Feel like you’re ready to take a mental vacation from the world of 2020? Hey, that’s how I’ve been feeling lately, too! And while I’m not about to stop reading books about the social change that so urgently needs to happen, I’m also not about to pass up the opportunity to lose myself in a wildly entertaining and escapist novel. Because it’s possible to do both, right?

Maybe you’re feeling much the same way. Maybe you’d welcome the opportunity to step into an alternative reality—a world where multigenerational family get-togethers are still possible, hugs and all. Kate Hilton’s latest book delivers all that and more. It’s a lot of fun and it delivers the mental vacation are craving right now. Bottom line? It’s pretty much the perfect book to enjoy over the holidays.

After devouring the book last weekend, I reached out to Kate to see if she might be willing to do a quick Q&A about her book. (What can I say? When I finish reading a novel, I always have questions.) And Kate was only too happy to answer those questions. Here’s what I asked her and what she had to say.

ANN DOUGLAS: Your novel is home to a large cast of characters. Did they all show up in your imagination at the same time? Or did some make their presence known to you sooner than others? I’d love it if you could talk a bit about how you (mentally) assembled your cast of characters. (BTW: I thought it was a great idea to include a list of the key characters at the start of the book. I referred to this list repeatedly as I tried to keep track of all the various family relationships. It was complicated. I guess that’s why I’m amazed and impressed that you could keep track of all these characters and storylines.)

KATE HILTON: I love books with big, intergenerational casts of characters, and the process of writing one was a real education for me. How did the individual members of the Goldstein-Hennessey family unite as one sprawling, fractious, somewhat happy unit? I started with Zoe Hennessey and Will Shannon, who had been secondary characters in my first novel, The Hole in the Middle (Zoe was the protagonist’s best friend, and Will was her first love). Their story arcs didn’t feel complete to me, and I wanted to check in on them and see what they’d been up to. When I started writing Better Luck Next Time, I thought it would be a straightforward love story with Zoe and Will at the centre. However, like the Goldstein-Hennessey clan itself, the novel had strong opinions and was quite unruly. In fairly short order, I’d added Zoe's cousins, Mariana, Beata, and Nina, and her brother, Zack. By that point in the writing, I’d realized that the story was about reinvention more broadly, and how different people deal with life's unexpected plot twists. Then, in the second draft, I filled in the multi-generational aspects of the story, by giving more space to Oscar and to Lydia. Lydia’s status as a feminist icon and her complicated relationship to motherhood are key aspects of the family identity, but those were layers that came later in the writing.

ANN DOUGLAS: Your novel takes place over the course of a year. The majority of the action takes place in 2020 (as Zack tells us on page 54) and yet there’s no mention of the pandemic. Is this because the book was written a year or two ago, before you knew how 2020 was actually going to play out? Or did you make a conscious decision to give your readers the chance to take a mental vacation from the many painful realities of 2020?

KATE HILTON: I wrote the book in 2019 and was projecting ahead so that the dates would feel current when the book came out. Little did I know! But I wouldn’t change it. So many people who’ve read Better Luck Next Time have said that it’s a welcome relief from the grim realities of 2020, and I’m pleased to provide an entertaining alternate universe where the pressing issues are the pitfalls of online dating and the absurdities of the wellness industrial complex.

ANN DOUGLAS: My very favourite page in the book is the page with the wedding vows. I don’t want to spoil the book for would-be readers by saying much more than that, but could you talk about the process of writing these vows? They seem so perfect for this particular set of characters—and yet I’d love to see the language in these vows show up in real-world marriage vows!

KATE HILTON: Oh, I love that you reacted this way! The vows are based on the ones my husband and I wrote we got married in 2018. I changed them somewhat for the couple in Better Luck Next Time, but many of the sentiments are the same. One of the privileges of marrying in your forties is that you know what commitments matter most to each of you, and you have a realistic understanding of what it will take to keep those commitments. My husband and I spent a lot of time reflecting on the kind of marriage we wanted to have, and how we wanted to show up for each other over time. And in writing this particular love story in Better Luck Next Time, I thought the characters would have undergone a similar exercise. They have been through a lot over the course of the novel, and it made sense to me that they would have thought deeply about the promises they were making to each other.

Better Luck Next Time was written by Kate Hilton and published by HarperCollins in November 2020. You can find out more about the book by visiting Kate’s website.