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| photo: Marlayna Demond | |
New York Times, Sunday Times, and USA Today bestselling author B.K. Borison is the author of cozy, contemporary romances featuring emotionally vulnerable characters and swoon-worthy settings. The latest in her Heartstrings series is And Now, Back to You (Berkley Books, February 24, 2026), a When Harry Met Sally-inspired, opposites-attract romance about two meteorologists.
Handsell readers your book in 25 words or less:
Two competing meteorologists get trapped in the mountains during a historic snowstorm. There is only one bed.
On your nightstand now:
We Could Be So Good by Cat Sebastian. Cat has such a tender, effortless way of writing that is deeply romantic. I particularly love how she slowly stitches connection between her characters through the smallest of details. Her voice feels like a cold drink of water. Whenever I feel uninspired or small, I pick up one of her books. They itch my brain in exactly the right way.
Favorite book when you were a child:
The Lord of the Rings series by J.R.R. Tolkien was my first full obsession as a kid. I think at one point I even tried to learn elvish. The world is so rich and immersive, it pulled me right in. In my heart, I am always somewhere in the Shire.
Your top five authors:
Nora Ephron, Cat Sebastian, Joss Richard, Ellen O'Clover, and Anita Kelly. I will literally drop anything I'm doing to read something they've put together, including their grocery lists.
Book you've faked reading:
I had a college professor I didn't like who assigned his own book as part of the class curriculum. I couldn't even find summary notes for it online, so I really flew by the seat of my pants in that class. Typically, I think every book has something in it to be learned from, but I really didn't think that man had anything valuable to say.
Book you're an evangelist for:
Literally everyone in my life is tired of hearing me yap about Star Shipped by Cat Sebastian, but it is truly one of the most tender, affirming books I have ever read and I genuinely don't know how she's capable of writing such powerful love stories over and over again.
Book you've bought for the cover:
The Ministry of Time by Kaliane Bradley. The colors are so striking. It reminds me of those old sci-fi broadcast features from when I was a kid. I'm also such a sucker for the original Penguin classic covers. When I was growing up, they had an entire display at Barnes & Noble of those covers specifically, and I remember slowly working my way through that display with my babysitting cash. I still have those editions of Bram Stoker's Dracula and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, dog-eared with notes in the margin.
Book you hid from your parents:
My parents told me I wasn't allowed to read at the dinner table, and I didn't listen, so I usually was hiding a book on my lap. I explicitly remember hiding a copy of a The Baby-Sitters Club book while I was supposed to be eating pot roast. I also used to bring a banged-up copy of a Tolkien book with me to church class. It was confiscated, but luckily I had like 17 copies of that book.
Book that changed your life:
Not a book, but reading the screenplay for Sleepless in Seattle was the first time I was consumed with the writing of something. I had always loved books, but Tom Hanks has a monologue where he's talking about magic and I remember sitting on my bed and thinking, "I want to do that." Nora Ephron has such a lovely, magical, whimsical approach to love stories that has deeply inspired by own story telling.
Favorite line from a book:
I can't believe I'm actually going to quote Shakespeare, but there's a line in "Venus and Adonis" that I've always loved where he says, "For he being dead, with him is beauty slain, And, beauty dead, black chaos comes again."
I've always found that to be terribly dramatic and wonderfully romantic.
There's also a line in Claire Keegan's Small Things Like These where the character reflects and says: "As they carried along and met more people Furlong did and did not know, he found himself asking was there any point in being alive without helping one another?"
I think about that moment a lot--what it means to be a person that exists as a part of a community. And how we can better shape ourselves to be part of a we versus a me.
Five books you'll never part with:
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, The Princess Bride by William Goldman, The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien, Atonement by Ian McEwan.
Look at that spectrum! I like thinking of books as little bookmarks on the chapter of life I read them in. Sometimes when I open up one of these books, I remember exactly where I was the last time I read it and it's a wonderful feeling of... time travel, almost. I like comparing how I feel reading it now to how I felt when I was reading it before. It's like a window to a different time, except you're looking in your heart.
Book you most want to read again for the first time:
Sometimes there's a magical moment when a book hits you at exactly the right time and is exactly what you need, and that book for me was The Very Secret Society of Irregular Witches by Sangu Mandanna. I felt so taken care of when I read that book for the first time. It made my belly swoop and my throat tighten in all the best ways.