If you’re in the mood for a lighthearted, cosy romance then I recommend picking up one of Laura Wood’s excellent historical fiction novels. Three of these make especially delightful summer reads: A Sky Painted Gold,* Under a Dancing Star and The Agency for Scandal, so consider packing one in your suitcase if you’re off on holiday and need an engrossing, fun read for the journey. 

Alternatively, A Single Thread of Moonlight is possibly my favourite of Laura’s books and makes a delicious autumnal read and A Snowfall of Silver is the perfect winter romance (it also features some of the characters from A Sky Painted Gold). It’s not a surprise that I’m such a fan of Laura Wood’s novels, as not only do they contain echoes of other stories I love - like I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith and Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances - but they also all strongly evoke a particular season and so make wonderful seasonal reading choices.

A Sky Painted Gold was chosen as last year’s Comfort Book Club read for June. The novel begins in that month and carries on throughout a magical, life-altering summer for its young protagonist, Lou, who is on the cusp of womanhood, dreaming of becoming a writer, but unsure how to break away from the quiet Cornish village and happy farm life in which she’s been raised. Unsettled by her elder sister’s upcoming nuptials, Lou takes to escaping to a grand, empty house on a small island accessed by a causeway from the beach.

Lou enjoys the quiet atmosphere and sense of freedom as she wanders the silent rooms, eating apples, reading Agatha Christie books and scribbling stories into her notebooks. One day, Lou’s peace is shattered as her refuge is once more occupied: by brother and sister Robert and Caitlin Cardew, young heirs to their parents’ fortune who seemingly have the world at their feet. Lou gets drawn into their glittering summer, filled with parties, boundless luxury and free-flowing champagne, but she soon learns that beneath the sparkle lies unsuspected worry and heartbreak. As Lou becomes closer to both Caitlin and Robert, she realises what truly matters in life and draws on her inner resources of determination, kindness and loyalty as she helps her new friends.

Laura Wood was kind enough to get in touch with me after our Comfort Book Club discussion of A Sky Painted Gold (which you may watch here), saying how much she’d enjoyed our chat, and also agreeing to be asked a few questions about her work and the books that inspire her writing over an informal Zoom call. It was so much fun to chat to Laura about books, writing and comfort reading, and I hope you enjoy reading our conversation below.

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MM: What first led you to turn your hand to YA [Young Adult] writing? I know you started out writing middle-grade stories.

LW: The YA started happening really early on, actually. My first book was middle-grade, and that’s because I won a competition, and the prize for the competition was that the book got published. In a way it was a strange experience, because it meant in one moment I had nothing, and then in another moment, I had an agent and a publisher. It was a bit weird, as I won my agent, which could have gone really wrong, but fortunately worked out brilliantly! We’re really good friends, I just love her, and we’ve done so many books together now.

I started telling Louise (my agent) about another idea I had (which would become A Sky Painted Gold), and she was so into it immediately, and she took it to Scholastic, who were publishing my middle-grade, and they were very interested, so it was like a dream project because everyone fell in love with the idea before I’d even written a word of it! So writing YA started happening alongside the middle-grade really very quickly.

I think the reason I wanted to write YA is because I enjoy writing young adult fiction in that sort of liminal space of the coming of age story. Eva Ibbotson’s young adult books were a huge influence on me, as were novels like I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith, which was one of my favourite books growing up, and The Dud Avocado by Elaine Dundy. I love books that are about young women on the edge of adulthood who are about to take their first steps out into the world, and YA fiction is of course a natural place where I get to write about those sorts of stories.

MM: What inspired A Sky Painted Gold?

LW: I think the idea for A Sky Painted Gold came from wanting to fill a gap; recently, aside from Eva Ibbotson, there just hasn’t been a lot of historical fiction written for young adults that doesn’t have a blend of fantasy elements, or that isn’t quite sombre in tone and subject matter (often set during the world wars, for instance). I thought back to all the fun and light and joyful historical fiction novels that I loved as a young adult. I suppose they were written before Young Adult - as a genre - really existed, but I wondered why there was nothing like that being written today and saw there was a real gap. I think my agent and the people at Scholastic realised that too: that there was a gap that could be filled for that type of YA historical fiction. I hope, as my books have done quite well, that more people will take encouragement from that and will write more into this area.

