health report loneliness, isolation and anxiety. And while doctors are yet to suggest tragic princes, horny dragons and 800-year-old faeries shape-shifting in the immortal realm as a potential cure, the publishing industry most certainly is. I've met a lot of romance authors who trade in happily-ever-afters, only to reveal their own love lives to be a pit of despair. So it's rather satisfying when Lauren Roberts, who is all of 23 and has sold well over 5 million copies of her romantic fantasy series Powerless , turns up with a strong-cheekboned fiance who looks not unlike the love interest in her books. Not that her man is Kai, exactly — the handsome killer prince with a tortured soul and the ability to channel anyone's magic powers, battling a cruel father who believes in an elites-only society — and not that she's quite Paedyn, a beautiful streetwise thief trying to pass herself off as a psychic to escape being put to death by the very royal she is falling for. "Because that doesn't happen", sighs the author from Michigan, who wears jeans and cardigans and black eyeliner and poetic tattoos about fragility, and whose books blew up in 2023 on TikTok. She certainly shares some of her heroine's relentless determination, though. At 18, she quit university to get a cleaning job so she could self-publish the book she'd been up excitedly writing until 4am some nights, only to then have it snapped up by major publishers Simon & Schuster and to speedily write several more. "But no, on our first date Zac and I went to see monster trucks at Detroit Stadium," she admits, sitting backstage before a sold-out event in London. Zac is with her, hanging on his girlfriend's every word just as a leading male character should. "But in a romantasy," says Roberts, "it's like: first date, oh my God that's my sworn enemy from a different kingdom and I'm riding a dragon". Romantasy, as you might have guessed, is the merging of romance with fantasy in commercial fiction, conjuring worlds where would-be lovers fight superhuman elements and oh-so-human feelings. It grew to critical mass in the pandemic, as people sought escape, with authors such as Sarah J. Maas, whose A Court of Thorns and Roses series starts with a 19-year-old woman falling for an ancient faerie man disguised as a beast. Rebecca Yarros only began in the genre in 2023, but this year published her third, Onyx Storm , which sold 2.7 million copies in its first week to become the fastest-selling adult novel of the past 20 years. The books are often dedicated to the readers themselves. Roberts's novella, Powerful , begins with the line: "To the girls with softer dreams — your purpose is just as powerful". Yarros goes a step further in Onyx Storm : "To the ones who don't run with the popular crowd, the ones who get caught reading under their desks, the ones who feel like they never get invited, included, or represented. Get your leathers. We have dragons to ride." "I think the reason 'romantasy' was coined in 2020 during the pandemic was because people were looking for that fun escape. That's why they are 500 pages, 800 pages — some of these books are like weapons," says Roberts, pretending to use one to whack someone over the head. Some of them are what the BookTokers describe as "spicy", written from the female gaze, full of orgasms and even interspecies love-making. But Roberts, who was raised as an evangelical Christian, writes for a young adult (YA) audience, keeping hers cleaner and full of longing. At a live London event she holds for her fans — many of whom have flown in from all around Europe — teenagers and young women fill the room with gasps and screams. As someone raised around women's rights activism in the 1980s, I did not foresee 2025 bringing me to vast rooms of young women willingly calling themselves "girlies". But this is the internet parlance that everyone here uses, Roberts in particular. It's all girlies, it's all "Oh my God, you look so pretty", it's the host Bella Pritchard saying she wants to link a Taylor Swift song to every relationship in the book and everyone squealing. "We all want tall, dark and handsome," says Roberts about her male leads. Looking around the venue, it's clear this is the generation who grew up watching makeup tutorials. Everyone looks immaculate, even if they're 12. I feel like I haven't seen a woman with short hair in 100 years. Humourless, middle-aged feminism surges within me. When the actor who plays Kai in the audiobook comes on as a surprise guest, the girlies scream in ecstasy. When he is asked for his own favourite book, and he says Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five , they fall into a bemused silence, apart from one lone voice whooping, and that whooper is me. Roberts then speaks about the concept of yearning — and she suddenly sounds deadly serious. "I really liked writing a man where there's not much toxic masculinity in the way they treat their women," she says, and despite her hero being, erm, an assassin, I can see exactly what she means. Reading the books, I became so desperately fond of him that it was hard to put the man down. So when we're alone, I ask her to expand. "OK, we're in 2025, where men, most of the time, are not good. Obviously there are exclusions. But it begs the question: what does romantasy have that is so intoxicating? And I truly believe it is that yearning. It's a man who's going to physically protect you. There's no texting. No phones. It's an emotionally available man who's going to tell you how he feels." Suddenly I get it. This isn't the backlash to feminism. No, this is the backlash to porn culture. To feeling expendable. To being swiped past, haunted by bad news, ghosted by your