In Blue Sisters, Author Coco Mellors Captures Both the ‘Light’ and ‘Horrendous’ Sides of Sisterhood (Exclusive)

Author Coco Mellors took five years to write her debut novel, Cleopatra and Frankensteinbut the trip helped with future projects.

She wrote nights and weekends while working as a fashion copywriter and earning a BA in fiction from New York University, and while the book eventually became a bestseller, as well as the subject of many passionate reviews from readers on TikTok, her success wasn’t immediate. That experience, however, prepared Mellors for the path to the publication of her second novel, The Blue Sistersout now from Ballantine Books. “No writing process is ever completely smooth. The novel is a long labor of love,” the author told PEOPLE at the Threads-hosted Creator Book Club event in New York on Sept. 25. “I definitely found that I had more confidence this time, because I knew I had already finished the novel and I believed I could do it again.”

Cover of ‘Blue Sisters’ by Coco Mellors.

Ballantine’s books

And there is. The Blue Sisters it was a moment The New York Times a bestseller upon its September 3rd release, and was recently chosen by Jenna Bush Hager as a September 2024 selection for her Read with Jenna book club. Bush Hager also moderated a discussion with Mellors at the Creator Book Club event. Following three sisters grieving the unexpected loss of their fourth child, the novel chronicles the ups and downs the Blue siblings face as they return to their New York apartment. where they were raised. Mellors, who cites James Baldwin, Zadie Smith and Jennifer Egan as authors she keeps coming back to, was drawn to family sagas while writing The Blue Sistersincluding the classic novel by Louisa May Alcott Little Women and Wes Anderson’s 2001 film The Royal Tenenbaums.

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“I love a family drama and I love an eccentric family story,” says Mellors. “I was inspired by this idea of ​​very different siblings coexisting in one family: exceptional people who are also extremely different, and how that can happen in families, and what it looks like to try to create a harmonious whole when each of the parts is so phenomenally different. ”

Coco Mellors (left) in conversation with Jenna Bush Hager at the Creator Book Club event, hosted by Threads, in New York on September 25.

Justin Aharoni

Mellors, who wrote the book while living in Los Angeles during the pandemic, grew up between London and New York and says writing the novel became her only way to “travel” during that period.

The PEOPLE Puzzler has arrived! How fast can you solve it? Play now! “Even though it was such a difficult time, it was also a really peaceful time for me,” she says. “I feel like I was able to go a lot deeper with these characters as a result.” For research purposes, Mellors also interviewed models whose lives have been shaped by the fashion industry to better understand Lucky’s character, and even spent a year training with a boxing trainer to write Bonnien — during which the author ended up with a black eye. was very difficult,” she says. “He was definitely not soft on me.” The Blue sisters are constantly under the influence of difficulties from their childhood and afterwards throughout the novel: sadness, of course, but also parental neglect, chronic illness and addiction. Mellors has been open about her own sobriety journey and says that putting difficult subjects on the page is part of what drives her as a writer.

Coco Mellors signs books at the Creator Book Club event, hosted by Threads, in New York on September 25.

Justin Aharoni

“I like to write about things that are difficult to talk about, but I also write about things that I talk about,” she says. “So, in a way, these topics are inevitable for me because they interest me in life.”

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“Of course, it’s challenging to sit with these topics day after day, but I always write about love and hope at the same time,” she adds. The complexities of sisterhood were also a challenge to capture, especially trying to “temper the darkness with light.” “I also made sure that the reader did not turn against it [the characters] at any time because the way we actually talk to our sisters can be terrible,” she says. The youngest of four siblings, Mellors understands this all too well. “I remember my sister and I had an argument at the beginning of dinner and I said, ‘I’m literally never going to talk to you again. You’re out of my life,’” she recalls. “And then we shared dessert until the end of the dinner. That’s the timeline of the sibling fight. Sometimes they are like summer storms: very intense, and then they pass.”

Coco Mellors (left) and Jenna Bush Hager.

Justin Aharoni

It’s also a related theme for Bush Hager, who tells PEOPLE that, as a sister, she was drawn to the “real way” the frat-sister mess was portrayed in the novel. Joining the list of Read with Jenna authors made sense in another way for Mellors. “In the end, I actually found out that I was selected for Read with Jenna two days after I gave birth to my son,” says the author. “So it was already a very happy time in my life, but it was unexpected and also so right… It feels like she’s my fairy tale mother.”

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Finding community with The Blue Sistersthrough avenues such as Read with Jenna and BookThreads, a community of readers on the social app, is also important to Mellors. “I think the sides and parts of ourselves that are most hidden, or sometimes most shameful, are also what connect us most deeply to others,” she says. “So it’s amazing to feel that, in any way through the book, I’ve reached out to somebody and pulled them in and made them feel part of this sisterhood and this compassionate circle of respect.”

Coco Mellors.

Zoe Potkin

The author is already working on her third novel, which will follow the director in Paris during the hottest summer in the city so far. As Mellors explains, her protagonist’s biological clock is ticking alongside the impending climate crisis. “It’s interesting to talk about the themes of fertility and the desire for families versus the desire for total freedom, which I think women can feel, in a way, against each other,” says Mellors. Being a new mother herself, now living in Brooklyn, she also enjoys writing about someone who is “just a little early” on that journey.

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories. WITH The Blue Sistershowever, despite her already tumultuous experience, Mellors says the most rewarding part of the whole process was getting the stamp of approval from her own sister, Daisy. characters about my own family, but she just said, ‘You got how I feel about you. You captured the love we have,’ Mellors recalls. “She read a very, very early version of the novel and has changed a lot since then. But I just remember feeling like, ‘Okay, fine. Mission accomplished.’”The Blue Sisters is now available wherever books are sold.

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Source: HIS Education