four weddings and a romcom
plus, a Q&A with Hannah Orenstein, author of MAINE CHARACTERS
fresh off ten days in mexico, walking into my apartment just after midnight on friday was pure bliss. while I loved every moment split between Mexico City and Cabo, being on the road takes its toll! after calling six different places home on this trip, unpacking, doing all my laundry, and cozying up on my couch to hermit/read felt glorious. in fact, thanks to an Eataly provisions order via Uber Eats (I know I’m tired when I can’t even muster the energy to go to Wegmans!), I didn’t actually need to leave my place at all yesterday. god, I love new york, if only just to bunker down and take advantage of her anything-can-be-delivered perks when I’m feeling lazy.
if you’re here because you found out about the sunday series after last week’s guest,
, mentioned it her feature in her Substack, welcome! a warm thank you to Grace for bringing you over—I’m so happy you’re here. wondering what to expect? each week, I share musings from my life in the city, my travels (I work in luxury travel marketing), and spotlight an influential voice in the literary world. in today’s edition, I’m thrilled that Hannah Orenstein is sharing more about her latest project! and for my fellow fans of THE IDEA OF YOU, get ready because Robinne Lee is joining us next week to share more about the book’s film adaptation with Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine—set to hit Amazon Prime this thursday, May 2nd! I have recommended/lent this book to more people than any other title on my shelf, and I can’t wait for the film to widen the audience of this delicious story. I’ll be doing a re-read this week to pregame the movie!!four weddings and a romcom
as I type this, I’m watching Anything But You (cheesy, just like I love my romcoms!), and it has me thinking about weddings. in addition to the ones I have orbiting my personal world right now, they’re seemingly ever-present in our culture. I have a lot of feelings about this!!!! while I’ve never been the type to dream about my own wedding (I’m more of a double down on the honeymoon kinda gal), I love the notion of love in its purest form, and can certainly appreciate when people put together a killer celebration of their union. I especially appreciate when weddings intersect with the hotel space, and this week, there were more than a few of those that captured my attention!
during my last visit to Sania’s Brow Bar, Suzy Vucetaj who does my brows (she’s a magician…cannot recommend highly enough) told me about a wedding she was going to that was set to start in South Africa at Singita Boulders. naturally, my attention was captured as I have fond memories of staying here back in 2020, including the moment when fellow guest captured a leopard on our personal pool deck while we were inside. anyway, that was just the preamble to the actual wedding set to end in Cairo. the over-the-top celebration has been all over my feed this weekend, and if you’d like to go down a rabbit hole, I highly recommend starting here. the content is content-ing all over IG and TT as well!
closer to home, if you’re a part of the Daddy Gang, you most definitely saw Vogue’s coverage of Alex Cooper’s wedding at Maroma, a Belmond Hotel—swoon! one of my favorite things she did was walk towards her guests versus up the aisle behind them. turns out, one of my fave TikTokers, Greta Rolli did the same thing at her gorgeous destination wedding in Portugual. and last but not least, yesterday, my friend and colleague Erin Trager-Kusman shared coverage from an elopement she helped plan at Amangiri that Elle covered here. all of this to say, destination weddings continue to have their time in the sun and I’m so here for it.
WVBC things
to wrap up, a huge thank you to
for featuring me as her Seatmate in her Substack this past week! I loved our Q&A and especially appreciated this fun graphic she made to showcase my carry-on essentials (pictured below). it was fun to chat about my start in the industry and what places/properties are on my radar. be sure to subscribe to Tori’s Substack for future Seatmate chats!
you’ll see that our West Village Book Club april pick, EXPIRATION DATES, is featured in my carry-on essentials. I just finished it this morning and holy tears!! we meet tuesday and I couldn’t be more excited to discuss Rebecca Serle’s latest with my WVBC girlies. previous sunday series guests
and discussed the book as their latest Bad on Paper pick in this episode, which I’ll be listening to during my Glowbar treatment this afternoon! I’ve been doing monthly treatments at Glowbar since 2019 and always look forward to the pick-me-up followed by inevitably pillaging their wall of my holy grail medical-grade products (members get a discount). if you decide to try them out, tell them I sent you! xKDmeet Hannah Orenstein
this week, I’m honored to be spotlighting New York-based writer Hannah Orenstein! for starters, Hannah is an incredible follow on Instagram if you’re not already in her orbit. I had the chance to connect with her offline last spring to get her advice on a project I was—and very much still am—in the trenches on. her consulting work has been instrumental, and I particularly love that that thread where we began going back and forth is now well over a year old. the latest email included her sharing, “I'm wishing you nothing short of a Felicity Blunt/Stanley Tucci situation…” so, yeah, she GETS IT! Hannah is the Deputy Editor of Lifestyle & Wellness at Bustle and the author of five novels, including Meant to Be Mine, Playing with Matches, and the forthcoming Maine Characters (out spring 2025) which we’re getting into today!
Kayla Douglas: Hannah, tell us a bit about your background and the path that led you to becoming a writer. What prompted your leap into novel writing?
Hannah Orenstein: I was always scribbling in notebooks as a kid. When I was eleven, I went to summer camp with a three-ring binder filled with twenty printed pages of my "novel," which was about a boy who time-travels to the present day and winds up making out with a girl while Usher's "Yeah" plays in the background. I was editing it by the pool and a girl in my cabin saw a line about their lips "mashing together." She laughed and told everyone. I was mortified.
