“Whose love stories get to be told? Whose happy endings do we get to see?”
Those are the questions that drive author Lily Chu to write her immensely popular romance novels featuring strong Asian characters — precisely because for so long, mainstream rom-coms in all types of media (books, movies, TV shows) have typically been centered around a white female protagonist and a white male love interest.
“[In a rom-com] the story has to revolve around the main characters, their relationship, and how it grows, and it has to have a happy ending — those are the rules of romance,” Chu explains. “When we’re looking at representation in romance, who gets to have hope in their happy ending? Who gets to be sexy? It’s important we see representation, because if you only have a few stories, people think that's representative of a group. No one's a monolith. So you need lots of different stories from all aspects. And being able to weave in those backgrounds and have that heritage as part of a story is important.”
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In her latest novel, Drop Dead — exclusively available to stream on Audible, the leading creator and provider of premium audio storytelling, and voiced by Phillipa Soo and John Cho — follows two biracial characters (like the author herself) who are rival journalists that have to work together to get to the bottom of a mystery. There’s witty banter! Scandalous intrigue! A slow-burn romance! And most importantly, cats!
Drop Dead marks Chu’s fourth book on Audible, following The Stand-In, The Comeback, and The Takedown. Watch our Twitch stream, above, as Lily Chu chats with R29 Entertainment Director Melissah Yang and R29 Beauty Director Sara Tan about how she found inspiration for Drop Dead, what it’s like turning her written works into audiobooks, what it’s like to be an Audible Originals author, what her writing journey has been like (spoiler alert: she found her agent on Twitter), and so much more.
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