lovers. To a world where politics feels unfixable. In romantasy, whole kingdoms can crumble when a woman fights for the truth. Societies can be fixed. Love can be found. In fact, the Powerless world steers well clear of dragons and goblins, and while some people do have magic powers, the entire plot hinges on misinformation about the Ordinaries that is being used to prop up the Elites. I wonder if Roberts will shy away from political comparisons but no, she likes it "when people notice that it's topical. Because there very much are Elites and Ordinaries in our world. There's hierarchy, there's poverty, things that are not being addressed. But it wasn't that I wanted to write an expose of America. It was more that art imitates life and I write what I see". Back at the event, this phenomenon is also, according to one German woman I meet who has flown her daughters here from Dusseldorf, something that gets non-readers to read. "My daughter, Antonia, would usually rather shoot herself than write — she hates it. But she wrote to Lauren to thank her for writing that book. I've never heard her so emotional in 14 years", the proud mum tells me. "And her sister Victoria, she's 12, it's always a fight to get her to read at all. But, finally, two weeks ago, she picked up the first one and read it in one go, for the first time in her life! And then she wrote to Lauren, too, and said, 'I cried, I laughed, I went through every emotion a human being can go through. And I thank you'. And then I thought, 'Oh my God, I thank you too!'." The books are quite violent as well as romantic. When I speak to the kids, the deaths seem to break their hearts in two. One says, "I was literally crying so hard at the last one that my sister asked, 'Are you OK?'." They all speak about Roberts on first-name terms, feeling a kinship with the author who posts funny videos online direct from her living room, at the desk where she writes the books, sharing her plans, her sense of humour, the dog. It all feels so much nearer than it once did. I realise how cancel culture could be so meaningful to a generation for whom the art and the artist are both equally close to you. If you're in a parasocial relationship with someone, of course you care how they behave. There are adult fans, too. I meet two women in their 30s from Cambridgeshire: Katy, who works for the NHS, and her friend, Danielle. They are in a community on Instagram who engage in "buddy reads", 20 to 30 women in an online book club with people they've never met. Katy reads on her phone, syncs the audiobooks to her car as she drives to work, and has shelves full of the print versions at home. "But those are more like trophies," she explains. Lily and Jillpa, in their early 20s, tell me that social media, so often vilified for ruining our attention span, is making them read more books, because of the risk of someone posting a spoiler from a new release before they get to the end. I ask them about plots that keep you waiting ages for the romance to build up. "Slow burn," they reply, in unison — everyone knows the shorthand. On BookTok, one user will post about a new favourite, only for another to ask if it's a love triangle, because they hate that trope, they say, but they're good with forced proximity, or enemies to lovers, or even fated mates. "If I hear people shouting for a certain trope that doesn't affect the plot of the book," Roberts says, on stage, "I'm a woman of the people, I'll use it. So sue me". On the one hand, the audiences believe so deeply in this fictional universe that they're wearing homemade shirts saying things like "We Love Kai Azer" or "Team Kai", but they're simultaneously savvy of all literary devices that create these worlds. In my day you wouldn't have said the word trope unless you were doing an English degree, but Romantasy isn't afraid to be uncool. Or to mix the strange with the familiar: in fact, that's how it works. It uses escapist elements to take us away from our lives, only to build up to a swooning or heartbreaking moment that, crucially, could actually happen to any one of us. Readers relate most to the part where a prince who has fought his way through a supernatural trial, say, quietly picks up his beloved's shoes. When I tell my 13-year-old what I'm researching she sneers, saying she sees girls at school reading romantasy, that the covers look naff. I could agree with her — and these are YA novels, after all, so not meant for me — but the unfortunate truth is that I'm halfway through the trilogy and now deeply invested in it. The power of Lauren Roberts' writing is that, although very unsafe things happen in this world she has built, you start to feel very safe in it. The writing seems to hold you. Still, there are only so many ways to smoulder and suffer for 800 pages at a time. Like any genre of fiction, the tropes repeat and the sentences start to become synonyms for their predecessors. You're halfway through the second book before Paedyn and Kai even so much as kiss — and that's a tortured one. Then there's a decent snog, but it takes place in a sewer, in which they are about to drown. By this point I feel I might go and watch some pornography myself, just to speed things up a bit. Instead, I post on social media to tell my friends what I'm working on, and ask if anyone likes these books. I get lots of positive replies, but most sent as private messages. These are largely heterosexual stories written for women and they seem to be particularly popular at a time where actual romance has never felt more disconnected. Where the birth rate is down, marriage is down, and ghosting and loneliness are up. But it's not just the stories themselves that uplift people — the