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

Mar. 15, 2025

Coco Mellors and the cover of ‘Blue Sisters’.Photo:Ballantine Books; Zoe Potkin

Ballantine Books; Zoe Potkin

It took author Coco Mellors five years to write her debut novel,Cleopatra and Frankenstein, but the journey helped with future projects.

Ballantine Books

Justin Aharoni

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

“I like to write about things that are hard to talk about, but I also write about the things that I am talking about,” she says. “So, in some ways, those topics are unavoidable for me because they’re what interests me in life.”

Coco Mellors (left) and Jenna Bush Hager.Justin Aharoni

That’s also a relatable topic for Bush Hager, who tells PEOPLE that, as a sister herself, she was drawn to the “real way” the messiness of siblinghood is portrayed in the novel. Joining the roster of Read with Jenna authors was meaningful in another way for Mellors too.“I ended up actually finding out that I was the Read with Jenna pick two days after I gave birth to my son,” the author says. “So, it was already a very happy time in my life, but it felt unexpected, and also so right … It feels like she’s like my fairy book mother.”

Finding community withBlue Sisters, through avenues like Read with Jenna and BookThreads, a reader community on the social media app, is also important to Mellors.“I think the sides and parts of ourselves that are the most hidden, or sometimes the most shameful, are also what connect us the most deeply to others,” she says. “So to feel that I have in, any way through the book, reached out a hand to someone and drawn them in and made them feel part of this sisterhood and of this compassionate circle of regard is amazing.”

Coco Mellors.Zoe Potkin

Zoe Potkin

The author is already at work on her third novel, which will follow a filmmaker in Paris during the city’s hottest summer on record. As Mellors explains it, her protagonist’s biological clock is ticking alongside the impending climate crisis.“It’s interesting to talk about topics of fertility and the desire for family versus the desire for total freedom, which I think women can feel, in some ways, are counter to each other,” Mellors says. As a new mother herself, now living in Brooklyn, she’s also enjoying writing about someone who “is just a little bit earlier on” in that journey.

Never miss a story — sign up forPEOPLE’s free daily newsletterto stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer , from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.WithBlue Sisters, however, despite its already-whirlwind experience, Mellors says the most rewarding part of the whole process was getting the seal of approval from her own sister, Daisy.“None of the characters are remotely like her, and I didn’t base any of the characters on my own family, but she’s just said, ‘You captured how I feel about you. You captured the love we have,’ Mellors recalls. “She read a very, very early draft of the novel and it changed a lot since. But I just remember feeling like, ‘Okay, good. Mission accomplished.’”Blue Sistersis now available, wherever books are sold.

source: people.com