MM: It’s been wonderful to see your success with these books! I think an assumption I’d made, for instance, is that this type of historical fiction novel wasn’t being published anymore because there wasn’t an audience for these books anymore, but you’ve shown that there definitely is! Did it surprise you how many older women (as well as younger readers) love your books so much?

LW: I suppose if you were being really specific, you would say A Sky Painted Gold is New Adult fiction, rather than Young Adult.

MM: I hadn’t even heard of the term New Adult fiction before!

LW: It’s even more of a nebulous idea than Young Adult! If something is New Adult it tends to be more about university age people. In some ways, I was surprised by the adult audience because obviously A Sky Painted Gold is not published by an adult publisher, and it’s not generally stocked in the adult section of the bookshops, but in other ways it makes sense to me because I wrote the books for myself, really - I write the type of books I want to be able to read - so in a way it makes sense that other people my age felt the same. Word of mouth has played a huge role in the success of the books, and often different generations in the same family - like with you and your Mum - read the books together, which is so special to me - I don’t know how anything could be more special than that!

MM: That is wonderful! And yes, one of the reasons I chose A Sky Painted Gold for my Comfort Book Club, was because I thought it had a broad appeal for different ages, and I could see it would be the type of book mothers and daughters - for instance - could read together. Much as your books are liked by an adult audience, though, they certainly also appeal to a young modern audience. And although you keep your books light, you do still address the darker aspects of history and write on topics that connect with young readers today, which I really admire.

LW: I think especially if you are writing for young adults, there is a sense of responsibility there. You do feel, as a writer, that you’re stepping into a really important and vulnerable time in a reader’s life, so you have a sense of responsibility. For me, that extends through the historical aspect of the novels, it extends through the romance; I make a point of modeling healthy romances, not celebrating toxic behaviour! 

And writing historical fiction, now, I think it always has to have a modern sensibility. I’m not writing a novel in the 1920s or Victorian era, and I’m not seeking to write replicas of these novels. Sometimes I think readers do find that difficult because they want complete historical accuracy, but for me that’s never going to happen because I have no interest in, for example, the bigoted language that was used in those times. You do need to acknowledge the pain and the issues of the past, not just gloss over them, but I’m not interested in writing a facsimile; I write for a modern audience and a modern sensibility.

MM: Although your books don’t gloss over the darker aspects of history, they are ultimately lighthearted reads, and I find them very comforting reads too. Do you read for comfort? And if you do, what are some of your favourite comfort reads?

LW: Yes, I do, in fact I think that’s probably the main reason that I read. I’ve always been a big reader, and I remember my Mum would come to pick me up from the school gates, and I would always be the last kid out because I’d have my reading book in front of my face! I’ve been a reader for as long as I can remember: to me, that’s my identity - being a reader. So yes, I definitely read for comfort, and I’m not great at reading things that are very gritty, precisely because I love to read for comfort.

Part of comfort reading for me is I’m a huge rereader: I reread as much if not more than I read something new. The books I’ll reread over and over again are anything by Eva Ibbotson, anything by Georgette Heyer… I love Agatha Christie and Golden Age mysteries, I find those very comforting. Then The Dud Avocado, anything by Nancy Mitford, anything Anne of Green Gables related. The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets (that was a huge influence on me thinking I could write A Sky Painted Gold) because it’s exactly that sort of novel that you think doesn’t exist anymore - it feels like it’s come from another time - and it’s such a wonderful, wonderful book. I love Wimsey [the Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries by Dorothy L Sayers], especially anything with him and Harriet in - a dollop of romance makes me so happy!

I feel like the fingerprints of those books are all over my books; they are a part of me, so they come out in my writing.

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Thank you so much again to Laura for taking the time to answer my questions! If you’d like to keep up with Laura’s latest news, do follow her on Instagram @lauracwood. Excitingly, Laura will be publishing her first adult novel, Under Your Spell, next summer. I can’t wait!

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