communities around them are creating real connection, too. Many romantasy authors start out self-publishing for grassroots readers, later to get picked up by mainstream publishers. Their fans often buy both copies — the "indie" version, then what they call the "traditional" — but with conflicted feelings, because a mainstream deal means the sequels are going to take so much longer to come out. Self-publishing is quicker. Indeed, while not denying the talent and commitment of the authors, the whole romantasy project feels quite crowdsourced. Roberts joined TikTok as a fan of other authors and built up an audience discussing their works, but once she had an idea of her own — about a heroine who, unusually, doesn't have any special powers, but is having to fake them to survive — she asked her followers if they would read it. They said hell yes, so she got to work, sharing extracts as she went along. She even called her heroine Paedyn after a follower in a TikTok Live who said she'd never seen her name in a book. Then came up with Kai and his brother Kitt by Googling "fierce hot male names". After the books started coming out, a fan theory grew about a pivotal character called Callum being a "dual". "It was wrong", Roberts tells me, but she worked with her editors to see if they could actually incorporate it into the story — and they did, so wrong became right. She calls her US and UK editors her left and right brain, the English one being very imaginative — "we're both dreamers" — whereas the US one brings her back down to earth. She leaves them voice notes every day to test out her new plots. I watch Rebecca Yarros being interviewed on YouTube by a group of women from Entertainment Weekly who all have enviable careers, also call themselves "girlies" and squeal a lot. "It's a little bit Hunger Games , a little bit Game of Thrones , maybe some How To Train Your Dragon for good measure", says one, when introducing Yarros's work, and the author sits there nodding as all her influences are reeled off. Most artists squirm if their art is compared to anyone else's, but in romantasy, you name your sources freely. Then they ask why she switched to romantasy after previously publishing straight romance novels. "When I knew my publisher was going to do a romantic fantasy line, I got really excited and I submitted five ideas," Yarros tells them. "She went through those and found where there was a hole in the market. She said: 'We're gonna go with the dragons'." I'll say one thing for romantasy: nobody, but nobody, is trying to hide how the sausage is made. Private Eye even reported in May that a couple of authors had been caught seemingly using ChatGPT to write sections of their books. Dark Obsession: An Age Gap Bratva Romance by KC Crowne apparently went on sale containing the following paragraph: "Here's an enhanced version of your passage, making Elena more relatable and injecting additional humour while providing a brief, sexy, description of Grigori. Changes are highlighted in bold for clarity." Roberts and her fiance have known each other since high school, where his mother was Lauren's English teacher — the one who encouraged her all along, putting her essays forward for regional competitions. Their families shared an evangelical Christian background; the young couple still have faith, but stress that they are "not rigid, not conservative" and believe the church should be "loving and welcoming". Roberts does thank the Lord in her book's acknowledgements, though, and tells me, "I do think all of this came to be because there is a higher purpose for all of this — truly, I do believe it — so I feel very blessed". But her English teacher helped, too. "Oh his mom's always taking the credit — as she should!" Zac brings his tech job on the road with them so he can help. At an influencer lunch, held by leading fantasy book-subscription service FairyLoot, he helps get video footage; at the auditorium event he deals with all the flowers and gifts before sneaking round the back of the venue to get the best photo of his beloved on stage. Men in these books want their women to thrive and be their best and brightest selves. They are turned on by their powerfulness rather than emasculated by it. Indeed, it interests me that romantasy heroines are never the glossiest candidates for passion: for example, Yarros's lead character, Violet, endures various chronic illness symptoms while battling to keep up with her overbearing mother. Of course, storytelling as a form has always championed the underdog (David and Goliath; now there's a trope). But there is something about these women, with their health conditions, their rough starts sleeping in a slum, surrounded by death — Jilly Cooper it ain't, but sexy it is. Underestimated women battling their way to greatness and their lovers desiring them for it. "I tried to date Lauren for years, but she would always ignore me," Zac tells me as I meet them for breakfast at Heathrow before they fly to an event in Dublin. All that yearning, finally paying off. We discuss her brand of escapism some more before I'm left alone to read that day's news. Ah, the real world, I think to myself somewhat reluctantly. Except all of the newspaper headlines are about our very own tragic prince, Harry, being estranged from his father the King, after breaking the immortal code of our kingdom and fleeing to another. The others are about Trump reshuffling his courtesans in a new bid to save his very own elites, while denying that they're elites at all. Then there's a third one about a man who may have developed a whole new kind of anti-venom after being bitten by 200 poisonous snakes. Romantasy doesn't seem so far-fetched after all.
