Okay, buckle up for this one. Robin Lefler’s sophmore novel NOT HOW I PICTURED IT is the shipwreck rom-com you’ve been waiting for, a pitch perfect DREAM of a book whose wacky premise brings some real heft to the table. And I’m so happy to be able to talk to her about NINE PERFECT STRANGERS, by Lianne Moriarty, the novel about a group of people isolated together at a wellness centre that inspired Lefler as she shaped her own book.
Listen as Robin talks about what she loves about Moriarty’s hybridity, the challenges of writing a locked room mystery, how annoying it was to have to keep track of her characters’ food rations, the real island with an actual castle that inspired the setting for her story, the surprising thing she learned about creating a plot outline (spoiler: it works!), and why it was important to her to write about characters who are still becoming themselves in their 40s.
About NOT HOW I PICTURED IT:
The OC meets The Unhoneymooners in this shipwreck romcom when the reunited cast of a hit show get stuck on a deserted island with nothing but their complete lack of survival skills, simmering drama, and the sneaking suspicion that someone is up to no good.
Agnes “Ness” Larkin has been out of the spotlight for twenty years since her quick departure from a starring role in a hit teen TV drama. When the show is tapped for a reboot, no one is more surprised than Ness that she signs on to rejoin the cast, leaving behind a normal—if not exactly thrilling—life in Toronto. Also back for round two are Libby, Ness’s former best friend and soon to be makeup empire magnate, and Hayes, Ness’s one-that-got-away who has risen to A-list fame (and somehow gotten even better looking) in the years she’s been gone.
When they set off for filming near the Bahamas, a storm leaves the seven actors and one production assistant stranded on a small island with only an abandoned, derelict mansion to wait out the storm. But when the weather clears and a new day rises—their boat is gone too.
Stuck in a bizarre, crumbling house on an uninhabited island with possibly the most useless survival group in history, Ness and her co-stars are forced to revisit a minefield of past transgressions and come to terms with the adults they’ve become as they work together to ride out the storm. Or at least pretend to—they are actors, after all.
Interspersed with weather reports, fictional memoir excerpts, a dating profile and Perez-Hilton-esque blog posts, Not How I Pictured It is a rollicking novel of delightful absurdity, pithy dialogue, and no shortage of heart.
ROBIN LEFLER grew up near Toronto and (briefly) pursued an ill-fated career in equine massage therapy before stumbling into the world of robotics and tech sales. Not How I Pictured It is her second novel. Her first, Reasonable Adults, was published in 2022. Robin Lefler still lives in her hometown with her family and two very needy canines.
Episode Eight: Robin Lefler