Welcome to another Weekend Read. This week’s featured book is the romantic novel, Tuesdays Are For Oversharing, by contemporary women’s fiction author Bella Osborne. Bella has dropped by to tell us what inspired her to write this book. So grab a cuppa, get cosy and let’s get chatting to Bella.

Blurb

Louisa Hall has a whole new life… and emotional baggage she definitely didn’t ask for.

After inheriting her brother’s house in a pretty village, all Louisa wants is to lie low. Avoid people. Keep her feelings under lock and key. And absolutely not crash into annoyingly handsome nurses or ducks. Definitely not ducks. (Long story.)

Then her lonely neighbour drags her to the Cosy Café’s Tuesday club – a place for tea, cake and conversations she’d rather avoid.

Louisa would rather hide than share her secrets, yet she finds herself drawn to these odd strangers. But when the struggling café faces closure and long-buried truths begin to surface, Louisa must decide how much longer she can stay on the sidelines.

Sometimes healing starts with oversharing.

Buy link:  https://mybook.to/Tuesdays

Welcome to my blog, Bella. I love the premise of this book. Can you tell us what inspired you to write it?

Thanks for inviting me over, Karen. I really appreciate it. Ideas for stories pop up in the most unexpected places. Whilst writing my sixteenth book, Not Quite Done With Dating, I sadly lost my mother after a short illness. Little did I think her dying would give me an idea for my next romantic comedy but that’s exactly what happened. Whilst death isn’t a popular subject in my genre I was interested in how losing someone puts a spotlight on the relationships of those impacted. Family dynamics is something I find endlessly fascinating as an author so to be able to explore them in a novel was too good an opportunity to pass up.

I did some digging on the internet and discovered something called The Death Cafe. This isn’t a physical place but the name of an initiative that was born in America. They’re website says – At a Death Cafe people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death. Anyone who knows me or follows my socials will know I am a sucker for a cake or biscuit so this sounded perfect. The Death Café’s objective is ‘to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives’. These groups meet regularly in cafes all over the world, with some dedicated online groups, all focusing on a subject we so frequently ignore.

I felt this was something I wanted to explore further in my latest book, Tuesdays Are For Oversharing, and I’m so glad I did. My writer’s brain gets overexcited when an idea sparks so I already had strong main characters with backstories long before ever engaging with the Death Cafe community. But when I did they confirmed my thoughts about them being a laidback, supportive bunch of people with a variety of different reasons for attending. Possibly because dying is a bit of a taboo subject when it happens close to us it often takes us by surprise and hits us hard. But when people start talking about death it normalises it and makes it more comfortable a discussion topic and that can only be a good thing.

Despite this thread running through the book I’m always keen to balance out the dark with a lighter more comedic side because that’s how real life is. We all have tough stuff thrown at us but somewhere there is often something funny to lift the mood if you look hard enough and my characters are no different. My main character Louisa has a quick wit which sometimes gets her into trouble and Norma at the cafe regularly gets her words muddled up which leads to some fun results. Throw in a complicated mother and daughter relationship, a lonely neighbour, a couple of cheeky cats, a handsome nurse plus all the other colourful folk who make up the Death cafe regulars and shenanigans ensue. Ultimately this group come together through highs and lows to support each other and hopefully put a smile on readers faces along the way.This sounds fascinating. Wishing you lots of success with it.

This sounds fascinating, Bella. Wishing you lots of success with it and your future writing.

Meet Bella

Author bio

Bella has been jotting down stories for as long as she can remember and her first novel hit the shelves in 2015. Since then, she has written many bestselling and widely translated novels filled with heart, humour, and characters who, like most of us, are just trying to cope with what life throws at them. In 2022, she was thrilled to win the RNA Romantic Comedy Novel of the Year Award. She secretly wants to keep her readers up late at night reading just one more chapter.

Bella lives in Warwickshire, UK with her husband, daughter and rescue cat where her garden is home to many rehabilitated hedgehogs and one particularly cheeky squirrel. She loves planning with sticky notes, researching biscuits and listening to music in a bath that’s only slightly cooler than the sun.

For more about Bella, visit her website at www.bellaosborne.com or follow her on social media:

TikTok – https://www.tiktok.com/@bellaosborneauthor

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/BellaOsborneAuthor/

Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/bellaosborneauthor/

Threads – https://www.threads.com/@bellaosborneauthor

Blue Sky – https://bsky.app/profile/bellaosborneauthor.bsky.social

X/Twitter – https://x.com/osborne_bella

More of Bella’s Books