Buzz Feed
22-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Buzz Feed
Top BookTok Romantasy Reads: How Many Have You Read?
How Many Of These Popular Romantasy BookTok Books Have You Read? Some of you have yet to read "Powerless," and that needs to change. 🗡️💜📖
BBC News
19-04-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
'I'm a viral author but I can't quit my job'
A former teacher said she remained a long way off being able to make a living as an author despite going viral on social media and her novel becoming an online Ball's post on X about proudly selling two books at an event in December was viewed 25 million times and received more than 740,000 helped propel the 48-year-old's thriller novel, Powerless, to the top of Amazon's teen and young adult fiction Ball, who lives in Colchester, said the attention had been "wonderful" but the industry remained "very difficult" for small authors to become established in. "People do come up to me and ask if I am going to give up my job now and I'm like 'Well no, not really'," said Mrs Ball, who previously taught in Suffolk and now works at the University of Essex."It is still very difficult for a small author to get out there. "Obviously, if you look at the 25 million views on the post, if everyone had bought a book then that would have been amazing."I've sent emails to some book shops [asking them to stock my books] but I still haven't got anywhere." She said the attention had helped her sell "a few hundred" books, with some going to countries around the them was an American fan who requested signed copies, said Mrs Ball."It's really encouraged me to keep going with the writing and I have almost finished my third book," she said."Going viral has helped to get me out there, so maybe it will help have an impact in the future and I can get bigger and maybe sell more books."Quite a few smaller authors have told me that I have inspired them to keep going, so that was really nice." Mrs Ball said not all of the social media reaction had been positive."You do get the odd sort of negative comment, but I think they're probably just trolls, so I don't take that seriously," Mrs Ball said."There was one comment on Instagram, where someone said my book sucked but then on the positive side loads of people defended me, which was really sweet." Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Telegraph
08-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
The future of romantasy plots? Fewer hunks, more nerds
If you have a teenage daughter, today is likely to be a very important day: the publication of the final book in Lauren Roberts's mega-selling Young Adult trilogy, Powerless – the best-selling YA title of 2024. Bookshops are opening early in expectation of queues, over 100 Waterstones stores are running events with activities like origami rose-making, book trivia, crown-making and plot predictions. The participating stores will be decorated with in-world décor, featuring themed drinks, branded stickers and exclusive event tote bags. Roberts has sold out huge venues in Liverpool, Birmingham and London and one can only assume her hundreds of thousands of TikTok followers will get plenty of content to enjoy. Roberts – who, at just 23 years old, has sold four million books in over 29 languages – is a key player in the romantasy reading phenomenon, a portmanteau of romance and fantasy that blew up on BookTok (the book themed area of TikTok) two years ago and has now become so popular among young women in particular that it boosted the fantasy/sci-fi genre by 41 per cent in the last year alone. The genre has been embroiled in a growing moral panic of late, with critics finding its erotic content inappropriate for the YA (12-18 year old) readership – a recent Substack on the topic was titled 'If BookTok was a community of men we would be calling the police', lamenting that girls were deciding whether to pick up a book or not depending on its 'spiciness' rating. Roberts, however, is an outlier, with her trilogy being remarkably chaste for the genre. The Powerless trilogy takes place in the kingdom of Ilya where Elites, who have inherited special powers from the Plague, live a privileged life whilst Ordinaries (those without gifts) are banished. Our heroine, Paedyn Gray, an Ordinary who fakes a power, is thrown into the brutal Purging Trials alongside Kai, a highly gifted, smoking hot Prince. The pair's relationship is at once sincere, relatable and cringe – and they don't even kiss until book two. This might have something to do with the fact that Roberts, who became an instant New York Times best-seller aged 20, was raised in a typical Christian household in the US Midwest. She joined TikTok and the BookTok community in her mid-teens, initially to talk about her love of fantasy novels. But then she started reading extracts of her work, and her followers begged her to write a book. She began writing a first draft of Powerless aged 17. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Lauren Roberts (@laurenrobertslibrary) Whilst studying physical therapy at college and doing work experience, she dashed between ultrasound practice and her desk, where she scribbled down a character idea or plot hole. In her second year of university she persuaded her mother – 'a very practical, analytical maths teacher' – to let her come home for a term and complete the work. Together they worked out a budget with her limited student funds, until Roberts was able to hire a freelance editor, who spent four months working on the manuscript. Then Roberts Googled: 'How to publish your own book?' It all paid off. By the time Roberts published Powerless she had an audience primed to buy it in the kinds of numbers that glowing New York Times reviews or publishing house marketing departments can't promise. The day the book was self-published, she sold over 4,000 copies. For context, that would have placed her in the top three of the UK's bestseller list this week. Three months later, an email arrived from Simon & Schuster requesting a meeting, and Roberts became part of their roster. But why, when successful self-published authors generally receive about 60 per cent royalties for print sales versus around 10 per cent in traditional publishing? Simply put, to take the pressure off. 'Now there's so many people behind the scenes, working and pulling everything together. It's just a really well-oiled machine,' says Roberts, who can focus instead on writing – for Fearless she wrote for 12 hours a day for four months. At the moment she is in the process of completing the second of two novellas also purchased by Simon & Schuster, and working with a screenwriter to bring Powerless to the small screen. The feedback loop with her readers is one of the most fascinating parts of Roberts's story. She's able to see how her fans respond to certain characters and plot devices in almost real-time, and even take on plot requests – apparently the 'nightmare' trope (where a character appears to be living through their worst fear, only to wake up screaming) was in high demand whilst writing. Much of the YA and romantasy style of writing is built on tropes, which perhaps explains some of the snobbery towards the genre. But whilst some readers might think 'here we go again…' when enemies become lovers (or at another dagger to the throat), fans can't get enough of them. So long as the story she wants to write isn't altered, Roberts is relaxed about including a handful of requests. 'I know these people support me and love these stories and want to see more of that, so I'm happy to provide it.' But as a result of these tropes, plagiarism accusations crop up repeatedly. Roberts has come under fire for some themes of her books closely resembling two in particular: Red Queen by Victoria Aveyard, which includes special powers, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, which has brutal state-organised tests. 'I don't feel the need to address it because it's not the truth. I've always credited Powerless as a mixture of Red Queen and The Hunger Games,' Roberts says. 'Those tropes and those common themes are what help the authors get their foot in the door and market their books. But I do really think that the author is the variable that changes everything. It's their story and their characters that make it different.' After all, she explains, Ancient Rome's gladiatorial games showed violence as entertainment was in demand millennia ago. Plagues and persecuted peoples are textbook Old Testament. People imbued with special powers are straight out of The Fantastic Four. Roberts's books may be more PG than the majority of romantasy, but why, I ask her, does the genre seem to hit the perfect erotic note for women? 'I think women need some sort of an emotional connection. It's the banter, the yearning and longing that draws women in.' I think she's right. There's something almost Austenian in the meaningful glances, written notes and courtly behaviour between her lovers – certainly it must be more chivalrous than anything today's teenage girls have come to expect. Romantasy also gets accused of perpetuating alpha male stereotypes. But Roberts thinks the genre is swinging away from this particular escapist fantasy 'towards a more attainable romance, or like a more everyday romance [with]... the nerdy, sweet, golden retriever boy'. Her own healthy relationship with her fiancé couldn't be further from the will-they-won't-they, enemies-to-lovers journey of her protagonists. To the snobs who look down on romantasy, Roberts believes they're missing out. 'There's still this weird hierarchy in the reading world of some people looking down on others for reading a certain genre… but [romantasy] blends so perfectly the intensity and plot of a fantasy with the longing and like tension of romance. And that's what we're looking for, because we don't experience that in everyday life.' It might be worth giving those four million readers the benefit of the doubt.