I went to school for journalism and took two creative writing classes there, too. I met E. Jean Carroll when I was interning at Elle, and she hired me to work as a matchmaker for the company she was launching that year. I was 21, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, and I had the most fascinating time of my life. After I left that job, I wrote Playing with Matches. Some of the characters kiss. None of their lips mash together.
Kayla: What were the seeds of inspiration behind your new book, MAINE CHARACTERS? What's the premise?
Hannah: MAINE CHARACTERS is about two half-sisters who have never met, but find themselves forced together for the summer at their family's lake house in Maine after their dad suddenly dies. It's like a grown-up version of The Parent Trap, only with affairs and great wine (one sister is a sommelier).
During the summers, I live on a small lake in rural Maine. It's my favorite place in the world, my family has been going there for thirty years. Obviously, there's a pantheon of incredible authors who capture New England's beach towns — Elin Hilderbrand, Meg Mitchell Moore, Jennifer Weiner, to name a few — but I really craved a similar book set on a Maine lake. I couldn't find one, so I wrote it.
Kayla: You've shared that this book will be your most personal yet. Can you tell us more about that?
Hannah: There are always bits and pieces of me in my writing, but this brings readers into my daily life in a different way. Pieces of the book might seem, uh, very familiar to people who follow me on Instagram: the house, my obsession with loons, watching the sunset every night with my family, what I call Wine Speed (four miles per hour, the fastest you can drive a boat without spilling a drop). And it's not just the surface-level stuff, it's very much rooted in my own feelings about change, loss, and what this place means to me.
It kind of feels like I'm inviting everyone over to hang out. Come on in. Can I get you a glass of wine?
Kayla: How was the creative process for writing MAINE CHARACTERS distinct from your other novels? In what ways was it similar?
Hannah: Like always, there was an intense outline. I think this one might have been twenty pages. This was my first (or maybe second? lol) time writing a novel longhand. I really love to write outside, sometimes out on the water, so my laptop just wasn't practical. Because I can't edit myself as I go, I find it easier to get into a flow. My first drafts are messy but they're my favorite part of the publishing process.
Kayla: What does it look like to "balance" your full-time work with your fiction writing and your other personal projects?
Hannah: I don't think anyone has this figured out. I go through periods where I'm working on a book for hours a day, every day, on top of my job at Bustle, and then periods where I don't touch fiction whatsoever.
Kayla: You've found unique ways to help support aspiring authors through coaching and mentorship. Can you share more about the aspects of the writing, editing, or querying process that writers can consult with you on?
Hannah: I love to work with writers! I offer one-on-one consultations as well as virtual workshops about writing and publishing. (And on a very different note, as a former matchmaker and Hinge copywriter who's covered the dating industry as a journalist for nearly a decade, I offer reviews of dating app profiles, too.) Reach out to me at hannah@hannahorenstein.com to chat further!
Kayla: Tell us about the most recent work of fiction that left you with a book hangover.
Hannah: I got a galley of THE PAIRING by Casey McQuiston and oh my God... It's about two bisexual exes who accidentally book the same weeks-long food and wine tour of France, Spain, and Italy. Every scene is bursting with desire — for each other, for flavor, for wanderlust, for their hot tour guide. Every line is like biting into a juicy peach. For weeks after I finished it, everything around me was incredibly ugly and boring by comparison.
Kayla: What book is on your TBR pile that you're most excited to pick up?
Hannah: I like to read about rich people doing absurd things, so I'm looking forward to VERY BAD COMPANY by Emma Rosenblum (out on May 14). A group of tech execs is on a corporate retreat in Miami when one of them goes missing. Her debut, BAD SUMMER PEOPLE, had a fun mix of dark humor and juicy scandals, and I bet this will, too.
Editor’s note: Emma Rosenbloum just so happens to be slated as our sunday series guest on May 12th! Can’t wait to bring you a conversation with Emma on her sophomore novel.
Kayla: The sunday series was conceptualized as a love letter to my favorite day of the week. If we were with you in Brooklyn on Sunday, where would you take us to spend the afternoon?
Hannah: Let's do a loop around my neighborhood, Williamsburg: We'll get iced lattes at Dunkin' — or Bakeri, if you insist on something chic — then pick up a book at McNally Jackson and read on the little beach at Marsha P. Johnson State Park. The skyline views there are amazing. For dinner, we'll go to Sweetwater for delicious French food and the nicest staff in town.
Kayla: When can readers expect the release of MAINE CHARACTERS, and in the meantime, what's the best way to support your published work?
Hannah: Spring 2025! In the meantime, you can catch up on my back catalog:
Meant to Be Mine: What if you knew the exact day you'll meet the love of your life?
Head Over Heels: Before the Paris Olympics, dive into the world of elite gymnastics.
Love at First Like: A jewelry designer needs to find a fake fiancé in order to save her business.
Playing with Matches: Inspired by my brief, disastrous stint working as a matchmaker.
If you pick one up, thank you! I love you.
i loved this interview! as someone who lived in maine for two years, i'm very excited for hannah's next book and to be able to revisit a maine summer at will.