Elizabeth Eulberg, the author of several YA books including The Lonely Hearts Club and Better Off Friends, as well as her middle grade series Scared Silly and The Great Shelby Holmes, takes readers across the pond for her return to the romance genre with her new YA novel, Take a Chance on Me. The story follows Evie, who after suffering a blow to her confidence when a video of her goes viral, heads off to spend the summer in London with her estranged father. As Evie navigates a fraught dynamic made more tense due to her father’s disordered eating, she also finds herself falling for British busker Aiden. Eulberg spoke via Zoom from the U.K. to share how her own travel experiences influence her works, what draws her to British culture, writing about body image for young people, and why love stories continue to be a literary mainstay.

It’s been a while since your last romance novel. What brought you back?

It’s almost 10 years. It wasn’t intentional. Contemporary romance has always been my heart; it’s what I love reading and writing. But when I finally said, “I want to go back to writing,” the market had changed a bit, and there weren’t as many contemporary romances in young adult. I had Take a Chance on Me in a drawer for a while because I was told it’s not going to happen. I was like, I really love this book, and I want to read through it again, so I sent it to my editor, Maya [Marlette] at Scholastic. I thought, you know what? Let’s just see what she thinks about it, because I really want to go back to writing these swoony love stories and with the banter and feelings that you have as a teen, which are always so heightened because you experience so many firsts.

You wrote an essay for PW a few years ago about the differences between being a kid 30 years ago and being a kid now, and some of the similar through-lines. Does that apply to young love? Do you think love stories are the same today as they were back then?

I definitely do. I think it’s one of the reasons Pride and Prejudice is still a novel that people go back to time and time again. It’s the classic enemies-to-lovers trope, but it’s that quest of finding someone who not only gets you, and understands you, but chooses you. And that’s a thing that Evie especially has an issue with: she feels looked over a lot. Everybody wants to be accepted. Everybody wants to be loved in some way, and I think especially as a young adult, those feelings are so new and raw, and a lot of people are figuring out who they are. Even if it’s a relationship for a couple weeks or a couple months, it really does reflect on you as a person, for good or bad. And so it’s important to make sure that you pick someone who will compliment you and not put you down, or take the light away from you.

Similar to the book’s protagonist, you made a move to the U.K. What inspired your decision to move and how has your own experience colored Evie’s perspective?

I studied abroad in London when I was in school. I was 20 years old, still figuring out my life, and it was my first time living in a big city. I absolutely fell in love with London, and I started coming back more. I find it a really inspiring city. My first book, The Lonely Hearts Club, was inspired by The Beatles’ music. I did a retelling of Pride and Prejudice called Prom and Prejudice. And I did a Sherlock Holmes retelling. I felt that I wanted to shake up my life a bit. Every story I write starts with a “what if?” My whole thing was what if I moved to London for a couple of years? How will that help reset me? Because I had felt stuck for a little bit, living the same kind of life, and seeing other people get married, have kids, move, I wanted to do something to ignite a spark in me. And moving here reminded me so much of when I wrote this book [during a writing retreat in 2018]. I went back to edit it, and there was so much more to say, because I now knew more about being in London than just being a tourist.

Over the course of the book, Evie develops a healthy mindset for herself regarding her body image. Why was it important to showcase the effort, such as going to therapy, that goes into it and how valuable that work is?

One thing that is very different now than from when I was a teen is the discussion of mental health and therapy, and how it’s not something to be ashamed of. But on the flip side of that, something that is also different from when I was younger, is social media didn’t really exist. I think that teens today have so much pressure looking online at images that are filtered and Photoshopped. I find myself comparing myself [to other people], so I think about what it would be like as a teen now. For Evie, there’s that pressure she has just being a teenage girl, but then she has her father who’s in her ear judging her, making snide comments when she’s eating.

I wanted to think about what impact that would have on a young woman. I wanted to address it in terms of her needing to see a therapist because she thought food was evil, because that’s what her dad thinks, and you can’t just switch that off. I want to make it very clear that even though she had worked on it when she was younger, it isn’t all fixed. I think so many of us wish that we could just admit that there’s a problem with something, snap our fingers, and it goes away. But anything mental health-related is a lifelong journey.

Evie’s strained relationship with her father stems from his controlling behavior around food. How did you want to approach the struggles of living with a parent who deals with disordered eating without villainizing his experience?

It was something that I had to work on. At one point my editor said, “I need you to give just a peek of the old dad,” because Evie very much [thinks in terms of] old dad vs. new dad, the before and after. And at the time, there were a bunch of articles on male celebrities admitting to having eating disorders, because it’s not something that we’re used to seeing. But I thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to have an issue that we don’t see portrayed a lot with men in young adult literature? But Evie still loves her dad, and I needed it to be a relationship she wants to go back to.

What’s next for you?

I am very excited to be continuing my romance trend. I am working on a two-book series—for now—with Scholastic called The Taylors with Jen Calonita, who is a middle grade author. Jen is writing a middle grade book about these four girls, all named Taylor after Taylor Swift, who meet in fifth grade, and then they try to go see the Eras tour. I’m writing a YA series about the same characters, these four girls in their first year of high school and their love stories. It’s called Love Stories: The Taylors Version #1, and book two is what I am working on right now. The first book’s coming out in October!

Well, now we have to know, what’s your favorite Taylor Swift era?

It 100% depends on my mood! Recently I just want things that are going to lift me up, even though I’ve been listening to “I Can Do It with a Broken Heart” a lot, and “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived.” But I think my favorite era, when I went to go see the concert at Wembley [for the Eras tour], is 1989. I love fun and pop.

Take a Chance on Me by Elizabeth Eulberg. Scholastic, paper $12.99 Mar. 4 ISBN 978-1-5461-2927-1