Yahoo
31-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Funko Brings to Life First-Ever Author Driven Literary Based Pop! Figures From Lauren Roberts, #1 The New York Times Bestselling Author of the ‘Powerless' Series
The Pop Culture Powerhouse Collaborated with Lauren Roberts to create Paedyn Gray and Kai Azer Pop! Figures, marking Funko's First Foray Into Never-Before-Seen Character Adaptations, Derived From the Beloved Romantasy Genre EVERETT, Wash., March 31, 2025--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Funko (Nasdaq: FNKO), a leading global pop culture brand, announced the launch of two trailblazing Pop! figures inspired by beloved characters, Paedyn Gray and Kai Azer, from Lauren Roberts' #1 The New York Times bestselling Powerless trilogy on March 31. In a bold and innovative move, Funko celebrates the power of storytelling, honoring the rich world of Powerless and its passionate fanbase with this unique, literary-first collection. This groundbreaking release marks Funko's first collaboration with an author to bring beloved book characters to life—without inspiration from film, TV, or real-world adaptations. Paedyn Gray and Kai Azer collectibles mark an exciting first-of-their-kind debut that coincide with Roberts' release of Fearless, the final book in the Powerless trilogy on April 8th. Fans can preorder at "Seeing these characters step off the page and into the real world for the first time is both surreal and deeply meaningful," said Powerless author Lauren Roberts. "Paedyn Gray and Kai Azer have lived in my imagination and in the hearts of readers, and it's incredible to see them introduced in 3D as Funko Pop! collection." "As a pop culture and fan-first company, we're always exploring new ways to celebrate fandoms and build community through meaningful collaborations," said Husnal Shah, SVP of Product at Funko. "Partnering with Lauren to bring her vision of Paedyn Gray and Prince Kai to life as Pop! figures has been a designer's dream. Most importantly, we believe fans will agree that—even the powerless have a story worth telling." The series has become a cultural sensation, with the first book securing a spot on the The New York Times bestseller list for 34 weeks and selling more than a million copies. The series' novella, Powerful, was also on the list for nine weeks. With Fearless arriving in April 2025, the launch of the unique Pop! figures offer fans the perfect way to celebrate the collection's epic finale. Lauren Roberts is represented by MoxieCompany for branded partnerships. Simon & Schuster is her Publisher. ABOUT FUNKO Headquartered in Everett, Washington, Funko is a leading pop-culture lifestyle brand. Funko designs, sources, and distributes licensed pop culture products across multiple categories, including vinyl figures, board games, action toys, plush, apparel, housewares, and accessories for consumers who seek tangible ways to connect with their favorite pop culture brands and characters. Learn more at Funko, and follow us on TikTok, X, and Instagram. ABOUT MOXIECOMPANY Moxie & Co. is a global brand & franchise management, promotions and licensing agency. Moxie represents a diverse portfolio of brands including Lauren Roberts: Powerless Series, Simon & Schuster: Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, Raggedy Ann & Andy, Hamilton Beach Brands, Eloise, Ivory Ella and more. Moxie develops and manages strategic licensing programs across a wide array of product categories at all levels of retail around the globe. For more information, visit ABOUT LAUREN ROBERTS Lauren Roberts is a #1 New York Times and internationally bestselling author of Powerless, Reckless and Powerful. Her books have sold more than a million copies around the world. When Lauren isn't writing about fantasy worlds and bantering love interests, she can likely be found burrowed in bed reading about them. Lauren has lived in Michigan her whole life, making her very familiar with potholes, snow, and various lake activities. Alongside her cat co-authors, she hopes to have the privilege of writing pretty words for the rest of her life. If you enjoy reading, writing, and ranting, Lauren can be found on TikTok, Instagram, and Substack @LaurenRobertsLibrary for your entertainment. View source version on Contacts 42West, on behalf of Funkofunko@ Sign in to access your portfolio
