Love, Shakespeare-Style: A Conversation with Author Chloe Liese

“My mantra as a romance writer is, ‘everyone deserves a love story,’” author Chloe Liese says.

Chloe Liese is a contemporary romance author who earned the coveted title USA Today Bestselling Author with her newest release, Better Hate than Never. This is the second book in The Wilmot Sister Series and is a retelling of The Taming of the Shrew.

While watching her favorite Shakespeare film adaptation, she was inspired to write the series and base each book on a different piece of work from the famous playwright.

“I was watching my favorite film adaptation of Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing and just had this idea pop into my head, thinking how fun it would be to reimagine that play for a modern audience,” Liese says. “After that, my idea for a sister trilogy, in which I'd take on a different Shakespeare play for each Wilmot sister, was born.”

“The Wilmot Sister Series are what I'd call rom-com Shakespeare reimaginings, romances that use Shakespeare's work as a springboard for revisiting some of the Bard's most famous scenes and characters through a modern lens,” Liese says.

What does Liese find so inspiring about Shakespeare?

“His creativity as a writer,” she says. “His inventive playfulness with language (he made up his fair share of words that we still use today), and his love of puns and humor are inspiring; I find his love of witty banter and complex, humorous ensemble casts timeless.”

Although this may be fiction, it's not fake.

“It's deeply important to me to write happily ever afters for real people, to affirm the truth that all of us deserve joy and intimacy and love, and that mental health struggles, disability, chronic conditions, neurodivergence, none of that preclude us from loving and being loved,” Liese says.

A common theme in Liese's stories is the representation she gives her characters. In the first book of the Wilmot Sister series, Two Wrongs Make a Right, the female protagonist is neurodivergent, and the male protagonist has anxiety. In Better Hate than Never, the female protagonist has ADHD and is demisexual—which means someone who experiences “sexual feelings and attraction only after developing a close emotional relationship and not on the basis of first impressions, physical characteristics, etc.”

For Liese, putting in the time to research a story's concept outside of her lived experience is crucial.

“It's of the utmost importance to me to interview and research about those aspects before I've written a single word or plotted the book out so that any aspects of these experiences or conditions that my character has will fundamentally shape and drive who they are, rather than be retroactively shoehorned in,” she says. “It's very important to me to do everything I can to write nuanced, authentic, affirming, positive representation.”

Liese gets so immersed in her stories, it's like she lives in those worlds.

“Every book I write, it's like a movie unfolding in my head,” she says. “I'm in it. And I've loved every place my books have taken me.”

But what does she want readers to feel when they read one of her books?

“I hope they feel hopeful. I hope they feel seen. I hope they feel like they've had the best hug in a long while,” she says. “Even if someone who's never been through a tough mental or physical season, who's happy and well-adjusted and comfortable in their life, picks up my book, I hope they feel encouraged.”

Liese will continue to inject those feelings into her book Only and Forever, to be released in 2024, the final installment of her other series, The Bergman Brothers.

She describes the story as “a ‘room-mance’ (a romance between roommates) about a romance-reading optimist and a thriller-writing cynic who team up to help each other through tough professional seasons and end up falling head over heels in love.”

Once The Bergman Brothers series is finished, she has the last book of The Wilmot Sisters Series, Once Smitten, Twice Shy. Liese is still working on it but says, “I'm really pleased with how it's going—it's swoony, hopeful, playful, and happy!”

Liese’s works are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Target, among other booksellers.