Author Spotlight: Dorothy Koomson

 Hello my lovely readers! 

Welcome to the first ever Author Spotlight. I have a list of authors/writers that I'll highlight every so often on this blog. Of course, we're starting with one of my favorite authors, Dorothy Koomson. Let's get into it!

Dorothy Koomson is an English novelist of Ghanaian descent born in London.

She's often referred to as the "queen of the big reveal."

Koomson loved writing and reading at an early age.

"My mum taught me-and my siblings- to read and write when I was in nursery," she said. "As I got older, I used to go to the library everyday after school to read books and I used to write short descriptive passages all the time."

When she was just 13 years old, Koomson wrote her first novel, though unpublished, "A Thin Line Between Love and Hate."

"I used to write a chapter every night in my exercise books then pass it around to my fellow convent school pupils the next morning," she said. "They seemed to love it."

Koomson attended university at Trinity and All Saints College in Leeds before returning to London to get her masters degree in journalism from Goldsmiths University. During her career as a journalist, Koomson would regularly write short stories and novels whenever she had the chance. In 2003, it all paid off when her first novel The Cupid Effect  was published.

The Cupid Effect follows Ceri who now lives in Leeds after living in London. She's an accidental Cupid as she has a bad habit of unintentionally inspiring people to follow their hearts and then trying to resolve the resulting shenanigans. Living in her new city, it's not long before chaos ensues and she has to figure out whether she should stick with her vow to not get involved with things or continue on as a modern-day Cupid.

Koomson followed up her debut with several popular "chick-lit" novels like The Chocolate Run, Marshmallows for Breakfast and my personal favorite, My Best Friend's Girl. 

However, Koomson really hit her stride when she published The Ice Cream Girls in 2010. This novel marked the beginning of Koomson's reigning title as the "queen of the big reveal."

Her sixth novel takes a much darker turn than most fans were expecting. It tells story of two teenagers, Serena and Poppy who were accused of murder. One is set free and the other was sent to prison. Now, it's 20 years later and one is trying to clear her name and the other is trying to keep her secrets.

This book was adapted into a mini-series in 2013 and had great viewings, with an average U.K. viewership of five million each night. 

In a now-deleted blog post on the TV adaptation, Koomson- in so many words- said she was disappointed with the series.

While watching the drama, I couldn't help thinking that, while the people who made it had liked the basic idea of my book, they decided that abusive relationships and girls being groomed into sexual relationships by older men simply didn't happen in the way I had written about them.

Koomson did not have any input on the changes made from the book to the TV drama nor did she have any say in the changing of the ending.

Koomson has written a whopping 18 novels with her 19th novel currently in production. 

I haven't explored her chick-lit novels aside from My Best Friend's Girl and Goodnight, Beautiful. I'm just not a chick-lit girl, I suppose. I need the drama! I have read all of her novels since The Ice Cream Girls (minus That Girl from Nowhere).

My favorite Koomson novels are: The Ice Cream Girls, The Rose Petal Beach, The Flavors of Love (now called That Day You Left), The Friend, The Beach and The Brighton Mermaid.