Dear Lisa
I wanted to flag something that might interest you as an editorial angle rather than a straightforward review pitch.
Mo Fanning is an award-winning indie novelist. His LGBTQ+ novel Husbands won the 2025 IndieReader Discovery Award. Mo has written his way into what is arguably the most commercially competitive space in UK fiction: the grown-up romantic comedy.
His new novel, Lisa Doyle is Absolutely Fine (18 June, Spring Street Books), sits in the territory of Mhairi McFarlane and Beth O’Leary: a woman fakes an engagement after four glasses of wine, not giving any sane thought to how her invented fiancé shares a name with her very married boss. Set in Manchester, warm, sharp, and built around the exhausting performance of having it together.
What makes this worth a look is the story behind it. The grown-up romcom space is dominated by Big Five publishers and almost exclusively female authors. Mo is an indie-published male novelist writing a female-led ensemble comedy – and doing it with genuine emotional credibility rather than observation from the outside. It’s the kind of genre crossover that rarely gets examined, even though indie authors are increasingly producing the most distinctive commercial fiction.
I appreciate the Guardian’s review schedule is tightly curated, but I think there’s a feature angle here – whether as part of a summer fiction round-up, a piece on the changing landscape of romantic comedy, or simply a book that deserves to be on the radar.
Mo is available for interview and I can send a review copy immediately. Press release attached. Cover artwork and author photos also available.
Best,
Adrian Bedford
ABC Book Marketing
Tel: 07881 925376