Bestselling author Stephanie Garber on writing new urban fantasy and her 3 favourite books

If you've ever spent any time at all scrolling through BookTok, you'll almost certainly have come across Stephanie Garber's novels. Originally published in 2016, Caraval, her debut, continues to be discussed and recommended on the platform by thousands of book lovers almost 10 years on.

As well as the Caraval series, you may also know Stephanie as the author behind the Once Upon a Broken Heart series. Her latest book, Alchemy of Secrets, marks her adult debut. It follows Holland, a graduate student obsessed with myths and legends who one day finds out all of the stories are real.

After being told she'll die tomorrow unless she finds an ancient magical relic, she's thrown into a world she could never have imagined, and racing through Los Angeles, she runs into the path of a magnetic stranger who claims he's been sent to save her life. As she solves clues and searches for truth, she finds herself struggling to tell enemy from ally.

Speaking to the Express about the novel ahead of its publication earlier this week, Stephanie said: "I love urban fantasy," explaining that paranormal and urban fantasy are what got her into reading.

On how this love for the genre translated to Alchemy of Secrets, she said: "I really wanted something in the vein of The Da Vinci Code meets A Discovery of Witches, because I love the accessibility of a paranormal romance. I also love the way, to me, it feels like the most escapist, because it feels the most likely that it could happen."

When it came to plotting out the novel, Stephanie said she started with the world and the folklore before just letting her characters take over.

"I read a lot of urban fantasy and I know what I love in it. I had these things that I knew I wanted to put in the book, but then there was a lot of space in between to kind of play with them and see how it would all shake out.

"I think when you have a clear idea of the world and a clear idea of who your characters are, for the first book in a series, you don't have to plot as much, because they kind of are going to take you on the course. You have a clear goal, and so I had those things and I knew that were certain benchmarks that I wanted to hit.

"I knew that I wanted to write a story where it wasn't clear who the love interest was. I wanted to throw a lot of characters at my main character and make it not a clear love story, not even really a true love triangle, but more of like, wait, who can she trust? And who is the love interest? Is this the bad guy or the love interest?"

Stephanie also had some words of advice for any budding authors hoping to write their own bestselling novel one day, recommending a read of John Truby's The Anatomy of A Story. "You want to have one core idea, and that is your seed and you're planting it, and this is the seed that grows like a tree," she said.

"So I think when you're figuring out this seed that you're centring this whole story around, it has to be something that you absolutely love that keeps you up at night, that makes you write notes on your phone when you're out and about or on receipts when you're at a restaurant.

"It has to be this big enough idea because it has to carry you through the whole story. And I think that if it's true for you, if you feel this, readers are going to feel it too."

When she isn't writing and conjuring up fantastical new worlds, Stephanie is also a big reader herself. She named Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor as her all-time favourite fantasy book, adding that she re-reads it almost every year. "If you've never read Laini Taylor, her writing is just gorgeous," she said.

"She's just, I think, one of the best writers out there and the storytelling in this book is just incredible and thought provoking, but really fantastical."

Other books Stephanie says she recommends all the time include Kiss of Deception by Mary E. Pearson, as well as The Rose Bargain by Sasha Peyton Smith. "I felt like that book was like The Bachelor meets The Cruel Prince and I just loved it. It was just a really fun book and it was really, really clever.

"There are these fantastic fairy bargains and there's a really good romance, and then there's really awesome female friendships in this book, which were unexpected, given that it is like a competition for marriage, and I love the way she did it. So that book is just, I flew through that book."

You can buy Stephanie's new book, Alchemy of Secrets, now.